Latest news with #interactiveTV
National Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Post
Zone·ify Becomes First AVOD Platform to Launch Free Gaming Through TV Remote Controls
Article content After shattering streaming records with the 'Border Brawl,' co-produced with TNA Wrestling, Zone·ify expands its entertainment platform with interactive TV games and branded game opportunities Article content TORONTO — Zone·ify, the rapidly growing free streaming platform, today announced the launch of a new feature: free interactive games playable instantly with an existing TV remote. In partnership with ES3 – the leading TV interactive engagement platform provider, the launch makes Zone·ify the first AVOD (Ad Supported Video on Demand) platform to offer native gaming as part of the core TV experience – no downloads, consoles, or mobile devices required. The games are now available on a wide range of streaming devices and cable and satellite providers, including Android TV, Fire TV, Comcast Xfinity TV, DIRECTV U-verse, Rogers Xfinity TV, and many others. The launch follows the explosive success of The Border Brawl, Zone·ify's first exclusive live sporting event streamed from Niagara Falls, Canada which became the most-watched title in company history and drove a 13x increase in live watch time. Now available on demand, the event was a cross-border showdown of wrestling legends and reality stars that drew record-breaking viewership across the U.S. and Canada. Building on that moment, Zone·ify is taking the next step in redefining free entertainment. Article content 'We're not just a streaming service anymore – we're a full-scale entertainment platform,' said Doug Edwards, President of Zone·ify. 'From the viral success of The Border Brawl and our rapidly growing library of content to the launch of TV gaming, we are evolving into a destination for watching, playing, and engaging – all in one place.' Article content Now live with over a dozen casual games, Zone·ify's newest feature offers instant gameplay using nothing more than the TV remote – no downloads, no mobile devices, and no extra hardware required. The company has plans to rapidly expand its game catalog and offer custom-branded games for advertisers and sponsors, providing a new, measurable way to engage with audiences. With branded game integrations, companies can align their marketing campaigns or entertainment IP with playable content, reaching viewers through immersive interaction. Article content Zone·ify's free games are available now on these devices with more planned to launch in the coming months: Article content Zone·ify's first-ever exclusive live sports event, The Border Brawl, held in Niagara Falls, Canada, shattered the platform's all-time streaming record with a 13X surge in live watch time. Fueled by national pride, reality TV stars, and wrestling legends like 'The Mountie' Jacques Rougeau, Barbie Blank, Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake, Matt Hardy, Nic Nemeth, Tommy Dreamer, and many others, the event delivered an outrageous showdown between Team USA and Team Canada. Streaming free on Zone·ify, the spectacle became the most-watched title in company history and is now available on demand across Roku, Fire TV, Android TV, Comcast, Cox, and more. Article content Zone·ify, available on over 422 million devices and in 16 million Pay TV households, delivers thousands of movies, TV shows, curated short-form content, FAST channels, games, and events like nothing else on the digital landscape. Article content ABOUT ZONE·IFY Article content Zone·ify is a free, ad-supported streaming entertainment platform delivering live events, FAST channels, movies, short-form content, games, and exclusive programming to audiences across the U.S. and Canada. Available on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Comcast, DIRECTV, Cox, Rogers, Bell, mobile devices, and the web, Zone·ify reaches over 422 million consumer devices and 16 million Pay TV households. With 75+ curated channels, a growing slate of live ring sports, and bold original content, Zone·ify is where niche meets mainstream — all in one place, always free. Learn more at Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Music video streamer ROXi lands backing from US broadcasters
A music video-streaming service whose shareholders include the U2 bassist Adam Clayton will this week announce that it has sealed a management buyout after months of talks. Sky News understands that the assets of MagicWorks, which trades as ROXi, have been sold to a new company called FastStream Interactive (FSI), with backing from two major US-based broadcasters. Sources said that Nasdaq-listed Sinclair and New York Stock Exchange-listed Gray Media were among the new shareholders in FSI, with the launch of new interactive TV Channels in the US expected to take place shortly. The deal, which has involved raising millions of pounds of new equity from new and existing investors, has resulted in previous creditors of the business being repaid in full, according to the sources. Its search for funding from the US was seen as vital because of the programme to roll out its FastScreen technology. Founded in 2014, ROXi described itself as the world's first 'made-for-television' service, allowing viewers to stream millions of songs and download hundreds of thousands of karaoke tracks. Its broadcast channels allow viewers to skip through content in which they have no interest. Simon Cowell, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams were among the prominent music industry figures who had previously been named as ROXi investors. Financiers including Guy Hands and Jim Mellon are said to be part of the new ownership structure. In response to an enquiry from Sky News, Rob Lewis, FSI chief executive, said: "The new technology, FastStream, will revolutionise broadcast TV. "For the first time in history, consumers tuning into a normal TV channel will find they automatically start at the beginning of the programme, and that they are able to skip, pause or search, even though they are watching normal broadcast TV". Begbies Traynor Group, the professional services firm, and Rockefeller Capital Management advised on the process.
