M Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are about to pick up impressive new hardware to stick
in their corporate trophy cases: Next week, the companies will take home their
first Emmy awards for technical innovations.
Microsoft scored in the recently created video game technology category. Its Xbox
Live service is being recognized as a pioneering effort in the development of
multiplayer console technology, according to the National Academy of Television
Arts & Sciences, which awards the Emmys. Microsoft will share video game honors
with Atari Inc. and Sony Corp., whose Atari 2600 and PlayStation 1 machines are
being retrospectively recognized for their milestone achievements.
IBMs award is for "pioneering development of locally integrated and branded
content using IP [intellectual property] Store and forward technology."
(Were shocked they skipped over that category on the Emmy Awards primetime
broadcast, earlier this month.) The citation recognizes a project IBM has been
working on with Warner Brothers WB Television Network for nearly a decade,
starting not long after the networks launch. The two companies partnered to
create what Steve Canepa, vice-president of IBMs Global Media & Entertainment
unit, describes as "station in a box" technology.
The WB Network couldnt afford to set up affiliate operations in every market
it wanted to serve across the U.S. Instead, working with IBM, it developed a
system for centralizing programming and advertising content in Los Angeles and
transmitting that information to receivers in local markets. Local ads could
be beamed to Los Angeles, digitized and edited to fit with the networks national
look-and-feel, and then sent back for insertion into local programming feeds.
The system drastically reduced the local staffing and facilities requirements
for running regional broadcasts, according to Canepa. The WB Network currently
advertises coverage in 92 percent of U.S. television markets.
"Instead of having 50 or 60-percent coverage, [the WB Network] could get
a full national footprint," Canepa said. "The Emmy really underscores
the substantive impact this had as a proof point, as a real force in changing
the broadcast industry."
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences handed out its first
technical and engineering accomplishment award in 1948. Broadcasters, film developers
and equipment makers dominated the awards first few decades, but a few Silicon
Valley companies have picked up awards in recent years. Hewlett-Packard Co.
took one in 1999 for software that measures the effectiveness of digital media
compression, while Apple Computer Inc. picked up a 2001 engineering award for
its FireWire data transfer technology and another the next year for its Final
Cut Pro software.
Xbox Live Product Manager Ben Kilgore said his team views the award as a chance
to celebrate the years of work theyve put into Xbox Live, which now has more
than 2 million active users. A group of Xbox Live developers will travel next
week to Princeton, New Jersey, to attend the Thursday awards ceremony at Bristol-Myers
Squibb.
The most important question, of course, is which designers attire they plan
to wear for their trip across the red carpet.
"Weve spent a lot of time debating it," Kilgore said. "Were
going a little bit more formal than t-shirts
