Los Angeles — Innovating new ways to boost its Web audience, CBS Interactive is taking online streaming video to the next level in an attempt to recreate the camaraderie of the living room online.
The new feature dubbed as “social viewing rooms” that enables groups of viewers to gather in virtual rooms to collectively watch top programs such as “Survivor” and “CSI” in their own [room] while interacting with each other, participating in polls, and even throwing darts at the screen.
The service blends together elements of a chat room, video conferencing and standard live streaming to give fans a more communal experience when watching the network’s content online.
The new service is available for primetime, daytime, and CBS Classics. Users can also easily find, make friends with, and communicate with others who contribute to their passion for CBS programming. Viewers will see a list of everyone else in the room, and can chat with any or all of them directly during the show, thus increasing viral aspects through chat and interaction.
“In many respects, for people on the online side today watching video is a one-to-one experience, leaning forward into the computer screen,” said Anthony Soohoo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Entertainment at CBS Interactive. But in a social viewing room, “a friend who is 3,000 miles away will actually feel like he is sitting right next to you”.
The CBS.com Social Viewing Room builds up a key component of CBS Interactive’s broader mission to engage TV fans online and add a social dimension to the online viewing experience.
“The Web presents a unique opportunity to do more than just rebroadcast entertainment content,” said Soohoo. “The CBS.com Social Viewing Room is a next-generation social media platform that enables users to engage with each other and the content they are watching in a fun new way, while at the same time giving advertisers an opportunity to connect with this engaged audience.”
An appealing idea, but CBS’s social viewing rooms do have one major fault in the implementation. Because everyone is watching the show together, the show does not start when you enter the social viewing room. You will step in at whatever scene the show is currently on and begin viewing from that point.
So, if you are expecting to pick the most recent episode of
that you missed during its normal run time, this is not the venue to do it. Hopefully, CBS will realize the huge mistake in the implementation and let you know when the next episode will begin or let you go into a queue that will automatically launch the episode when it comes around again.
The service debuts Wednesday with 15 primetime and daytime programs with plans to expand social viewing rooms to other CBS properties such as the CW and Showtime. Intel is the exclusive sponsor of the launch.
“We are hoping to expand it to a lot of our properties,” Soohoo said. “We are thinking of using this technology on many of our future products. We believe this is groundbreaking,” he added.
“The main intention is that we want to create critical mass across our content,” said Soohoo. “We want to have a good amount of users in a (social viewing) room, at least three or four.” He declined to say what specific audience goals CBS had for the service, but said the network would be able to gauge the response after a quarter.
CBS may perhaps think its own social viewing effort will help boost TV ratings as well. At a recent industry event, Patrick Keane, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive, noted that
35%
of the networks’ viewers say they are watching more TV because of programs distributed online.
CBS is not the first media company attempting to simulating screening rooms online. Entertainment portal Lycos two years ago began a similar service allowing people to convene to watch movies and TV shows, including ABC’s “Wildfire”.
It will be remarkable to see how CBS enriches these social viewing rooms in the future. If they could add an easy way to have a private room with just your friends, it will bring in a big hit.