Sky News
18-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Music video streamer ROXi lands backing from US broadcasters
A music video-streaming service whose shareholders include the U2 bassist Adam Clayton will this week announce that it has sealed a management buyout after months of talks. Sky News understands that the assets of MagicWorks, which trades as ROXi, have been sold to a new company called FastStream Interactive (FSI), with backing from two major US-based broadcasters. Sources said that Nasdaq-listed Sinclair and New York Stock Exchange-listed Gray Media were among the new shareholders in FSI, with the launch of new interactive TV Channels in the US expected to take place shortly. The deal, which has involved raising millions of pounds of new equity from new and existing investors, has resulted in previous creditors of the business being repaid in full, according to the sources. Its search for funding from the US was seen as vital because of the programme to roll out its FastScreen technology. Founded in 2014, ROXi described itself as the world's first 'made-for-television' service, allowing viewers to stream millions of songs and download hundreds of thousands of karaoke tracks. Its broadcast channels allow viewers to skip through content in which they have no interest. Simon Cowell, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams were among the prominent music industry figures who had previously been named as ROXi investors. Financiers including Guy Hands and Jim Mellon are said to be part of the new ownership structure. In response to an enquiry from Sky News, Rob Lewis, FSI chief executive, said: "The new technology, FastStream, will revolutionise broadcast TV. "For the first time in history, consumers tuning into a normal TV channel will find they automatically start at the beginning of the programme, and that they are able to skip, pause or search, even though they are watching normal broadcast TV".
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Bandersnatch was Netflix's grandest TV experiment. So why erase it?
It's going on for six and half years since the release of Black Mirror's Bandersnatch – the feature-length interactive episode of Charlie Brooker's futureshock anthology series. But now there is one final twist in Brooker's tale of an emotionally unravelling Eighties video game programmer: the entire thing has just been scrubbed by Netflix in an act of digital disappearing that could have come straight from…yes, a Black Mirror script. The snatching of Bandersnatch is part of a move by Netflix away from the interactive TV model into which it invested millions between 2017 and 2022. In that distant and now long forgotten time-period, the streamer proclaimed its modern take on the old ' choose your own adventure ' format an area of enormous potential. 'We're doubling down on that', Netflix VP of product Todd Yellin had declared in 2019, shortly after Bandersnatch made its debut (Yellin left Netflix in 2022). Fast forward to 2025 and Netflix has embarked on a radically different strategy – having scrubbed not only Bandersnatch but a widely praised May 2020 interactive episode of Tina Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, along with several kids shows that utilised the same technology. True, Bear Grylls's You Vs Wild hobbles on with the decision-making element expunged – meaning viewers can no longer actively choose to make Bear eat poison mushrooms and then loudly throw up all over his shoes. The barbarians are inside the gates. Films and shows leave Netflix all the time – in the majority of cases, because of the licensing deals through which the 'content' was secured in the first place. But Netflix owns Bandersnatch lock stock and dystopian barrel. More than that, it put huge resources into the cutting-edge 'Branch Manager' system that gave Charlie Brooker the freedom to write 150 unique scenes and over 60 decision points – along with the 10 official endings to the story (plus other rare outcomes only a tiny percentage of viewers have ever discovered). Netflix has been trialling the tech in kids shows when it approached Brooker and Black Mirror producer Annabel Jones about an interactive one-off. They had initially declined, fearing the results would smack of novelty. But when Brooker came up with the idea of a love letter to 1980s video games, they decided to give it a go – with Netflix encouraging the pair to think outside the box and push Branch Manager to its limits. 