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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
A big change
for 1 company
will not show up
on TV screenIT was looking as if one of only three sources of visitor programming on Oahu was going to vanish today from television sets in dozens of Waikiki hotels, including properties belonging to Starwood, Outrigger and Ohana hotels. But it wasn't so.
Time Warner Oceanic Cable notified the hotels last month that English-language programming for visitors from Network Media Inc. on Channel 8 would be replaced by Fox News.
Neither Network Media nor its programming is going away, according to President Peter Gellatly. "It's only the delivery system that is changing."
Well, the channel's name also changed, from KVCN to HawaiiTV.
Network Media's programming will still get to the hotels' TV sets, but through the Internet and video servers instead of a cable system, effective today.
The nearly 20-year relationship between Network Media and Oceanic ended following the interpretation of a Federal Communications Commission ruling by Time Warner officials on the mainland, Gellatly said. A new arrangement proposed by Oceanic was too expensive for Network Media, he said.
"So we decided to make a change to an actually far-superior technology for HawaiiTV, although we still have a very strong, good relationship -- in fact, a partnership with Oceanic on another channel, CTV, Convention Television, which will continue to be delivered," Gellatly said.
Fox News was chosen as a replacement because Oceanic had heard from many hotels that visitors were interested in having the network as another free channel to view, said Mike Goodish, Oceanic vice president of networking and technical quality. Visitor programming on other islands will not change.
Gellatly sees the change as positive, saying the new delivery system "would seem to offer more flexibility for hotels and for our advertisers, for us where content is concerned and probably best of all, for visitors."
Such flexibility has been offered by Network Media competitor Hotel Guest Services Corp. since 1999. Programming is customized for each hotel and its proprietary software "enables (hotels) to update information 24-hours-a-day with a PC," in both English and Japanese, said President Karl Schweitzer.
Its more than 50 hotel-clients include the Kahala Mandarin Oriental, the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa and the Hawaii Prince Hotel.
Hotel Guest Services' clients can get bilingual emergency information to guest rooms immediately. "It helps with risk management," Schweitzer said. The company also sends out bilingual updates on important news, weather bulletins, road closures and event cancellations.
Visitor Video Inc. is another vendor, supplying six channels of English and Japanese programming to Hilton Hawaiian Village. The company is also in talks with other properties, which Dennis Burns, vice president for operations, did not name. Its service runs off DVDs in the hotel's computer control center.
"The DVD is just such an efficient way for us to work," said Burns. "We build the DVD and install the disk and we can make changes very quickly."
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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com