For Bryan Biniak, chief executive of Jacked Inc., television should be an interactive experience.
As soon as new background music is introduced during a favorite sitcom, the viewer should be able to glance at a nearby laptop and see the title of the song on an online music provider, ready to be downloaded. While watching the Food Network, the featured cookbook should be automatically selected on Amazon.com, ready to be ordered.
Santa Monica-based Jacked has 10 patents filed to make this possible through Jacked. The company has contracts with the Associated Press, Yahoo Flickr, and Amazon, and this allows them to create widgets that stream content on an Internet browser real time to complement a TV broadcast.
“It’s not about bringing TV to the Web, but bringing the power of the Web to TV,” Biniak said.
The company’s first contract is with NBC Sports for the Notre Dame football season. Jacked will power NBCSports.com Play Action, which features a library of widgets on player profiles, chats, news, photos and play-by-play information.
On the site, viewers will have access to the behind-the-scenes information on every blocked pass and injury report in real time. Team paraphernalia can be bought on an Amazon.com widget.
Commercials are also fair game. Before a 30-second clip on the latest model of an SUV is over, the site may feature a Consumer Reports article on the car.
All this is presented on a single Web browser or what the company calls a “dashboard.”
Jacked is in talks with other media companies to target not only sports broadcasts, but also news and entertainment, Biniak said. The year-old company is armed with $6.5 million in venture funding, and has 11 employees in Santa Monica and 15 in India.
He said the company appeals to multi-tasking types who don’t want the hassle of getting on a search engine in the middle of a broadcast to find more information.
“When you’re watching TV, there’s nothing else you can do but sit back,” Biniak said.
But analyst Rob Enderle wonders, what’s wrong with sitting back?
“People fundamentally want TV to be a passive experience,” Enderle said. “Programs are designed so that people can sit back and watch the program. To change that behavior is tough.”
Enderle said most people who watch sports television do so in groups and want to jump up and scream when the team is winning, not go to their laptops.
“Sounds very geeky to me,” he said. “I could see a whole bunch of people in Silicon Valley enjoying this, but you move to the Midwest or the East and I’m not sure people will be comfortable having laptops open during the games.”
Even if Jacked forays into news or entertainment programming, Enderle said marrying computer and television screens would be difficult. “Try watching TV while you have the laptop open. You’re not going to be entirely engaged,” he said.
Podunk on the Map
Internet Brands Inc., parent company of CarsDirect, recently bought a data site that features in-depth profiles of more than 47,000 communities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Based in New York City, ePodunk.com provides demographic information, local history, photos and popular attractions about each neighborhood. Visitors can also trace their ancestry on the site based on the places their family has lived in.
It features major cities and out-of-the-way hamlets so small that some are not even reported by the U.S. Census Bureau (including Podunk, N.Y., near where ePodunk was founded).
People considering a move to a new neighborhood are the primary users of the site, which was launched in 1999 by journalists including the former director of library services at the Detroit Free Press.
The acquisition falls in line with Internet Brands’ recent drive to establish itself as the go-to site for big purchases. The El Segundo-based operator of CarsDirect has over the past year expanded into home finance, real estate and luxury cruises.
Internet Brands filed to go public last month and plans to raise $100 million through a listing on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.
ValueClick Upgraded
Shares of ValueClick Inc. are continuing their up surge this month, recovering from a 19 percent hit in July after its second-quarter profit missed Wall Street expectations.
Stocks rose more than 4 percent last week after analysts upgraded the online advertising services company. This follows an upgrade in August from a JP Morgan analyst.
Citi Investment Research analyst Mark Mahaney upgraded ValueClick to “Buy” from “Hold,” calling it a bargain. The stock is undervalued, he said in a research note, after losing 30 percent over the last two months.
ValueClick is positioned to benefit from increased advertising spending, he said. The Westlake Village-based company is the nation’s No. 1 independent online advertising network, and reaches more than 130 million unique users in the United States every month, which amounts to about 75 percent of the Internet.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at
[email protected]
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