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The printed bible of couch potatoes is reinventing itself in the world of interactive programming.

The walls of TV Guide's offices in New York tell a version of America's history few others can. Along the corridors and hallways, open spaces and nooks, blow-ups of TV Guide covers chronicle the evolution of TV, entertainment and ultimately Americana over the past 47 years. On one wall, Lucille Ball smiles laconically on a wholesome cover from the '50s, while elsewhere Archie Bunker smirks in his favorite chair in the '70s. And further down, covers featuring Britney Spears and 'NSync usher in pop stars for the new Millennium.

This might be the last place you'd expect a technology revolution to unfurl. With its age-old brand, TV Guide may seem everything but high tech. Sometimes, however, what's old can be very new again. For TV Guide, in fact, reinventing what's old is exactly what holds the key to the company's future.

"The TV Guide that existed 40 years ago has no relevance to our readers today," says Gemstar-TV Guide's co-president and co-COO Joe Kiener. "But if you look at what we're doing today, it all fits where we've been going."

Indeed, less than two months after Gemstar completed its acquisition of TV Guide from News Corp. and Liberty Media, the newly reborn integrated media company--Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc.--is outlining a bold vision as Sherpa to the world of interactive programming.

At the heart of that is the amalgamation of TV Guide's media properties and, more significantly, the adoption of the interactive programming guide (IPG) found on digital cable boxes, satellite decoders and other set-top boxes; a mundane tool at face value, but one that's extremely powerful because of its ubiquity.

TV Guide's interactive TV mavens figure their depth of resources and killer distribution adds up to an entertainment portal like no other: an opportunity to lead people through some 500 digital channels, video-on-demand, interactive content and more entertainment than anybody knows what to do with. If Gemstar-TV Guide manages to conquer the IPG, some analysts say, Yahoo! and AOL will have nothing on this stalwart of the analog age. The only question, of course, is whether interactive TV is ready for prime time.

"The Internet is a legacy medium as far as we're concerned," insists Dick Porter, Gemstar-TV Guide's executive vice president, media sales. "For us, the future's all about interactive TV."

FROM RAG TO RICHES

That's a far cry from TV Guide just a few years ago. It's hard to believe, in fact, that not long ago the venerable giant was in the same position as other established magazine brands from the '50s.

The digest, launches by publishing magnate Walter Annenberg in 1953, became renowned for its broad mix of listings, reviews, gossip and industry news. It was a mix that worked so well that no publication managed to compete with it. Sure, newspapers inserted TV supplements with their Sunday papers, but TV Guide's national brand never faced any serious challengers. Almost in no time, the digest became the largest-circulation weekly in the world, reaching more than 19 million at its peak in the mid '70s.

But toward the late '80s, its fortunes turned along with many other magazines. In 1988 Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquired TV Guide and other properties for a whopping $3.2 billion. But the magazine was far from ready for the future, and moving into the mid-'90s seemed ever tougher as competition from younger, hipper titles and from Web sites stole some of its show. With its circulation dropping from 16 million in 1989 to 10 million in 1999, TV Guide began to look like a relic.

Salvation came in the form of a dish. United Video Satellite Group, a satellite programming and promotion service, was a perfect suiter for TV Guide. In early 1999, United bought TV Guide from News Corp. for $800 million cash and a 44 percent interest in the resulting company. In 1995, the satellite services company had merged its service with Liberty Media's Netlink to form the largest U.S. provider of C-band satellite content. It had entered the world of electronic program guides with its Prevue Channel and had developed its own interactive program guide, one that drew it into various legal disputes with Gemstar, its fierce rival in the electronic program guide business. (Shortly before the TV Guide acquisition, United Video made an unsuccessful bid for Gemstar.) With that, TV Guide, Inc. was born again, a Tulsa, Okla.-based company owned equally by News Corp. and Liberty Media, with a slew of technologies and, of course, the uber-brand of TV Guide.

But the deal making wasn't over yet. The biggest step for TV Guide came last October when Gemstar itself came in with a $15 billion offer for the company. The deal would combine Gemstar's IPG operations and technologies with TV Guide's powerful brand, content and technology. Effectively, it was a merger between a tech player and a content producer, but it redefined TV Guide's business and squelched a long-running feud between United Video and Gemstar over the IPG standards.

Suddenly, TV Guide was the king of TV guidance once again. With properties spanning print, online and broadcast, the company's marketers figure they now reach some 79 million viewers in the United States, plus a growing base abroad.

Now the company's new chairman and CEO, Henry Yuen--a man who started his business because people couldn't program their VCRs--was lionized as the "Bill Gates of TV." By combining his patents for IPG technology with TV Guide's, he amassed a lock on the burgeoning world of IPGs that few can crack.

THE NEW COTERIE

With the merger completed in July, Gemstar-TV Guide became an amalgam of intertwined assets that resemble Greek salad more than a stew. "Think of it as a platform-agnostic brand for guidance on content," says Porter. "Part of that strategy is occasion based--the print version is good at being portable, the online version is good for searching."

