Where There’s Demand There’s a Business While many twenty-somethings inthe late 1990s focused their efforts on creating the hottest new dotcom and launching the next huge IPO (intial public offering) of tock, others drew inspiration for their success from unfulilled practical desies involving a decades-old piece of technology. ‘The story of one San Franciscan who worked as a freelance cameraman for a local TV station illustrates what can happen when imagination, strategic planning, and IT development mis. Babak Farahi noticed thatthe station where he worked consistently rejected viewers’ requests for tapes oftheir children, friends, or pets that had appeared on the station's news broadcast the day before. But, he thought, if there is a demand for such television snippets, why not sll them? So the 24-year-old set up four VCRs in his parents’ home, recorded the news every day, and persuaded the TV station's receptionists to refer viewers to him when calling to request a copy. “The plan worked, His clients included small businesses, especially restaurants, and, of course, ‘many parents who wanted copies of their children’s TV appearance. ‘The cameraman did not grow complacent with his success. He took his business to a whole rnew realm after something caught his eye while waiting fora flight at San Francisco International Airport. He noticed that the TV monitor in the waiting area had printed text a the bottom of the screen. Could he expand his business by creating a closed-caption database of company products and names for sale to clients interested in monitoring press coverage of their business? This database would actively store televised references to companies without having to wait for specific ‘companies to request the service, Since the captions were stored in digital form, he could use them to do an electronic search for words, and therefore for business names. Further research uncovered two important findings essential for his new idea to thrive. Firs, ‘Congress had recently passed a law that would soon mandate that broadcasters and cable operators provide closed captioning for each show with text at the bottom ofthe screen. This meant that ‘companies could know if they were mentioned in a national news show on CNN or on a local ‘channel in Baton Rouge. The less satisfying discovery was that there was no closed-caption database software. So the cameraman shut down his video recording business, committed himself fully the new venture, and hired a couple of programmers to build the hardware and software for closed-caption text capture and searching. Within year, a new company was born, Multivision. Based in Oakland, California, Multivision enables companies to automatically receive TV clips with closed captions that mention their ‘companies via the Internet. Clients can receive all TV mentions or ones that are specific to certain fields, lke a show, a network, ora time of day. Multivision has eight offices throughout the United States and records over 75 percent ofthe 210 TV markets inthe country. The company's toughest competitor isthe industry leader, Video Monitoring Services (VMS), which has existed 16 years longer than Multivision but introduced closed-caption searches three years after Multivision. In other words, VMS imitated the idea and supported it with its huge financial resources and brand recognition, ‘Mulivsions sales were projected to reach $17 million in 2005, ensuring it the second largest share in a $100 million market. Multvision’s future plans include expansion into international markets, where voice-recognition and image-recognition software could deliver the same service even in markets without closed captioning. On the domestic front, the company aims to focus more on niche broadcasters, withthe channels offered growing faster than evet. Digital Showroom, a proprietary application of Multivision, allows customers to monitor their broadcast coverage, ‘watch the actual video of what aired, analyze the different media outlets, and present the results to their perspective marketing teams, s0 they can take the best advantage of the media exposure. ‘Maltivsion’s coverage includes more than 1,000 television stations, almost 25,000 hours of dally coverage, and is the industry's most specialized archive.The goal, says Babak Farahi, is to watch every television station in the country for certain keywords, such as the name of a company. Clients can buy "buzz reports" to determine how much media exposure they received. n 2005, Multivision covered the United States’ 160 television markets, which serve 98 percent of American viewers as well a 20 countries on 5 continents ‘Ongoing television and radio feeds from England, Ireland, South Aftica, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Poland, Canada, and other countries are available through Multivsion’s proprietary and industry-leading content database. Video can be made available for viewing ‘online through Multvision's Digital Showroom. The company now monitors and indexes broadcast, ‘content more than any other organization. Farah says this satisfies his clients’ ever-growing need to monitor as much broadcast content in as many markets as possible to effectively manage their brand, product, and messaging objectives. Sources Shubert, S, Busnes 2.0, Api 2, 2005; wor: [Link], May 20,2005; [Link], 2005; [Link], May 16,2005 Thinking About the Case | What was Farahi’s original idea? What does this idea have to do with IT? Why is IT so important in implementing this deat }. Was Farahi’s idea aimed at an existing market, or did he create a new market? Explain, Was Multivision a first mover? If so, did its moves guarantee it market dominance? Explain. ‘Multivision could not find an appropriate software application to sere its purpose in indexin and archiving video, s0 it developed its own, How does developing its own software serve its strategic advantage?