• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, January 26, 2006

Viewers who checked out the Chicago CBS affiliate's broadcast of the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon last fall likely weren't surprised to see a message ticker crawling across the bottom of the screen. But the content of the ticker might have given them pause. Several times during the show, the ticker ran notes of encouragement text-messaged by viewers watching the race at home. The broadcast was the first airing of Vibes Media's TextTV messaging platform. TextTV builds on the firm's Text-2-Screen application, which allows concertgoers to send messages from their cell phones to stage-side screens.

"Lots of people have done TV voting," says Jack Philbin, Vibes' president and co-founder. "What this does is open things up a bit and allow for some creativity."

TextTV boasts built-in filtering technology, eliminating the need for a staffer to monitor the message queue. Philbin says there's a natural advertiser tie-in, as well: The logo of Dunkin' Donuts, which had signed on with the CBS affiliate as a sponsor of the race, was displayed between ticker messages.

"It's user-created stickiness," Philbin notes. "You capitalize on peoples' obsessions with themselves. If they send a message, they're going to sit there and wait and watch." At peak times during the marathon, CBS 2 received three messages per second, all trackable. Philbin acknowledges resistance from old-school broadcast types, but notes, "We've seen, what, 59 iterations of interactive TV? Every one of them has failed." He adds, "In those cases, they were requiring a capital expenditure for the set-top box. The beauty of this model is that consumers already own the phone, which is the only tool they need to participate."