Officially, the company operates four main business sectors: Technology and Licensing, Interactive Platforms, Media and Services (which includes TV Guide magazine and the TV Guide Channel) and Investments and Holdings. The entire organization is overseen by Yuen and three co-presidents and co-COOs, including Kiener, Peter Boylan and Elsie Leung. The ultimate goal: leverage the TV Guide name to sell advertising across a slew of media platforms.

"We're offering a unique opportunity here to leverage the uberbrand, tailor-made with a mix of content," says Kiener. "We're moving the relationship beyond the tactical realm of delivering ad space into a market solution." Indeed, adds Kiener, TV Guide has been very successful at getting the magazine's advertisers to advertise across its other platforms.

MORE THAN A MAGAZINE

What most people think of as TV Guide is encompassed by the Media and Services sector, which manages the flagship digest, printed in 200 local editions every week, and ancillary sub-brands launched over the past several years. Sub-titles include names like: TV Guide Ultimate Cable, a full-sized magazine with room to list 150 channels in more detail; The Cable Guide, distributed to cable subscribers through joint marketing deals with cable operators; and TV Guide Crossword. Even more brand expansion is planned soon, with expanded editions of TV Guide focusing on teens and sports, according to Porter.

Despite all that effort, the decline in TV Guide's readership continues. This summer, the company reduced circulation yet again to 9.9 million. But Kiener insists the battle is no longer about holding up the magazine's circulation, but about spanning the entire media spectrum. Much as Web sites discovered half a decade ago, the entire battle is about eyeballs.

That's where the Media unit fits in. It manages TV Guide's Web site, the TV Guide Channel and TV Guide Interactive. Thanks to the merger with United Video, TV Guide got United Video's Prevue Channel and turned it into the TV Guide Channel, a media property in its own right. Technically, the channel is a spilt screen that includes scrolling listings of what's on in the bottom-third of the screen and programming, including interviews, celebrity profiles arid more in the upper two-thirds. In many ways, the channel is a chance to brand TV Guide as well as an opportunity to garner more advertising dollars.

"The channel about what's on often has better ratings than what's on," muses Porter, who points to the TV Guide Channel's reach into 54 million households nationwide and its average Nielsen viewership of 27 million per week.

TV Guide Online, meanwhile, is the offspring of TV Guide's TVGEN (TV Guide Entertainment Network) and Prevue Online. With its ZIP-code based searchable listings and content, and more importantly the brand recognition, the late-blooming site brought in 1.44 million unique users in June, according to Media Metrix. A distribution deal with AOL rakes in even more users from several AOL channels, making TV Guide a central source of TV listings for AOL's 20 million users. How can they tell? Everyday, about 4 p.m., the site traffic spikes, says Porter, suggesting that in the last hour of work users are logging in to see what's on TV that night.

But the apple of all the executives' eyes is TV Guide Interactive, the interactive program guide being incorporated into digital cable boxes. Like TV Guide Online, the Interactive Guide is a searchable, interactive listing that tells you what's on, what's coming and offers all kinds of details on movies, TV and more. But it has an important edge--it's quick, built-in, easy to use and accessed several times a day either through new digital cable boxes or through Gemstar's "GUIDE Plus+ Gold" system, incorporated in many VCRs and TVs.

All Kiener needs is quick, back-of-the-envelope addition to figure out the potential of that. "Our research indicates that consumers with the Guide access it on average four times an hour, typically three pages deep," Kiener says. "That amounts to 84 page views per household per day. With our combined distribution base in excess of 7 million IPGs ... that amounts to more than 200 billion page views per year." And if adoption of the IPG goes as planned, 10 million households will be using it next year, amounting to 300 billion page views a year.

SETTING SIGHTS ON INTERACTIVE TV

As channel lineups reach into the hundreds and video-on-demand becomes mainstream through personal video recorders such as Tivo and ReplayTV, or through Scientific Atlanta's video-on-demand boxes now shipping to select cities, the IPG becomes even more critical in viewers' lives.

But it's not the Net. Indeed, focusing on convergence being the Internet misses the whole point, TV Guide's executives insist. As Porter sees it, the Net has only prepared consumers to use interactive TV. People are used to multitasking, and they're comfortable with e-commerce. But what they really want is TV. All you have to do is add advertising to the IPG, add commerce capability--or T-commerce as Yuen calls it--to buy movies or even to buy products advertised, and you've got one hell of a portal.

"The market has changed in a way that benefits our brand,"

Kiener underscores. "TV has become more complicated, and people need us like never before."