'When Netflix initially told us they had the capability to do this, and they asked us if we'd be interested in making an interactive film, we said no. We were determined, it was not for us. It might have felt gimmicky, so it wasn't something we were interested in,' Jones told Deadline. 'They asked us to push the technology, or to come up with ideas they didn't think they could quite pull off, and they would work out how to do them. We'd say, 'Can we do this?' And they'd never say, 'No.' They'd go, 'Well, we can't currently, but we'll work out if we can find a means of doing that.' Bandersnatch was widely acclaimed – 'like nothing I've ever experienced in a movie, a TV show, on Netflix, or anything else,' gushed Esquire – and Brooker clearly has affection for it, given that the latest series of Black Mirror features a sequel story, Plaything. It was also a dark, gritty love letter to the Eighties UK gaming industry. There really was a game called Bandersnatch – or, at any rate, there almost was. In 1984, Liverpool-based Imagine Software teased a new 'mega-game' of that name, though the plans unravelled when Imagine went out of business (it ultimately finally released as the underwhelming Brataccas). Black Mirror is understood to have furthermore riffed on the unhappy story of Matthew Smith, who designed the groundbreaking ZX Spectrum title Manic Miner only to leave gaming after the intolerable pressure of designing the much anticipated follow-up, Jet Set Willy in 1984 – an experience he described as 'seven shades of hell'. Playing Bandersnatch, the viewer is likewise sent to hell and back again and again. The instalment stars Fionn Whitehead as a young programmer hired to adapt a fantasy gamebook, Bandersnatch, into a video game. As the stress of completing the game plunges Stefan into burnout, he begins to feel that outside forces are controlling him (i.e. the viewer). Pretty soon, it all descends into chaos, and the walls start coming in. In one pivotal scene, fellow programmer Colin (Will Poulter) spikes Stefan's tea with LSD and rants about alternate timelines. He demands that Stefan choose one of the pair to jump from a balcony. If the player picks Stefan, he dies, and the Bandersnatch game is cobbled together and released to poor reviews. If Colin takes the plunge, the event is revealed as a dream – yet Colin is absent from future sequences. There are multiple endings. One sees Stefan have a breakdown and kill and dismember his father. In another,, the game comes out and flops, and the Imagine-like publisher Tuckersoft goes bust. All told, there are 150 minutes of footage divided into 250 segments – meaning there are one trillion different paths the viewer can take. There are five 'main' conclusions but another five to seven that are harder to reach and depend on making a number of seemingly random decisions. In other words, no two viewers will experience Bandersnatch in the same way – resulting in a meta experience that is both a commentary on the illusion of choice in video games and which recreates the feverish frame of mind of poor Stefan as he is driven around the twist. The result is a unique and fascinating experience. Why, then, would Netflix turn sour on the interactive format – to the point of erasing it from its history? The answer, of course, has to do with money. Scripting hours of additional footage exponentially increases a show's production costs. For instance, the total runtime of the 2022 interactive episode of Jurassic Park cartoon Camp Cretaceous was three times that of a regular instalment – and for what return? Plus, it is understood hosting the Branch Manager system on Netflix servers was expensive – and required constant updating as Netflix upgraded its homepage (the latest version of which rolls out on May 19). Instead of interactive TV, Netflix is betting big on video games – rolling out mobile titles based on hits such as Money Heist and Squid Game. It is also investing in AI-driven feeds on its home page and shorter TikTok-style content. Last year, newly appointed VP of 'GenAI for Games' at Netflix Mike Verdu indicated that the company felt it had pushed the choose your own adventure format as far as it could go. 'We're not building those specific experiences any more,' he said. 