Jacob Shwirtz's Shwirtzings

Although my role at Viacom spans all our brands, every so often I get to work more hands-on with a specific one for a specific project. These days I’ve been working closely with our Spike team on the All Access brand.

The All Access concept is to take viewers deep inside the worlds of tech, gaming and comics - and do so across platforms and media, embracing the potential of Social TV. Spike is doing this with over 17 hours of live coverage from the upcoming E3 video game event as well as a weekly show that airs Thursdays and midnight (hosted by Katie Linendoll). After E3, Spike is also going to ComiCon for loads more live coverage across all screens.

At these mega events, Spike gets exclusive interviews, product demos, access to product launches, the key CEOs, celebrities and more. Content is streamed across all platforms, including on-air. And viewers are made part of the action through social interaction and live/dynamic poling where the on-air talent can basically have real-time conversations with the audience.

Spike’s 2011 live E3 multi-platform special was the number one destination for E3 coverage last year, garnering more than 10 million combined online and on-air viewers, and was also the largest live streaming event in Viacom history.

“E3 All Access Live” will be supported on Spike TV through “GTTV with Geoff Keighley,” “All Access Weekly” and “Playbook 360;” online on Spike.com and GameTrailers.com; socially through its Facebook and Twitter feed @SpikeTV; on popular gaming blog, Kotaku; and through mobile phones and tablets including iPhone, iPad and Android devices, as well as on the big screens in New York City’s Times Square. Also, for the first time ever, Spike will partner with sister Viacom networks, including MTV2; MTVU; VH1; Tr3s: Música y Más and others to provide additional programming coverage.

Over the last several months, at Viacom, we’ve been conducting detailed, proprietary research on Social TV. Today we released the results and I wrote the blog posting below as an intro. This is re-blogged from my piece on the Viacom blog.

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“Social TV is about integrating your favorite TV shows into your life,” said Austin, a 23-year-old from Boston who uses Twitter, Facebook and GetGlue to socialize around television. Though there isn’t one single app or service that users are flocking to right now, the lack thereof hasn’t deterred viewers from finding creative ways to socialize around television and, like Austin, integrate their favorite shows into their lives.

Keeping up with how our fans consume and socialize around our content is one of my main goals here at Viacom. That’s why I am very excited about our new breakthrough research that digs into the emerging trends of Social TV.

While most of the social TV research out there focuses on volume – how many tweeted during a show or how many ‘friends’ a network has – we chose to explore the social TV phenomenon through the lens of the viewer. We set out to get to the heart of how our viewers think of social TV, what kind of apps, services and sites they use when socializing around TV, and what they want their social TV experience to be. To those who socialize about the shows they love, we found social TV is much more than a tweet or a ‘like.’

We coined the study “Viewers C’s the Moment” because of three “C’s” that kept coming up: communication, content and comments. Our viewers are engaging in an average of seven different social TV activities (online or offline) on at least a weekly basis. They are using multiple devices and services to interact with different social circles while watching a show. A few sentiments we heard over and over:

• Social TV is about interacting with the TV… and the best part is that I can do it with my friends
• Twenty years ago it was enough to watch TV, but now it’s fun to see what your friends are watching, and if they’re laughing at the same parts
• The whole experience of watching TV is becoming more fulfilling

As this new and exciting space evolves, we’ll continue to program with social in mind, and continue to evolve our strategies for engagement. With this research in hand, we’ve got some great fodder for thought.

The Methodology: 1) a national online survey of 1,566, ages 13-54 in January 2012 and 2) 24 ethnographies in Boston and San Diego.

Read the full press release detailing the “Viewers C’s the Moment” study by clicking here.

This is something you need to know about. One of my best friends in the world has created a hilarious, super creative, unofficial audio guide for the John Chamberlain exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC.

To learn about the exhibit, see this video:

What my friend did was re-imagine the entire exhibition as though it were created by the Decepticons to commemorate their victory over the Autobots. Here is the introduction:

Commissioned by Megatron, Leader of the Decepticons, and inspired by the late John Chamberlain, world-renowned American sculptor, this exhibition celebrates the Decepticon’s annihilation of their archenemies, the Autobots, on February 24th, 2028 A.D. Each piece is artfully crafted from the wreckage of the fallen Autobot army. Presented here for the first time at the resplendent Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, one thing is certain… there is more to this exhibition than meets the eye.

You can listen to the entire audio guide at Audio Tour Hack. Follow them on Facebook as well.