New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The app will incorporate many different features that include social conversations, the ability to purchase merchandise and order tickets to WWE events. The app is powered by Bottle Rocket apps. WWE’s leadership in social TV complements its successful ratings that led USA Network to announce more WWE programming than ever before at their upfront.

The app has already been in the top ten worldwide on iTunes, a placement that every social TV startup dreams of joining. Since WWE has such consistent year-long programming that’s built around real-time buzz, we might see this app slowly start to outperform their actual website. As second screen startups continue to launch, pivot and go after users, one might wonder if the white-labeled, show or network-specific apps will end up being the eventual replacement of the old-school TV guide grid.

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This marketing partnership between the two is clever and highlights the Huffington Post as not just a news blog, but a social platform that’s capable of selling social TV to networks. While the activation lives on their website similar to how a news article would, it clearly states at the bottom that it’s a sponsored post.

Lost Remote: How will Huffington Post be marketing the show and how will social be used?

Lauren Kapp: We were aware of POLITICAL ANIMALS via the pre-premiere buzz, including mention of it in Maureen Dowd’s “State of Cool” piece, and discussed with USA the idea to create a list of America’s biggest “political animals” of all time. With Huffington Post’s highly engaged community for opinion and conversation, and USA’s tremendous reach, we felt this partnership would provide a great opportunity to start a dialogue about power and leadership. As we prepare to decide on the next chapter in America’s future, there’s a lot to be learned from those who defined our political past, so we felt that it was a unique platform from which to reflect on what it means to be a “political animal” at a time when leadership is on the minds of all Americans.

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We spoke to Campfire’s Partner and Creative Director Steve Coulson about their role in creating an experience to unleash the show to fans. They smartly worked to take the fictional Washington Globe from the show and bring it to life with the show’s writers and producers. Each week Campfire will be launching content to compliment the episode at WashingtonGlobeNews.com. Here are the details:

Lost Remote: How did Campfire come up with the concept?

Steve Coulson: Campfire’s work for USA Network’s “Political Animals” is designed as a storyworld extension, allowing viewers to immerse themselves deeper into the fictional world where Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver) is Secretary of State, filling in a lot of the backstory of the characters and political landscape. Given that the story revolves around a fictional newspaper, The Washington Globe, it was a no brainer to develop that further, creating both the newspaper itself and a special edition magazine section, “W.” The newspaper allows us to launch new weekly content that ties directly into the events of the previous episode and bridge the gap until the next. The magazine content is more evergreen, providing stories, images and video that introduce the characters themselves.

LR: What are the social angles?

Coulson: We’ve tried to use social platforms in the same realistic way that a modern newspaper would use them. The site uses advanced responsive design, allowing it to be read on the widest range of devices and platforms. All content elements utilize the Livefyre commenting platform for audience participation, and as with any publication, all content includes social share technology.

In addition, we’ve created an Instagram feed for this world’s President, with daily updates that include candid images of White House. Future photos will tie directly into plot events and be synchronized in real time. All Instagram images are also posted to a Tumblr site to promote social sharing.

LR: Anything else to add?

Coulson: We’ve managed to work with a great team of creators to bring this to life. The cast has participated in a series of exclusive videos for the site, and we are creating the weekly video blogs for the show’s The Washington Globe blogger Georgia Gibbons.

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“We’d be open to integrating everybody’s social streams,” TVGuide.com GM Christy Tanner tells Lost Remote. “Just as the playing field is level for streaming video and full episodes that we’ve integrated, that’s the same for a social stream.”

Tanner says the deal came together quickly after a brainstorming session with USA’s Jesse Redniss, and the Character Chatter platform was integrated with TVGuide.com’s look and feel. “It enables our users who are fans of their shows to seamlessly participate in social experiences that USA’s created, and overall their piece of the social pie gets bigger by adding our audience,” Tanner explained.

If you think TVGuide.com and its mobile experiences are starting to push into the second screen space, Tanner will tell you they already have. She points out that 91% of TVGuide’s mobile use happens in the home, 20% of TVGuide.com’s web traffic originates from mobile devices and 1.5 million users actively use the TVGuide apps every month. And in August, TVGuide plans a “major relaunch” of its mobile apps with new social TV features. “The experience that you see in our apps right now is a fine experience, but it’s about to get a thousand times better when we relaunch our apps,” she said.

