Sharper Picture
By: Steve Brennan

It's been less than a year since Mark Rosenbaum was beamed up. One day he was busily plying his trade as a studio international TV executive over at Fox. The next, he was in the world of the dongles.

There were no spaceships involved. In fact, Rosenbaum had been transported out of Fox by Pixar Animation CFO Simon Bax to head up a new high-tech venture called SmartJog, of which Bax is chairman.

One of Rosenbaum's principal missions as SmartJog CEO was to direct the international TV distribution business off the branch roads of technology and onto the superhighway. Just seven months later, SmartJog looks to indeed be launching the global television distribution business into the digisphere. Simply put, SmartJog boasts that it can provide a secure, low-cost method for moving digital content between television distributors and their international clients. Putting it in even simpler terms, SmartJog is out to eliminate the video cassette from the international TV distribution business.

And that's a bit like replacing traditional mail boxes with e-mail for those whose job it is to send programs to the far corners of the world ... while also securing their valuable creative content from cyber-thieves. Tape-based distribution has been the standard since the inception of the global television industry. But bypassing that traditional distribution route means avoiding such hassles and hazards as customs and shipping.

Rosenbaum faced a dilemma when he took over the job - how to convince studios and their broadcaster customers alike that this was a safe way to send programming around the globe via satellite. Distributors traditionally are paranoid about putting their programs into space where it can potentially stray into the realm of pirates.

"It was a matter of going step by step and explaining the various security layers that we have in place. We had to build that trust for both studio clients and broadcasters," says Rosenbaum. "Some got it instantly, others took some time.

The sales pitch has obviously been successful. "We are growing the business by about 15 broadcasters worldwide every month and we have about two-thirds of the broadcasters that represent revenue for the studios," says Rosenbaum. Additionally, the company customer roster includes such studios as NBC Universal Television, Alliance Atlantis, 20th Century Fox International Television, CBS Paramount International Television, BBC Worldwide and Carsey-Werner International among others.

International broadcast customers include Antena 3 (Spain), ProsiebenSat.1 (Germany), BSkyB (U.K.), RTL TV (Germany), Canal+ (France), Seven Network (Australia), Channel 4 (U.K.) and Sky Italia (Italy), among numerous others.

SmartJog has also keyed into some major TV markets including MIP and MIPCOM to provide "tape free" markets to international television distributors. At MIPDOC earlier this month, SmartJog partnered with Reed Midem to provide the first-ever fully digital content screening for all conference participants.

And the system will be very much in evidence at next month's Los Angeles Screenings, Rosenbaum says. Broadcast customers attending the Screenings can use SmartJog to instantly relay back pilot tapes for assessment at their headquarters around the world, he points out.

Developed within France Telecom and spun off on its own in 2002, SmartJog is based in Paris, with U.S. headquarters in Santa Monica.

Oh yes. For the record, a "dongle" is a special key provided to SmartJog customers to give them access to the digital content within the SmartJog system.

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