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Tuesday, January 25
 
Convergent programming includes special pre-, post-game elements.

January 25, 2000

GO.com (NYSE:GO) and the ABC Television Network will extend their innovative convergence programming, called Enhanced TV, to Super Bowl XXXIV Sunday, January 30 in Atlanta in conjunction with the live traditional ABC Sports telecast. The Enhanced TV production will include special pre- and post-game elements introduced specifically for the Super Bowl.

GO.com and ABC offered Enhanced TV for ESPN and ABC's regular season Sunday Night and Monday Night Football telecasts, respectively, this past season, as well as ABC's two post-season NFL wildcard games and the January 4 Nokia Sugar Bowl, the Bowl Championship Series game which decided college football's national championship.

A live production, Enhanced TV is the most innovative application of real-time convergence available today. Using proprietary technical tools and infrastructures developed in conjunction with Walt Disney Imagineering, ETV enables fans to access unique content via their personal computers that is synchronized, to the second, with the traditional game telecast. The content is highly interactive, uses television quality graphics, produced from a live control room and offers the user/viewer numerous customized offerings.

Enhanced TV will be available during ABC's Super Bowl pre-game (2 p.m. ET) and post- game coverage telecasts as well as during the game itself.

Enhanced TV's three main features include: Game Stats, a continuously updated, real-time interactive database of game, player and team statistics originating from the production truck on-site at each game; a Push Channel of enhanced 'television quality' graphics, interactive polls, animated statistical bar graphs and more, synchronized to the telecasts; and PrimeTime Player, a live interactive game tied to every offensive play from scrimmage, enabling fans to compete against friends and other viewers throughout the country during the actual telecast and win prizes for each quarter and halftime. Pre- and post-game programming will include live polling, and a trivia game synchronized live to the telecast.

Enhanced TV facts and figures

  • Since the start of the 1999 NFL season, more than 2.2 million users have experienced Enhanced TV;
  • The typical user stays logged on to Enhanced TV for an average of 37 minutes;
  • More than 3,000 Fact/Stat graphics are created before each game;
  • Users can take part in Instant Polling, as well as chat rooms enabling them to communicate with other Enhanced TV users;
  • Digital video-freeze frames from the telecasts are pushed to the users' computer screen;
  • Enhanced TV surveys show that 81% of users have a TV and personal computer in the same room, and 49% of Enhanced TV users had never used the Internet while watching TV before their Enhanced TV experience;
  • The same surveys indicate that 63% of users are between the ages of 26-45, and 95% said they'd use ABC's Enhanced TV again.

    On-air promotions encourage viewers to log on to Enhanced TV's applications during the telecasts. Links allowing PC users access to the applications are also positioned throughout GO.com services, including ESPN.com, NFL.com, Monday Night Football Online, Bowl Championship Series Online, ABCNEWS.com and ABC.com prior to and during each broadcast.

    Enhanced TV programming, which doesn't include any audio or video, is designed specifically to accompany the television broadcast. It is delivered via an Internet-connected computer and is controlled by the user while watching the game simultaneously on television.

    It is neither a television experience nor an Internet computer experience, but truly both at the same time -- the first step towards in-home convergence programming. Anyone with a personal computer, connected to the Internet via 28.8 modem or better, will have access to the Enhanced TV programming applications. Enhanced TV content includes:

  • Access to Game Stats, an interactive data base of game, player and team statistics beamed directly from the television truck game data computer, giving the stats-hungry fan instant access to almost every offensive and defensive statistics
  • A synchronized graphics Push Channel display of facts, statistics, quotes, trivia and more, enhancing the television broadcast
  • A live, interactive game, PrimeTime Player, in which fans predict the ball handler before every play from scrimmage. Points are awarded for every correct choice, and fans can follow their progress on live leaderboards as they compete against thousands of other real-time players nationwide. Players can create their own affinity groups to better keep score among friends. Throughout the telecast, interactive trivia questions, including "watch-and-win" questions, will pop up on the users' screens. Bonus points will be awarded for correct answers and added to PrimeTime Players' scores. A real-time leaderboard allows the users to track their score relative to all of the other players at any given second. Prizes are awarded to the 10 top scores for each quarter.
  • Clickable banner ads and promos appearing during commercial breaks that will be synchronized with on-air commercials; these banners, linked to marketers' Web sites, can be bookmarked by viewers for future access.
  • Future synchronized e-commerce opportunities; when a certain player scores a touchdown, for example, viewers will be directed to ESPNstore.com, where they can purchase that player's merchandise at a special discount available to only those experiencing Enhanced TV
  • Instant sports news and scores updates from ESPN.com, the most popular sports site on the Web, throughout the telecasts
  • ETV Chat rooms are available throughout each telecast allowing PrimeTime Player gamers to chat with their leaderboard competitors in real-time
  • Halftime live-synchronized Trivia Game allows the user to compete in real-time against other players. Each question is worth different point amounts depending upon its difficulty. A separate Half-time trivia leaderboard displays the users score relative to competitors in real time. Prizes are awarded to the top 10 scorers.

    GO.com was created as part of the recent merger between Infoseek Corporation and The Walt Disney Company's online unit, Buena Vista Internet Group (BVIG). GO.com oversees many of the Web's most popular sites and services, including the go.com portal, ABC.com, ABCNEWS.com, Disney.com, Disneystore.com, ESPN.com, NFL.com, NBA.com, NASCAR Online, ESPNstore.com, ABCsports.com, Family.com and Mr. Showbiz.




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