And while many startups struggle with scale and a business model, Tanner says TVGuide.com has both. “For us, social TV is a business,” she said, adding that it’s profitable across the board. “It’s just a matter of time before we integrate additional (second screen) features. We’re prioritizing on the basis of what we can monetize and scale.”

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MTV President Stephen Friedman told us about a new initiative for their hit “Teen Wolf,” which was then presented at their upfront. We caught up with Founder and CEO Aaron Williams who confirmed that they are powering this initiative, called “Teen Wolf: The Hunt.” SocialSamba has also quietly launched a consumer-facing storytelling platform called “SagaWriter.”

The new tool feels a bit like Storify in functionality, but it has a different mission to unleash a way to create a story with the social web. The Sagas are intended to create interactive stories that have elements to watch and also participate. One Zombies story I came across started off by inviting me to interact and tell the first character that I was there, followed by the story:

Lost Remote: Why did you launch the new consumer facing product?

Aaron Williams: One, very selfish – I want more people using our platform, the more people that touch it the better. Each deal has only 5 or 6 people touching the platform at once. Second, when we went to raise funding, it looked like we were an agency. I wanted to prove we were a platform and one way to do that is make it available to anyone. Third, I believe that there are so many stories in that long tail that we can turn this into the YouTube for social story telling. I believe there is real potential for hockey stick growth.

LR: How will this make TV more social?

Williams: Within our tool you can’t use copyrighted material. We follow the same DMCA rules that everyone else does. We see TV shows and other storytellers have interest in creating fan fiction. The WB adding Big Lebowski characters to Xtranormal, the fact that they are taking steps like this was a good thing to point to for us. It means its good for the brand. For us we see that wave coming, brands or storytellers can skin to look like their brand and embed in whatever platform they use to reach out to fans.

We white label all of our experiences, that we give the brand owner the opportunity. We’ll start to see more storytellers take advantage of that. We have sixty stories that have been created with just word of mouth. They read on average two stories when they come. Our average time per visit is just over five minutes. 12% of the fans that come to read a story, come to write a story.

I’m looking for the first YouTube [type] sensation and then pour tons of marketing behind that sensation.

There’s definitely potential here when it comes to fans creating their own fun fiction around their favorite shows but also for networks to create simple scripted social stories. One day TV networks might have budgets to hire social TV teams as big as their main writing teams, but for now a show like The Walking Dead could easily make a Saga where you get to talk to your favorite character while trying to avoid getting eaten. The company hasn’t promoted Saga at all yet (we’re the first to write about it) so it’s definitely early days that seem to have a hopeful future.

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Lost Remote: What worked so well with Character Arcade? Can you share a few numbers?

Jesse Redniss: Character Arcade (below) really became a new community offering for the Characters Welcome brand. Through the implementation of an affinity platform and Facebook Connect Integration to enable direct player-to-player challenging on the site and on Facebook, we started to drive a lot of new users, and repeat visitors into the community. To date, we’ve registered over 1.5 million players through organic sharing and challenging. We also kept Character Arcade highly curated and focused through the Characters Welcome brand lens, which created a unique gaming environment for our fans.

LR: When did you begin to see potential in growing the idea across the organization?

Redniss: The nature of gaming is sharing, if not competing, so it was an idea from the start over 5 years ago and grew as social gaming took off. USA’s Character Arcade was an experiment in user engagement and leveraging different types of content to immerse a viewer/user in a familiar brand that they are passionate about. In this case, the demographic and psychographic watching our then on the air USA hit shows Monk and PSYCH were a perfect fit for the casual gamer. By creating fun casual games that brought to virtual life the quirky OCD tendencies of Monk, fans were able to dive deeper into that character and figuratively BE the Character. These games really took off in popularity and the Original MONK’s Mind Game became a worldwide hit with over 13 million plays in the course of its first year. The game became a funnel of traffic back to the core Monk property and hopefully we converted some game fans into Monk TV show watchers. As our approach grew, we aggregated all of our games into one destination that became Character Arcade and it started generating a lot of page views and time of engagement of 19 minutes per user visit.

