Photo and report by Frits Agterdenbos of http://www.chessvista.com/
DGT and UEP in Interactive Chess TV30.01.2008 While Anand and Kramnik were playing their last serious game (Corus Chess 2008, round 13 on Sunday 27 January) before the World Chess Championship Match to be held in October 2008 in Bonn, DGT (Digital Game Technology) and UEP (Universal Event Promotion) have signed a declaration of intent to develop Interactive Chess TV. The signing and the celebration took place in Café De Moriaan, fifty meters from the Anand vs Kramnik fight, in Wijk aan Zee (Netherlands).
The expected amount to invest is ranging from 250 thousand to 300 thousand euro. It is a first next step in bringing chess to the people. ‘We expect to attract a new group of chess public’. DGT and UEP want to broadcast the World Chess Championship Match via Interactive Chess TV. ‘We need a 5000+ audience who on Pay per View basis will be witness of this chess event’.
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does tht mean there will b some chess matches on tv or just world chess championship
There will have to be a lot of added value to the broadcast to bring in 5k
PPV customers. I wonder what the numbers are for viewers of live matches online? Is it anywhere near 5000?
I certainly hope the best for this venture, but I’m a little pessimistic.
Pawned! –
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I think the idea is dead right form the start. Why PPV? How about getting sponsors and get the money needed from their commercials?
Anon 11:45 am:
I think the idea is dead right form the start. Why PPV? How about getting sponsors and get the money needed from their commercials?
1. I agree about the idea being dead from the start.
2. Why PPV? Because for any other channel, they would have to pay, whatever the cost is having a “private program” (like those half an hour infomercials). I don’t know how much those otherwise “empty” PPV channels cost, but likely to be less than the same amount of time, for example, on TBS (or any similar channels). And since chess is LONG (in comparison to 30 minute long time slots) the cost on a regular channel would be prohibitive.
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I don’t see thousands of people, who could watch those games on the internet from various sources, optionally being able to analyze those games, while observing them, pay to watch all that on TV, for money. If it was for free, it may indeed attract additional observers (who didn’t follow chess games before), but to gather large number of such people who are willing to pay, seems a very long shot to me.
The “you pay first, then we will make it popular” doesn’t appear to be the correct strategy. But hey, I was wrong before….
Well people pay to ICC (30,000 members) / Chessbase (200,000 members) $50 per year to play games on-line. There are some ducats collected by Chessbase for live annotations. TV channel??? Depends on the cost / value.
Well guys, please be positive!
Let’s be happy these people are investing a lot of money to bring us something completely new.
Internet TV is developing rapidly and it is good to see that Chess, which is not very well suited for regular TV, is right there in the frontline.