The interactive TV guide specialist, TV Genius has been bought be Red Bee Media to make it the UK’s first media management company to provide broadcasters and platform operators with an end-to-end content discovery system, writes David Fox.
The software company specialises in cloud-based content discovery across the internet, TV and connected devices, and its acquisition will allow Red Bee to combine its metadata services with TV Genius’ content discovery technology to create a synchronised viewer experience across live and on demand TV with accurate search, personally relevant recommendations and enhanced TV guides that will work across multiple platforms and devices.
“A critical requirement for monetising content across platforms and screens is to enable consumers to easily discover content in what is becoming an increasingly cluttered and fragmented marketplace”, said Bill Patrizio, CEO of Red Bee Media (pictured).
“Accurate search and personally relevant recommendation is a key differentiator in addressing this challenge and this acquisition allows us to significantly enhance our current offering by investing in new technologies at the core of the future TV experience.” He hopes that, together, they can “reinvent the EPG for online video.”
“As an integrated part of Red Bee Media, TV Genius will now have the ability to quickly grow its Content Discovery Platform while maintaining industry-leading relevance,” added TV Genius CEO, Tom Weiss. “The personalised EPG, social TV, and companion applications are changing the way we watch and interact with TV in significant ways.”
Red Bee plans to invest in TV Genius’ technologies as an integrated part of its portfolio and use it as the basis for system intelligence in its content discovery offering and for RedPlayer, which was launched in June and allows broadcasters and content owners to deliver and monetise high quality video to multiple devices, including PC, iPhone, iPad, gaming consoles and connected TVs in a secure and scalable manner.
TV Genius was founded in 2005 and has seen “significant year-on-year growth” since. Its TV search and recommendation engine creates more than 100 million transactions each month in seven countries and users include: ITV, BSkyB, Freeview, Astra, Bauer Media, IPC Media, STV and AOL. It recently announced the launch of a Facebook-integrated TV guide, which uses its award-winning Content Discovery Platform to personalise TV guides. When a user logs into the EPG with Facebook Connect, all the shows their friends like are highlighted in the grid.
