Posts for 'Tribune Media Services'

(Note: This is the second of several interviews I'm doing with speakers appearing at X Media Research's upcoming BroadbandTVCon in Hollywood on Nov. 5th and 6th, where I'll also be moderating. VideoNuze readers can save $75 on registration using the code "VideoNuze.")

Following is an edited transcript of my interview with Alex Vikati, executive director of Tribune Media Services (TMS), and previously co-founder of CastTV, which TMS acquired in December, 2010.

Describe TMS and its role in the ecosystem.

TMS is the world's leading provider of entertainment metadata - information about TV shows and movies. When you turn on a TV or device, most likely the scheduling information is coming from TMS. We have over 4K customers in 40 countries and our customers reach over 100M people.

You personally focus on online video and social data products at TMS. Can you explain more what TMS is doing?

TMS started by looking at linear TV. A few years ago we realized our main customers (pay-TV operators, CE manufacturers, etc.) needed data about online video too. Online video is different than traditional TV in that it's mostly on-demand viewing. TMS acquired my company CastTV, which was focused on online video data, and we turned it into a TMS product called Online Video Data ("OVD"). It takes the concept of a TMS identifier for a TV show and matches it to location of copies of that show available on the web, at Netflix, Amazon and other places. We're seeing a lot of interest in OVD as more content is coming online.

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The nascent market for second screen TV apps on mobile devices - whether from pay-TV operators, content providers, CE/SmartTV manufacturers or social media/discovery startups - is poised to accelerate due to a deal announced yesterday between Tribune Media Services (TMS) and Digitalsmiths. That's because TMS, which is the largest provider of metadata about TV shows and movies will now use Digitalsmiths' Seamless Discovery platform to offer 20 different APIs allowing app developers far easier access to the data than ever before.

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