Fox Taps Coincident TV to Power Interactive Video Player for "So You Think You Can Dance"

Fresh from receiving an Interactive Media Emmy nomination for the "Glee Superfan Experience," an interactive video player it created for Fox's primetime musical series, "Glee" (see the article published on itvt.com, July 8th), Coincident TV--a San Francisco-based start-up that earlier this year launched its "hypervideo" software suite, which it says combines online video, social media, Web links and commerce into a single immersive experience (see the article published on itvt.com, April 13th)--has been tapped by Fox to create a similar offering for the reality show, "So You Think You Can Dance" (SYTYCD).

According to Coincident, the new "So You Think You Can Dance Superfan Experience" (http://www.fox.com/dance/superfan) calls multiple media types from the cloud into an interactive video player, in order to enable fans of the show to watch interactive full-length episodes and simultaneously access insider and social content--without leaving the episode they are watching. Available features, the company says, include dancer biographies, Facebook profiles, Twitter commentary, episode recaps and video extras, such as original videos on choreography and signature moves. "As we launch our second interactive property with Fox, it is clear that audiences are hungry for the multifaceted video experiences that we can enable," Coincident TV founder and CEO, David Kaiser, said in a prepared statement. "Together, these Superfan applications represent a fundamental shift in how Web video is created and consumed, and we're excited to partner with Fox as leaders in shaping tomorrow's content experiences."

According to Coincident TV, the SYTYCD Superfan Experience launch is part of a broader collaboration with Fox. The company says that the Superfan video players it is creating for the broadcaster are built using its cue point language (CPL) which enables the rapid generation of real-time, interactive video experiences for both HTML5 and Flash. Coincident bills its technology and its authoring tool, the Experience Builder Suite, as "mak[ing] video, not text, the root of a Web experience--turning every frame of every video into a potential linking point to launch real-time social media, weblinks, applications and transactions." The result, the company claims, is "a new class of immersive, cross-platform video experiences that drive significant new revenue opportunities for content advertisers, owners and aggregators."