From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 2:51 PM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midnight: MetaTV catches the eye of Charlie Ergen – Carmel Satellite 2002
Here we are at the Carmel Group’s annual satellite show being held in Monterey, CA. We got ourselves invited to the show at extremely low cost and boy has it paid off big time. As we had known the conference was going to feature the biggest hitters in the DBS space. On the agenda was Leo Hindrey – CEO of YES as well as Charlie Ergen, CEO of Echostar. See http://www.carmelgroup.com/conferences/dbs2002/dbs2002.cfm
MetaTV was one of only 3 companies exhibiting in the intimate setting at the hotel. Our little exhibit really stood out since NDS and Canal + were rather drab with their tabletops and they spent most of their time ignoring each other because of their much publicized legal dispute.
But on to the fantastic news. Around 8:30am this morning, when we were chatting and doing demonstrations during the morning attendee coffee and breakfast, Charlie Ergen – CEO of Echostar who was early at his panel came by to check out the MetaTV booth which caught his eye! He asked us what MetaTV did and when we pointed out the Zap2IT application which we proudly said was up and running on DISH interactive, he remarked “Oh yes, I’ve seen that, it’s great, I didn’t know that you guys did that!” Well, now he does! He promptly took our Zap2IT fact sheet, our brochure and fact cards then before walking away asked “where are you guys based?”.
“Mill Valley, CA! We proudly replied.
Later on, Charlie was on a heated panel which also featured
Eddy Hartenstein, Chairman & CEO, DirecTV
Dean Allen Olmstead, CEO, SES Americom
Bob Phillips, CEO, NRTC
The topic focused around the Echostar/DirecTV merger and was very lively indeed. No doubt the press will be reporting on that shortly. When Charlie was asked during his panel about iTV services … he remarked …”our goal is to have great content and we are focused on having those applications running and available to our subscribers. In fact I just saw a company outside (MetaTV) with an application that I didn’t even know that they had developed for us. I love it and it goes to show that our environment is flexible and supports great consumer applications.”
A great plug for MetaTV!
After his panel he came outside and proceeded to spend over 2 hours with the press chatting about his views on the industry … again right in front of the MetaTV booth!
Check out the photos at: \\Magellan\Public\Marketing\Carmel2002\FrameSet.htm
Attendee after attendee then came up to us and said “boy Charlie must have really liked your stuff. Great mention!” and also we heard that he continued to discuss our Zap2IT application with other attendees who asked him about iTV applications.
This was really a one in a million opportunity to get our brand, name and great looking app directly in the eyeballs of the CEO of Echostar and I believe we made a great impression.
Later on in the afternoon, we partipated with Liberate, Predictive Networks and Canal + on a panel about iTV applications and DBS where a variety of lively topics were discussed. OpenTV were scheduled but for some reason decided not to show up. Their earnings were reported this afternoon and we were left to wonder if it was related.
Canal + liked what they heard from us on the panel and wanted to know how we could work together on the Zap2IT application on their platform since they had an agreement with Echostar to start using their Canal Mediahighway middleware.
In conclusion, this was a small show but the big guns came to town. The FCC commissioner did a luncheon keynote and also SES announced right here this morning that they would be throwing their hat in the ring to apply for another satellite service offering which really shook things up as well.
Once again, we were lucky and well planned to be at the right place at the right time. MetaTV continues to show that we are a player and the big boys are in the know.
We’ll chat more about it when we are back in the office.
But great job to everyone again and that Zap2IT app is kick xxxx and taking very big names later!