Time Warner Cable Plans to Triple Number of ‘Start Over’ Markets
Time Warner Cable, pleased with the early customer response to its Start Over time-shifting service, plans to expand the service to about 12 more cable markets this year, tripling its reach. Keith Nichols, senior dir.-new product deployments for Time Warner, said TW will extend Start Over to most of its 27 regional divisions after having launched the service in 6 markets the past 15 months. But, speaking at the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers’ (SCTE’s) conference in Houston last week, Nichols declined to say when and where Time Warner will roll out the service next.
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Time Warner offers the free digital video service in Columbia, S.C.; San Antonio; Greensboro and Winston-Salem, N.C.; Rochester, N.Y.; Albany, N.Y.; and Honolulu. TW started the rollout in Columbia in fall 2005. Start Over allows digital cable subscribers to restart specially enabled shows in progress, using just their cable remote, without special gear or function programming. Like a PVR, the service also lets viewers pause and rewind shows in progress. But, unlike a PVR, it doesn’t permit users to fast-forward through commercials, making it much more palatable to advertisers, or keep copies of recorded programs.
Although it doesn’t offer the bells & whistles of a PVR, Start Over seems to be gaining plenty of use. Nichols said the service is generating more than 450,000 viewing sessions a week on 160,000 digital set-top boxes. He said users are time-shifting 75-90 minutes of programming weekly, on average. Nichols said Start Over is also generating “pull-through” to Time Warner’s other digital products. He said the simplicity of the service has been the key to its early success.
Start Over, which launched in Columbia with about 50 enabled programming channels, now encompasses nearly 100 networks. Nichols said he expects to secure more programming deals as Time Warner expands availability of the service. In fact, TW officials, who are targeting 150 networks as “the sweet spot” for subscribers, have said the lineup will soon increase to 115 channels.
Time Warner executives say they are looking for ways to extend the window for show playback beyond its normal viewing period. In addition, they're exploring the idea of a complementary time-shifting service called Look Back, which would let viewers watch a program after its scheduled run time on the same night. Start Over doesn’t carry any ads but Nichols said Time Warner is weighing sponsorships.
The expansion of Start Over comes as another large cable operator, Cablevision Systems, continues to fight a legal battle with broadcast and cable programmers over its proposed network-based PVR service. Unlike Cablevision, which plans to launch a more elaborate PVR service, Time Warner has steered around such potential legal hurdles by negotiating programming rights deals for every program that it offers on Start Over.