This wasn’t the first use of games at NBCU as many networks have used this approach for years, but launching an aggregated, scalable approach, building our own game engines and IP, integrating FaceBook Connect to socially charge the platform and building in an affinity platform was the goal. When we saw that success, we wanted to share it across our sister networks.

LR: How will UGN work across NBCU’s brands?

Redniss: The beauty of the platform is to provide a flexible model that each brand can really control and manage as part of their overall brand positioning. This way, the game environment stays true to their brand look and feel as well as customized to their user base. On the back end, the UGN platform will provide a consistent Content Management System, Ad Integration system, Identity and Affinity system across all of the brands. This will enable us to look at casual and social gaming on a holistic level as well as provide the ability to drill down and parse out certain data and user segments to gain a better understanding of each individual player. We can then go back to the ad community with a story about true reach across the horizontal network.

We will also be able to realize content development efficiencies by building gaming engines that can be easily re-skinned and deployed across multiple properties at once, maintaining that particular brand look and feel, but having similar back end engines powering the games.

LR: When and where will we begin to see it?

Redniss: Going through the summer, we anticipate at least six major properties going live, if not more. From a USA perspective, we are also upgrading Character Arcade to the new platform in June.

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The big social TV announcements at the NewFront:

Universal Games Network (UGN), a social gaming platform across all NBCU properties:

The platform was originally designed by USA Network’s digital team and will be launched at the end of 2012. We’re excited to see what properties and brands are leveraged for this and if there will be a lot of similarities to USA’s Hashtag Killer:

The white-labeled solution will allow fans to play games, engage and consume content, amass reward points and redeem them for real and virtual goods across all NBCU gaming properties. Facebook Connect integration will enable fans to challenge friends in tournament style games. It will offer advertisers a one-stop shop to reach the ever-growing and coveted gaming audience across the entire NBCU digital footprint representing 115 million fans.

“Oxygen Connect” to launch in time for “The Glee Project” Season 2

Oxygen is preparing for the season two launch of it’s biggest show, The Glee Project. Instead of just launching a social TV strategy they’ve ramped up with a new social platform. Here are the details:

“Oxygen Connect” will provide fans with a platform that connects them directly to the series contenders over the course of the entire competition. With a premise of “earning to experience,” fans will have the opportunity to engage with the content and earn points toward more personal experiences such as live chats with contenders, and more.

Bravo Announces First-ever Location Based Social Media Experience for “Around the World in 80 Plates”

Andy Cohen and Lisa Hsia were in house as Bravo launched a new location based social experience for their “Around the World in 80 Plates” show. According to the release, “Bravo and Infiniti have exclusively partnered on a location-based social contest that encourages fans to tweet #80plateschallenge in order to unlock 10 secret locations across the US through an interactive map on BravoTV.com and on Bravo mobile.” Fans will be encouraged to go to auto brand Infiti’s Facebook or Twitter to uncover secret tips

NBC Politics will also launch an iPad app May 3rd with an interactive map feature. You can read the full announcement here.
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NBCU Chairman Lauren Zalaznick’s interview with Lost Remote on social TV:

Lost Remote: Why did NBCU decide to have a NewFront this year?

Lauren Zalaznick: NBC Universal really owns the space, the most original content a huge digital platform, number three in entertainment and we deserver to finally showcase all the things that we’ve been working for years and years, for each individual brand, and in particular since the Comcast NBC Universal merger, the incredible wealth of assets that wield themselves to be social and mobile and digital all based on premium original content.

LR: Why is social TV important to NBC?

LZ: Social TV is the way that our viewers watch. It’s the way that our digital users what to consume content and the whole being of social TV brings it all together with each individual brand’s social…that brings live viewing experiences together.

It’s a bit difficult to hear but you can watch the interview here:

NBCU EVP of Digital Sales Peter Naylor’s interview on social TV:

Lost Remote: Why did NBC decide to have a NewFront this year?

Peter Naylor: When Digitas announced that they were going to organize a lot of the websites that were creating digital content, it seemed to us that we should have a voice in this. While the other guys are trying to grab TV dollars, we try to counter-program a little bit, to borrow a TV phrase and to let people that we’re a digital powerhouse in addition to being a TV powerhouse. Why shouldn’t digital buyers consider NBC, when you think our wide expanse of opportunities, why shouldn’t we get their mind share and their share of wallet, when they’re trying to go after our share of wallet for television. It seemed like a natural thing for us to jump in.

