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webRIOT breaks new Ground in Interactive TV
Contributed by Bill Niemeyer,
Director of Strategic Development - Spiderdance

In 1999, Viacom's MTV partnered with interactive television platform provider Spiderdance to launch webRIOT, believed to be the first fully integrated online/on-air TV show available on a national basis in the US.

webRIOT was a fast paced dynamic music video game TV show. Four on-air contestants were shown music videos and asked questions with multiple choice answers. The faster they answered correctly, the more points they got. If they answered incorrectly, they would lose half the value of that question.

Spiderdance's TruSyncŸ interactive TV platform enabled any MTV viewer with an online PC to play along with the show online, in frame accurate sync. All they had to have was a TV in the same room as their online PC. No other special hardware, software or cabling was required.

webRIOT launched on November 29, 1999 and ran every weekday afternoon on MTV for 26 weeks.

The interactive TV component was a big success for MTV, generating over one million registered online users, more than the number of TV households that watched the show on a daily basis. It served tens of millions of games.

In order to play along online, users simply went to MTV.com to download and install the free webRIOT software (Spiderdance's system has since been enabled via Shockwave so that no download or install is required). Users would then register and be able play along with the show. Each time the user logged in, the Spiderdance system would send a small update with that day's show content.

When online users played in sync with the broadcast, they had to watch MTV to see the questions, to enhance on-air viewership of the show. A 24/7 online-only version of the game was also available.

MTV selected Spiderdance for webRIOT because its system and infrastructure offers a flexible, massively multi-user platform for deploying interactive TV content tightly synchronised with on-air programming. The system can run on a wide variety of client devices, including PCs, set-top boxes, Internet appliances and wireless devices.

MTV also selected Spiderdance because it wanted to launch the interactive TV component of webRIOT for the largest possible market. In the US this is the "two screen" market or people who simultaneously watch TV and surf the web. As of 1999, MTV research indicated this market was 10 million households in the US (about 10 per cent of all US households).

This market has since dramatically increased in size in the US. Dataquest estimates that 44 million Americans were "surfing and watching" in 2000. Cyber Dialogue reports that the average online US adult (60 per cent of US adults) spends 44 per cent of their TV viewing time simultaneously online.

Spiderdance, using its patent-pending TruSyncŸ system, provided the following for MTV:
The webRIOT client software used to play the game

Easy-to-use content and scheduling tools used by MTV to prepare each day's show for presentation online
Tools to enable the automated sync of the on-air and online content

Infrastructure services (ie server hardware and TruSync Server software) to deploy the interactive TV component

A number of factors have been cited as to why was webRIOT such a success among online players including:

The perfectly matched online gameplay created a very compelling experience. MTV and Spiderdance worked closely to match the online experience to the show, both visually and for gameplay. The frame accurate sync of the Spiderdance system enabled online users to feel fully integrated with the fast paced show.

Spiderdance's system enabled MTV to display live on TV the scores of the top ten online players. This is a powerful way to engage and motivate online users.

* The patent-pending technology assured users fair gameplay, no matter what speed connection they had, from 28.8K to broadband.

The on-air show had a strong "call to action" to play along. At the start of every show, the URL was shown on-air while the host told viewers to join in.

MTV offered a good online prize package. Grand prize for the first season was a Ford Focus (won by a 15 year old). Prizes were awarded on the basis of performance (top scores) or participation (each time a user played, they got an entry in a drawing).

Two screen PC/TV use skews young (although not dramatically so) and MTV is the number one US cable network for 12 to 24 year olds.

The show was also a strong success internally at MTV. Contributing to this was:

The massive user response, over one million registered users, provided MTV with a valuable database for later opt-in emails.

Achieving an on-time successful launch and very high level of operational reliability (TV programmers demand higher standards for these than are acceptable on the Web).

Spiderdance provided the support of advertising and marketing. The TruSync system supports the display of advertising tightly synchronised with on-air commercials, enabling interactive TV marketing and T-commece. webRIOT included Flash ads from Ford, AT&T, Priceline and Nike.

Spiderdance provides easy-to-use software tools to prepare shows for presentation. Our systems' automated synchronization with broadcasts provides low cost operation for interactive TV content.

The 24/7 version provided an effective online/on-air cross-marketing tool and provided MTV a way to further leverage sponsorship.

Spiderdance has deployed its TruSyncŸ scalable interactive television platform in interactive TV shows for TBS Superstation (AOL Time Warner), MTV (Viacom), The History Channel (A&E), and Game Show Network (Sony). Spiderdance's TruSync system can handle over a million simultaneous users and can be deployed on PCs, wireless devices, set-top boxes, web tablets and other Internet-enabled devices.