Great ideas are obvious in retrospect – and this is a doozy. Health TV will show targeted health programing to people waiting in doctors waiting rooms. With an average wait of 20 minutes that’s an opportunity to hit an audience with some juicy advertisements along with that content.
Sadly for HealthTV’s international prospects this isn’t an original idea – In the USA Accent Health already “reaches 11.3 million health conscious viewers every month, in 10,800 doctors’ waiting rooms nationwide”. Their health-oriented programing is provided by CNN, and runs in a one hour loop.
HTV seems to be pinning a lot on their IPTV delivery mechanism, and see, it seems, the Health TV as just the first venture. However for this venture I wonder whether the IPTV delivery is really needed – or whether a monthly DVD would suffice. The expense and reliability of IPTV, given the appalling infrastructure in NZ, and the use of new technology versus proven older tech means that they may be worrying too much about technology and not enough about content and sales.
Speaking of content – it appears that HTV will be creating (a lot of?) their own content, which is expensive, but nice to have. They have, it seems, already signed up a critical mass of doctors waiting rooms, and so the model should work. HTV also rejects prescription drug ads, which Doctors appreciate but will curtail their income somewhat.
A comment on the reporting – firstly it is great to see htc.co.nz linked to in the NBR article, something which fairfax and APN have yet to figure out. However with 1 second of Googling I was able to find Accent Health – why wasn’t the NBR able to do this?
Lance Wiggs 