Broadcast services company Red Bee Media is acquiring a UK tech company, TV Genius, which has a content discovery platform for personalisation, search, recommendations and enhanced TV guides. The price has not been disclosed but we understand it’s between £5m and £8m.
Red Bee Media already manages the content for most broadcaster online players such as the iPlayer, ITV Player and 4OD, so the TV Genius platform will allow it to enter the TV search and recommendation business. With the abundance of TV content out there, broadcasters are switching focus from getting content online to enabling viewers to actually find the damn stuff. Earlier in the year TV Genius created a facebook intergation allowing programmes to be recommended to you based on what your friends watch. When a user logs into the EPG with Facebook Connect, all the shows their friends like are instantly highlighted in the grid.
Red Bee Media also has a product called RedPlayer, which allows broadcasters and content owners to deliver and monetise high quality video to PC, iPhone, iPad, gaming consoles and connected TV.
TV Genius started out in 2005 and its TV search and recommendation engine creates more than 100 million transactions each month in seven different countries. It’s used by ITV, Sky, Freeview, Astra, Bauer Media, IPC Media, STV and AOL.