Travel HD Touts Demand – and VOD Premieres
Net Launching on Cox, RCN Today With VOD Extras
By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 1/14/2008 7:03:00 PM
The high-definition version of Travel Channel launches today with Cox and RCN distribution pacts and offering cable affiliates video-on-demand premieres of new shows.Pat Younge, Travel Channel’s president and general manager, said Travel Channel HD officially launches today (Jan. 15) but the signal has been available to Cox affiliates since Jan. 1. Cox Communications bought Travel Channel from Discovery Communications last year.
“San Diego’s already been taking it,” Younge said. “We start rolling out across Cox from [Jan. 15].” RCN might launch the new channel as soon as today in Chicago, he said.
Cox and RCN will have the ability to offer VOD premieres of a new show, Michael Palin’s New Europe, a week before it airs on Travel Channel and Travel Channel HD, in February.
“We’re also working with them to create a cycle of HD VOD premieres as well as [other] HD VOD content to encourage more consumers to take HD and, for those who’ve got it, to spend more time in the HD environment,” Younge said.
Younge also cited Frank N. Magid Associates survey data, done for the channel, that found Travel Channel was the most anticipated new HD channel among current HD subscribers. “Also, we’re doing much more of the content that lends itself naturally to HD,” he said, including shows about indigenous cultures and travel programs about national parks and beaches.
Travel Channel dropped its World Poker Tour programming (which shifted to GSN), and Younge said that’s freed up money for the channel to “double down” on shows such as Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and Samantha Brown’s Passport. “Not only are we going out aggressively in HD, we’re going out aggressively in HD and on brand,” he said.
The channel is planning an advertising campaign supporting the launch, around the slogan “Some Things Are Meant For HD.”
Younge said affiliate interest, was strong but Travel Channel HD has to cope with the bandwidth capacity constraints that all channels seeking new distribution face. But based on what Travel Channel (with 91 million subscribers) affiliates have said, and consumer interest, “we’re confident we’re going to get healthy numbers pretty quickly.”
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