LR: WHy do you think social TV plays an important role in this whole mix?

PN: Well I think social TV just makes television stronger. All the gross ratings points that are out there get activated and amplified. When they combine first screen with second and third screen. TV has always been social, now that we’ve got the hardware, i.e. the smart screen, the software, otherwise known as the social networks, it’s all converged to make social TV really just explode. This is no fad, it’s a trend. TV has always been social, now it’s super social.

You can watch the low quality video interview here:

Social TV for brands is here to stay.

If you’re interested in more video, check out Naylor’s presentation to the crowd here, where he discussed President Obama’s involvement in their “Viggle-enabled,” broadcast of To Kill A Mockingbird, and the sizzle reel they played at the beginning showcase their complete digital footprint. A popular theme that has continue throughout the upfronts and NewFronts is scripted social platforms to get fans hooked when not watching the show. Read our interview with Kay Madati (who was at NBCU’s NewFront) to learn more about Facebook’s approach to the “before” and “after” a show airs. Also, read about the recent MTV upfront where they also announced a big scripted social platform for Teen Wolfe.

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“Fans will learn about iconic moments, celebrity recounts, exclusive photos and videos as they watch Universal’s digitally remastered and fully restored classic being broadcast nationally for the first time,” explains the release.

The idea of using Viggle to raise money for a nonprofit seems like a very good idea. Instead of constant personal point-earning, this seems like a great incentive to get new people to try out the service by helping a good cause. Additionally, watching a film on TV is a lot different than watching primetime programming. While I often find that any second screen experience can be distracting to my primetime TV habits, when it comes to a linear airing of a film, Viggle could be a great way to remind people about the non-primetime programming that the network has and make a very “old school” movie interactive in a social TV world.

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The Kennel Club is an organization that’s been around since 1877 that’s dedicated to the sport of pure bread dogs. If you haven’t seen Best In Show, or specifically Jane Lynch’s role in one of the best mockumentaries to date, watch this clip to understand a bit more about how passionate dog lovers get about this show.

Through the club’s website, you’ll have the chance to chat with expert Chuck Bessant at 10pm tomorrow. USA’s impressive social TV mix around the show combined four video streams (covering 185 breeds), the chat with Bessant and a GetGlue campaign. The stream will be accessible worldwide and will feature Facebook and Twitter integrations. Happy Valentine’s Day and don’t forget to check out some of the best looking dogs from around the world, live from Madison Square Garden in NYC.

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This week, the USA Network show “White Collar” rolled out one of the first SideShows on the Miso platform. At different moments in the show, it displayed quotes, polls, factoids, photos, video and even a location pinpointed on Google Maps. You can also check-in for White Collar badges. USA promoted the Miso app online, and it plans to create a new SideShow for each episode this season.

One catch, however: the app is only truly synchronized for DirecTV and AT&T U-verse subscribers (so far). Otherwise, you have to manually swipe through the timeline.

Separately, USA Network also launched Mozzie’s Mission tied to the show, an online game that incorporates original video, sponsored (with product placement) by Ford. For fans that make it through the six-week game, they unlock the chance to win an iPad 2.

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Lost Remote: Will you promoting the app on-air?

Jesse Redniss: We will be rolling out a full promotional and marketing plan in Q1. We are “releasing it into the wild” in Q4 to receive initial fan and consumer feedback, and in true USA fashion, we plan on making enhancements in an organic fashion so the offering is continually evolving.

LR: Will the app be promoted at all in yap.tv?

JR: It is our intention that Yap and USA will help promote, further driving the fan experiences.

LR: Launching with any advertisers?

JR: We are not launching with any advertisers out of the gate, but we are in deep conversations with numerous “partners” that would like to be integrated into the offering. As mentioned at the Social TV Summit Press event, we are looking for partners that share the same vision that we have here at USA and would like to create great character focused content together.

LR: Any exclusive content/polls this week as you launch or is it all going to be user generated?

JR: We will have some exclusive Polls and Character Chatter aspects in the App this week, and definitely next week after the Thanksgiving Holiday.

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