How significant is the opportunity? Analysts note that if it rolls out fast enough, the profits can be massive. "The IPG is an absolutely essential navigation tool," says Jack Meyers, CEO and chief economist at Meyers Group. "People will soon be switching from surfing to pre-planned navigation. And that space that comes up with the IPG becomes the most valuable real estate around." key to the hearts and minds of consumers. Meyers figures TV Forget the networks, forget cable channels, TV Guide will be your Guide is already capturing revenue through the IPGs on the "GUIDE Plus +" system built into more than 3 million TV sets. In the first place, manufacturers must license the technology, then broadcasters must license the content and then advertisers can pay for the placement. Meyers figures that any smart advertiser would take a look at the new system.

NEW, NEWER, NEWEST TECHNOLOGY

But the success of the Interactive Guide is centered around GemstarTV Guide's combined 140 patents, which all but lock up control of the IPG space in Gemstar-TV Guide's hands. It's a lock Gemstar has long protected vigorously, suing everyone from personal video recorder maker Tivo and Scientific Atlanta to TV Guide itself for patent infringement or breach of contract. Nobody expects that to change.

But that's a blessing and a curse, a growing tide of competitors say. Most important, they note, the courts have never tested how far the patents can reach. And more significant, some suggest, the patents lockin outdated technology. "The best thing about the acquisition [of TV Guide by Gemstar] is it freed up the marketplace to look at other technology," says Barbara Needleman, vp of entertainment products at Tribune Media Services, the interactive arm of Tribune Company. Tribune, which produces most of the TV listings in newspapers, launched its own cable channel guide last December and is planning its own interactive program guide to be launched next year, but it will be doing it through completely different technology, Needleman says. "Gemstar does have valuable patents, but many of those were issued a long time ago. We think there can be a lot better technology out there. Our focus is that technology is an enabler, not the end-all-be-all."

Needleman says Tribune intends to give cable companies something TV Guide doesn't: control. "We allow cable operators to control the brand and some of the content," she says. "The market has needs they don't feel TV Guide can offer."

But TV Guide is also making a big bet on interactive TV. While it makes sense that convergence is on the way, the question is whether the result will look more like the Web or more like TV. "If you're betting that more people will watch TV on a PC rather than on the TV, I'm willing to bet against you," says Kiener.

But as the clunky rollout of broadband Internet access has proven, the commercial introduction of large-scale interactive TV will be far from smooth. "If interactive TV doesn't make it, then they're not going to make it," underscores Brad Atgate, senior vp and director of research at Horizon Media.

Yet, many of TV Guide's competitors also figure TV Guide's already won. "Is TV Guide the navigation hub to interactive TV? Yes. Will they dominate that space? Yes," admits Jonathan Greenberg, CEO and founder of Gist, the online TV listings player. "But could people like us be a good alternative? Absolutely." The question is will end users turn to that alternative.

Yack: More than chat

For years, Jeff Morris watched as the world of broadcast television became more complex. He saw TV go from a world of general entertainment into one of niche interests. And he realized that companies like TV Guide would be the biggest winners in all of it. "With all that channel proliferation," says Morris, "it became clear that the killer app in all of this is the electronic program guide."

When Web content exploded, Morris instantly saw the value of guidance in the new space as he helped Showtime build content for it. Now, as president and CEO of Yack, the oldest guide to online events and programs, Morris is working to do for online content what TV Guide's done for TV. A year after taking the helm at Yack, Morris has transformed the site from a listing of chat sessions to a comprehensive listing of content on the Web.

It's a business that boasts significant opportunities as broadband access proliferates, but it also poses massive challenges, as Morris and his minions are learning. Morris estimates that there's about 7,000 hours worth of digital cable and satellite TV content available on a given day; in contrast, he figures there's probably 700,000 hours or more of streaming content on the Web. And unlike the 30-minute to 2-hour-long programming on TV, online streaming content ranges from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. "The multiple is 1,000 to 10,000 times greater," he says, "and when you figure in live events, which are usually stored for future playback, the magnitude of the task is huge."

Keeping track of it all could be a daunting task, until you realize that content producers need Yack as much as the audience needs it. "Our goal is to connect the audience with the content, but it's also to connect the content provider with the audience," he says. With over 260 deals signed with content providers ranging from SonicNet to House of Blues, all of which provide listings to their content and other sites' content, the process of producing 3,400 listings a week becomes much more straightforward. Morris boasts his site is the first to be selling "tune-in" advertising, Yack's key source of revenue, along with licensing and syndication. Citing TV Guide as an example, Morris figures Yack has print and broadcast content in its future. "Nobody's [guiding] people with the comprehensiveness we are," Morris claims as he draws out a bigger vision for the still privately-held venture. "We started out PC-centric, but you can expect we'll grow to several different platforms."

There are even bigger rumors of TV Guide in Yack's future, however. While TV Guide executives deny any discussion and Morris downplays the possibilities, he admits, "In my mind, it's inevitable that Internet guidance and electronic guidance will merge ... I see us as mutually exclusive businesses but very related businesses." One thing is clear, if Morris can help it, Yack's future won't be all talk--or chat.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

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