• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, October 16, 2007

Last week I was contacted by a reporter who was writing a piece about video on demand. She opened our interview with, "Hasn't VOD been a disappointment? Hasn't broadband video really just taken the wind out of its sails?" What about wireless video, I quipped. Hook, line and stinker, she jumped on that bandwagon too. We were two peas in the VOD-bashing pod.

Not one to mince words or kick an application when it's down -- particularly, when referring to the televisual realm. I suggested that the premise of her article was absolutely wrong. She was offering outsight, not insight, about VOD. Her piece would reflect what the media community, particularly media buyers, has been complaining about for eons: limited deployment, lengthy integration deadlines, scarce metrics, and difficult navigation. As accurate as these criticisms may be, the measurement of VOD's success will be determined by consumer usage. If consumers engage, marketers are sure to follow. My understanding from Rentrak, the cable operators' and satellite platforms' emulation of the VOD models, is that VOD is catching on. Maybe not as fast as the ad community would like -- particularly when it comes to deployment, advertising propositions and reportage - but growing.

I would argue that the more consumers get accustomed to, and interact with, broadband and wireless video-on-demand models and their accompanying interactive features, the more likely they will easily and effortlessly segue into VOD usage over pay TV and digital terrestrial platforms when these systems fully deploy with intuitive measurable bells and whistles. Selfishly, I hope that it is sooner than later.

Until then, let consumers enjoy on-demand activities wherever they are proffered. As the media community has seen and continues to experience, utilization of one televisual model has not resulted in the disengagement of another or precluded yet another from elevation. After all, when I began my career in the advertising community, there was only one "prime time": analog TV's 8 p.m.-11 p.m. time period. Today, we have three designated "prime-time" time periods: traditional TV prime time remains evening viewing; broadband's prime time is daytime; and in mobile parlance, prime time is drive time.