Q&A With Turner's Dennis Quinn

Cable World,  Oct 10, 2005  

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A sommelier for the digital frontier talks about GameTap.

By Shirley Brady

While it's not quite that the apocalypse is upon us, the online subscription-based website GameTap represents a radical direction for parent company Turner. GameTap, which launches this month, is a branded entity that doesn't have roots--or even exist--on television. Its function is to let video gamers play games like Pac-Man directly on the PC and stream original short-form programs celebrating video games. Turner EVP of business development Dennis Quinn explains why GameTap is a natural addition to the house that Ted built.

CableWORLD: How does this transform Turner's traditional--and maturing-- businesses?

Dennis Quinn: It changes the network model. If everybody's making a product [like GameTap] that just makes high-speed a much more logical investment and greater value proposition, then content providers no longer need 40 million households. Broadband brings to life the long tail theory because you can have a business on 100,000 subs and not need a universe of a kajillion.

CW: How does GameTap fit Turner's digital and entertainment strategy?

Quinn: At Turner, what we see is that high-speed is so important to our distribution partners and they've done such a good job leveraging their power plants and increasing speeds. We think that [GameTap and other such products] create a great consumer offering for folks who will upgrade and buy those faster speeds if they don't already have them. Even if you have 3 megabits or 1.5, it's still a great experience, and we'll tell them that it's even better if you buy up.

CW: What's more important, content or brand?

Quinn: You read all this stuff about the disaggregating of product through video search and I wonder, is that really what a customer wants? Wouldn't the customer rather be able to rely upon a brand to be the sommelier of great stuff within that brand? So we'll see. That's what we believe and that's what we put our efforts behind.

CW: How does Turner decide which platforms to embrace?

Quinn: Often you'll see companies take something that was optimized for television and crank it into a handheld. We recoil at that. We want to own that space for a person who's interested in news or games or cartoons with our brands, but we're going to invest in it and research in that form factor. That's why we have a platform R&D group now and a new products development [unit]. We want to customize and optimize our brands for each of those form factors. Broadband is just another extension.

Turner's Snapshot of Gamers

* 56 million people play games and have broadband.

* 25% are "chills" who enjoy games as a leisure pursuit and a way to relax.

* 27% are "tag-alongs" who aren't into games. They're mostly parents, who play games to bond with their kids.

* 25% are "thrills" who are very competitive about games, skew male and are married.

* 38% of "thrills" are women, who compete against their kids, spouses and friends.

* The thrills spend more money on games but not as much time with games as the chills, while tag-alongs spend more on games than either the thrills or chills due to "pester power."

[Copyright 2005 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]

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