From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 1:52 AM
To: *ALL MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midnight: NATPE 2001 – Why don’t you just tell me the MetaTV application you want to see?
NATPE 2001 kicked off with Jerry Seinfeld accepting the Chairman’s award for outstanding contributions to television.
This Capt. Midnight is dedicated to Seinfeld fans who may notice a few Seinfeldisms …
So MetaTV is well represented here at NATPE at the Liberate booth as one of the only partners who have a pod fulltime (without having to split shifts like some of the other companies). In addition, we also have a separate pod dedicated to showing the MetaTV PopTV Variety Pack for Liberate Compact portal.
Other companies to Liberate: “Is it our turn yet to demo?”
Liberate: “It’ll be 10, 15 mins.”
Other companies: “Can’t you just let us in there, MetaTV seems to be getting all the attention.”
Liberate: “Sorry, you have to keep your ‘boys’ away from their ‘boys'”
Like we did at WCS, we are also participating in shared theatre presentations (Well done Jim Gold on a masterful job today with the first one).
“The competition’s getting a little upset!”
Also fresh from our announcement today that Liberate named us the “sole technology provider” (not like the Michael Bolton song by the way), there certainly was a fair bit of interest, although traffic was certainly much lighter that WCS. I think that we made the right decision to not have our own booth here at NATPE. RespondTV’s booth was just across the way from the Liberate one and it looked rather quiet (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Meanwhile, at the WorldGate booth, we were showing our latest Ford/JWT project (thanks to everyone for getting that going and removing the IP address blocking just in the nick of time). Jim informs us that there were a few curious, probing questions from WorldGate about our agreement with Liberate.
WorldGate: “So how come you didn’t do an announcement like that with me?”
Us: “It’s not you. It’s me.”
WorldGate: “You’re giving us the it’s not you, it’s me routine? We invented it’s not you it’s me!”
This certainly is a different kind of show. Lots of pre-built conference rooms on the show floor specifically designed to do deals. People pitching their hearts out at competitions and at any TV producer/executive they could find to get their show/idea taken up. From marine biologists to architects and porno stars named ‘Buck Naked’, everyone wants to be your latex salesman. So far, so good though, MetaTV is quietly making our mark. While others are laying staff off (also known as ‘shrinkage’) when being told by Liberate, “No exclusive for you!”, we continue to build strong relationships and gain mindshare.
“This is indeed the Winter, Spring and Summer of MetaTV.”
Capt. Art Vandelay