SCOTT TeISSler
Scott Teissler
CTO and chief digital
technology strategist
Turner Broadcasting
System
Scott Teissler is chief technology officer and
chief digital technology strategist for Turner
Broadcasting System.
tant non-generic video destinations, we are focused
on video ad delivery and formats.
Has the emergence of the “three-screens” model
(TV, PC, mobile) impacted Turner?
You might almost say four screens: TV is really TV
linear and TV VOD, with a third “TV” coming ... that
incorporating so-called in-channel navigation.
It’s fair to say we have been in the thick of the evolution of the three-screen model, rather than impacted by it. A dozen years ago, CNN.com essentially
defined the second screen for news coverage, and 10
years ago the brand made a similarly seminal move
onto pager and then more general wireless platforms.
In the same era, we were running some early convergent (PC and TV, together) productions on TBS,
and what we do today with Nascar.com is a general
descendent of those efforts.
Our production processes are geared to producing
media formats for online and mobile as adjuncts to,
byproducts of, and derivatives of our linear productions; and, of course, with the advent of UGC (like
iReport), we now have content flows from digital to
linear. The pace of experimentation and innovation
is still rapid in this area, and we see new technical
demands for integrated ad campaigns and more
creative (contextual) associations between program
and commercial content on the various distribution
platforms.
How far have you moved along the Tru2Way
(OCAP) path? Are you working with internal and/
or third-party application developers?
For the most part, we’re still in the era of first-generation Tru2way applications: consumer utility services
like EPGs and navigation to what is, essentially, VOD
content. With a couple of these established in front of
initial consumer populations, which also demonstrate
vigorous uptake, I think you’ll see more activity on
the part of content providers with related linear and
non-linear properties (like Turner’s). We’ve had internal prototype applications of this sort for several years
now. But the deployment prospects have remained
premature.
What technologies in the advanced advertising
arena are of most interest to Turner Networks?
We have the advantage of having several Web properties (CNN, Cartoon, Nascar, NBA, etc.) that are both
significant destinations for multimedia experiences
and graceful extensions of underlying TV properties.
The different technologies that underpin “vertical ad
networks” are thus important to us, allowing us to
offer audiences across our network of branded sites
with contextually beneficial and well-understood
environments in which to serve ads. Also, as impor-
Where do the biggest IT challenges lie regarding
collaboration with affiliates, MSOs in particular?
Hitherto, MSO IT and technology establishments have
not been organized with developmental collaboration
with programmers in mind. Now that infrastructural
developments may be causing two “screens” to converge
in the living room (IP path and linear/VOD path), the
motivations for such collaborations will be strengthened.
Some of the challenge lies, of course, in what the client-side devices are capable of: “Broadband” gives us a very
wide technical canvas compared with the set-top stack.
On the other hand, applications first appearing in broadband could be powerful models for analogous program-mer/MSO collaborations.
We do think there is an opportunity, which has
not been fully grasped for MSOs and programmers,
to outperform other platforms delivering big-screen
user experiences that are more valuable and impactful
and entertaining than on rival platforms that simply
don’t have comparable delivery performance. We have
certainly have the audiences, and we currently have a
significant advantage in ability to deliver media in real
time to those audiences. We should pay more attention
to defining the applications that can leverage this. ■
16 Supplement to Communications Technology
