Nothing on TV tonight? Dial up a date.
Starting Valentine’s Day, the nation’s largest cable provider extended its “Dating on Demand” service to Chicago and other Comcast markets that have the company’s On Demand video service.
While On Demand lets subscribers watch certain prerecorded TV shows and events whenever they want, Dating on Demand serves up homemade and professionally made videos of subscribers. When a viewer sees someone he or she wants to meet, the viewer can send an e-mail through www.DatingOnDemand.com, which is run by the online dating site www.HurryDate.com. There’s no cost to view a profile, place a profile or record a video profile. To contact a dater, a viewer must pay a $20-a-month subscription to HurryDate.com.
Comcast is not just interested in playing cupid for its 22 million subscribers. Overall, the cable industry is pulling out all the stops in its battle against satellite TV providers and telephone companies. Cable operators have spent billions over the past decade upgrading their networks to allow two-way communication between the viewer and the cable company. That allows cable operators to offer the TiVo-like digital video recorders that satellite operators such as DirecTV offers to its subscribers. The two-way link also makes possible video on demand and Dating on Demand. Watch for more paradigms that have succeeded on the Web to migrate to TV.
Dating on Demand evolves out of the “everybody’s-a-star-for-a-day craze of reality programming,” notes Matt Stump, a reporter for the cable industry publication Multichannel. From Comcast’s perspective, the service is aimed at keeping viewers coming back — and from switching to satellite.
“A viewer could go to Dating on Demand one week and not see anybody interesting, but go back the next week and make it a habit,” he says. “That would reinforce the value of the cable subscription and it provides the local hook to keep people from going to DirecTV.”
Comcast has been offering Dating on Demand in its home city of Philadelphia since August. Despite little promotion, the service has generated more than 1 million views, says Matt Strauss, Comcast vice president of content development. That means that 1 million times, subscribers in Philadelpia clicked “OK” on their remotes to view a Dating on Demand profile.
Comcast has recorded profiles in Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Baltimore; and Chicago and plans to visit 12 more cities by year’s end. In the Chicago area, the profiles can be viewed in the Lifestyle section of the On Demand area.
Online dating has become a huge industry. In the first six months of 2004, Web personal sites brought in $234 million, according to Internet researcher comScore Media Metrix.
