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A New Balance for Ads, Programs: Commericals Are Interlaced With Comcast's New Exercise Channel

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By Miriam Hill, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jan. 18--Comcast Corp. is aiming to pump up advertiser interest in on-demand television with a new exercise channel that lets viewers watch workout videos whenever they want, but won't let them avoid commercial messages.

Comcast also hopes the new channel will give its subscribers another reason not to defect to satellite-TV providers, which cannot offer as many on-demand programs as cable systems.

The new channel, Exercisetv, to be announced today, was quietly launched over the last few months. In one key way, it will not look like other television: Exercisetv will have no advertisements -- at least not the traditional kind that interrupts shows for 30 or 60 seconds.

Instead, Exercisetv will have a single sponsor, New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., the fitness company best-known for its running shoes, making the new channel a more subtle version of an infomercial.

Exercisetv's roughly 90 shows will feature New Balance products, educational videos produced with the company, and messages to viewers sponsored by New Balance. An Exercisetv instructor will wear New Balance shoes, for example, and viewers will see tips on their screens from New Balance, such as "Bend your knees."

The channel will be offered as video-on-demand only, meaning that customers can access the shows whenever they want by pushing a few buttons on their remote control. By integrating the New Balance promotions into the programs, the network may overcome an advertiser concern about on-demand programming: viewers fast-forwarding though their messages.

The network will be available to Comcast and Time Warner digital-cable customers at no extra cost.

Jake Steinfeld, the fitness guru whose tagline is "Body by Jake" and who helped create FitTv, a cable fitness network, will create programming for Exercisetv. Available programs will include children's workouts, tai chi, Pilates and yoga.

"You can pick whatever workout you want whenever you want," said Matt Strauss, Comcast's vice president of programming and content development. "You can say, 'I want to do a yoga workout that focuses on my abs, and I want to do it when I get home from work.' "

Comcast, the country's largest cable company, with 21.4 million customers, is betting on video-on-demand technology to help it hold customers. Satellite television, the cable industry's main competitor, cannot offer video-on-demand.

Comcast said customers watched more than one billion video-on-demand shows in 2005. Still, the ad-skipping aspect has been a concern for advertisers.

At first, programs will simply feature New Balance products and provide information for Web sites where customers can learn more. Eventually, Comcast and New Balance will suggest sites where customers can buy the company's fitness products. And Comcast said consumers eventually would be able to click and buy products right from their televisions, instead of going to a computer.

Comcast hopes to attract other fitness-product advertisers to the programs, though New Balance has exclusive rights to market its shoes and apparel.

"Comcast is in the forefront of trying to use video-on-demand as a differentiator between cable and satellite," said Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication who studies mass-media marketing.

Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research, said Exercisetv could help solve the advertising problem that video-on-demand poses. But it could create other challenges, he added, because it may bite into advertising revenue for specialty channels offered on traditional cable. Such channels, which include Discovery, Home & Garden, and hundreds of others, receive little or no revenue from content they provide to cable companies for on-demand viewing. Instead, they rely heavily on advertising dollars, which could be diverted by sponsored channels such as Exercisetv.

"This may solve an advertising problem for Comcast but it doesn't solve the problem for these channels," Bernoff said.

Comcast's Strauss said the company believed advertisers wanted a variety of possible outlets, including traditional cable channels and video-on-demand.

In tests, Exercisetv got as many as two million views in a month, strong numbers for video-on-demand, according to Bernoff.

Comcast would not discuss financial aspects of the deal, including whether it would receive any money from New Balance if customers asked for more information or make purchases based on Exercisetv shows. Comcast said that New Balance would be a co-owner of the venture.

Contact staff writer Miriam Hill at 212-757-2295 or hillmb@phillynews.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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