'The technology was very limiting and the potential for what we could do in that realm was kind of capped. But we learned a ton from that.' The difference in strategy is illustrated by how Netflix has chosen to market the new series of Black Mirror and that Bandersnatch sequel, Plaything. Netflix subscribers can download a tie-in mobile game, Thronglets, which recreates the empire-building PC simulation that drives the protagonist around the twist. It's great fun and has the same creepy ambience as the episode. But it is nowhere near as gripping as the original Bandersnatch, which started off asking you to pick a breakfast cereal for the lead character and then plunged into a vortex of madness and chaos – a world that has now been sealed shut and cast into the digital void. All told, it is a dark day for dystopias.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why the groundbreaking ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' is disappearing from Netflix
It's the end of the road for choose-your-own-adventure programming at Netflix, and there's no rewinding to pick another path. On May 12, the streamer will remove Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (2020). Both of these interactive TV specials empowered viewers to choose different paths to essentially create their own narrative. More from GoldDerby 'A fever dream': Jamie Lloyd and Tom Francis describe their radical new take on 'Sunset Boulevard' Sam Reid, Mark Johnson, and the 'Interview With the Vampire' team sink their teeth into FYC season How the casting director for 'Adolescence' discovered Owen Cooper for the emotional lead role of Jamie: 'The search was far and wide' In November 2024, a Netflix rep told The Verge that it was removing all of its choose-your-own-adventure projects, which at that time numbered 24 unique titles. As of Friday, only Bandersnatch and Kimmy vs. the Reverend remain on the company's "interactive specials" page, but not for long. "The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas," Netflix spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher said last year. In 2019, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch won a pair of Emmy Awards — for Best TV Movie and Best Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program. The plot followed a young programmer, Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who was adapting a fantasy book into a video game in 1984, with the help of gaming expert Colin Ritman (Will Poulter). Poulter returned to Black Mirror this year as the same character in the "Plaything" episode. Bandersnatch included more than five hours of material, although the average time for a user to make it through the entire story was about 90 minutes. Because there were 150 minutes of unique footage divided into 250 segments, there were more than 1 trillion possible paths that viewers could take. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend served as the wrap-up movie to the 2015-19 comedy series created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. The interactive telefilm included multiple paths and alternate endings, and it received two Emmy nominations, for Best TV Movie and Best Limited/Movie Supporting Actor for Tituss Burgess. Star Ellie Kemper returned as Kimmy Schmidt, a former mole woman who's now a bestselling author, as she plans her wedding to Prince Frederick (Daniel Radcliffe) and uncovers a secret bunker started by the Rev. Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm). Fey previously called it "a great way to officially complete the series." It was written by Fey, Carlock, Meredith Scardino, and Sam Means, and directed by Claire Scanlon. At the same time that Netflix is halting its efforts with this particular choose-your-own-adventure format, the streamer is ramping up its games portfolio. The TV homepage was even recently redesigned to feature games that can be played on-screen by using your cell phone as the controller. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby 'I've never been on a show that got this kind of recognition': Katherine LaNasa on 'The Pitt's' success and Dana's 'existential crisis' How Charlie Cox characterizes Matt Murdock through action scenes in 'Daredevil: Born Again' 'Agatha All Along' star Joe Locke on learning from Kathryn Hahn, musical theater goals, and the 'Heartstopper' movie with Kit Connor Click here to read the full article.
