Interactive video distribution systems – Program – message – or commercial insertion or substitution – Specific to individual user or household
Reexamination Certificate
2001-04-18
2004-07-06
Srivastava, Vivek (Department: 2611)
Interactive video distribution systems
Program, message, or commercial insertion or substitution
Specific to individual user or household
C725S001000, C725S036000, C725S042000, C725S091000, C705S014270, C345S215000, C345S215000, C345S215000, C709S217000, C709S219000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06760916
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to media production, and more specifically, to distributing live or live-to-tape media productions over a communications network.
2. Related Art
The broadcast industry has experienced dramatic changes both in technology and business operations. The changes have been manifested in response to regulatory requirements for digital transmissions and competition from both traditional and nontraditional industry sectors. Traditional competitors such as cable coexist with broadcasters due to both mandated and agreed upon “must carry” rules. These rules allow local broadcast stations to access cable networks. Nontraditional transmission media provide another source of stiff competition due to the emergence of digital broadcast satellites (DBS) and Internet Service Providers (ISP).
As more and more households adapt to nontraditional transmissions, the competition for consumer attention will continue to increase. Currently, the unique advantage that broadcasters have is local origination, especially for news. However, competition continues to develop for major network (i.e., ABC®, NBC® and CBS® affiliates due to FOX®, UPN® and other startups for cable services and Internet multicasts (including webcasts). In addition, in the foreseeable future, digital transmission signals may be divided into separate channels for multicasting applications, thereby permitting major networks to step into the local origination market. In addition, newspapers, radio stations and other media hosting entities are competing for awareness and market share on the Internet. Television broadcasters are putting forth an effort to also maintain a local market share on the Internet but have yet to leverage successfully their best asset, i.e. video.
All of these issues present new obstacles that must be overcome by all broadcasters. These issues involve transitioning to digital broadcasts; leveraging automation to resolve the reallocation of resources to generate more content at lower operating expenses; creating an Internet presence to leverage video assets; multicasting to add programming diversity and revenue; using computer networking to adapt streamlined approaches for field acquisition, pre-production, editing, and on-air execution of a show; and maintaining on-air systems through system redundancy.
To increase their presence on the Internet and compete for a larger viewing audience, broadcasters have deployed various business models. Some broadcasters operate their own web sites to service the broadcasters' audience. However, proper staffing and management is critical to the successful operation of a web site. To effectively manage the web site, a broadcaster typically hires a webmaster, dedicated editorial manager, graphics personnel, journalists, editors, and web advertisement sales personnel. Nonetheless, budgetary constraints and market downturns have a propensity to encourage broadcasters to find creative ways to operate their businesses without increasing labor expenses.
To reduce operating costs, other broadcasters use third parties to manage the web site operations for the broadcaster, or make the content available over the Internet. The third parties may hire a staff of approximately three to four employees to perform web operation duties, such as writing and editing. The third parties may also take on the responsibility for selling advertisements to the local community. Although broadcasters may save labor expenses by hiring a third party, they typically demand a high percentage (e.g., fifty percent) of the revenues generated from the web operations. As a result, many broadcasters are finding the use of third parties not to be as cost effective as originally anticipated. Therefore, there is a trend to move web operations in-house to gain more control and revenue.
In addition to selecting the most cost-effective Internet business model, broadcasters are also challenged to design and provide a web site that is more likely to attract and retain a greater number of visitors. Most visitors browse sites to search for informative and entertaining media. With respect to news sites, most visitors would prefer to be able to pick and choose among a selection of different news stories. However, web sites generally require the visitor to select a news story one-by-one. Thus, the visitor must engage in the tedious and time-consuming process of loading, buffering and viewing each news story one at a time.
Although some conventional web sites may allow a visitor to watch a previously recorded news program, such web sites do not enable the visitor to skip past a news story within the news program. Such web sites also do not allow the visitor to rearrange the order of the presentation. Moreover, such web sites tend not to provide supporting graphics or data that would enable the visitor to find more information about a particular story.
Increasing their Internet audience would enable broadcasters to improve their profit margins by collecting more advertisement revenue. However, Internet sponsors hesitate to sponsor web content without some reasonable assurance that the advertisement will be viewed by a visitor that is likely to purchase the promoted item.
Nonetheless, various pricing schemes can be deployed to sell advertisements. For example, a broadcaster can set prices based on a target audience, media content, time spot, duration of the advertisement, time of transmission, or other over-the-air broadcast criteria. Over-the-air broadcast criteria are typically used to target consumers who are most likely to purchase an advertised item. However, such criteria do not provide any assurance that an advertisement actually will be delivered to the targeted consumers.
Another pricing method would be to sell the advertisement based on client-server metrics, such as hits, downloads, click-throughs, or page views. Client-server metrics can be used to measure the quantity of consumers that actually receive an advertisement, but it is difficult to predict whether the consumer is likely to purchase the advertised item by considering client-server metrics alone.
Therefore, what is needed is a media production and distribution system and method to address the above problems.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention solves the above problems by providing a method, system and computer program product for producing, distributing or tracking media or multimedia (collectively referred to as a “media production”) within a worldwide communications network, such as the global Internet. In an embodiment, an enhanced media server transmits the media production over wired or wireless channels to one or more clients (such as, a personal computer, personal digital assistant, enhanced telephone, or personal television). An online user can operate the client to display and interact with the media production. The client includes a graphical user interface (GUI) that permits the user to select various options to customize the transmission or request a standard program. For example, the user has the option of selecting a live or prerecorded news program to be transmitted. The user could also select specific segments from one or more news programs, and arrange the segments to be presented in any order. Moreover, the user can stipulate the duration of the entire transmission, or specify the time to start or stop the transmission. The requested segments can be downloaded, streamed or saved to the client.
The present invention supports the production and distribution of various types of media productions and value added enhancements (collectively referred to as “enhanced multimedia”). A media production primarily includes video of news programs, television programming (such as, documentaries, situation comedies, dramas, variety shows, interviews, and the like), sporting events, concerts, infomercials, movies, video rentals, and radio broadcasts. However, the present invention can also be implemented with any other type of audio, video, graphics, te
Couch William H.
Fres Gilberto
Hamlett Timothy
Hoeppner Charles
Holtz Alex
ParkerVision, Inc.
Srivastava Vivek
Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox PLLC
Vu Ngoc
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