Tampa Tribune
By Richard Mullins, Tampa Tribune, Fla.
May 28--In the march of progress, American society now verges on a significant leap that will deliver something incredible for couch potatoes.
Sometime in the months ahead, somewhere in the United States, someone watching TV will reach for the remote control and -- for the first time -- order a pizza using only the buttons on the remote. No need to rise off the couch or reach for the phone.
Yes, a pizza. Point, click, buy, eat.
They'll still have to get up to answer the door, but cable and satellite companies have been looking forward to that moment for, literally, decades.
"This has all been talked about since the 1980s or earlier, but all the pieces haven't been in place," said Craig Leddy, president of the New York consulting company Interactive TV Works. "Now, finally, the pieces are coming together in a lot of different ways, and the interest is just booming."
If the current technical leaders pull off some laboratory projects, the first pizzas will most likely come from Papa John's to a customer who ordered it through the satellite TV company Dish Network Corp.
And if those kinds of companies can pull off making pizza by remote a possibility, they can open up huge opportunities for advertisers to trigger your buying impulse for many other kinds of products: shampoo, insurance, movie tickets, cruises -- virtually anything advertised on TV.
Could It Work?
The companies are secretive about their plans, but Papa John's and Dish Network executives acknowledge they have projects under way that could make remote-control-ordered pizza a reality. Others, such as Verizon, suggest they're working on the idea too.
So, for pizza lovers everywhere, here's a rundown of the state of the art when it comes to pizza via your TV:
Dish Network in 2007 started an interactive advertising campaign that showed advertisements for Papa John's when customers activated certain channels -- like the banner ads that appear on the Internet. Then the system listed the local Papa John's locations, with their phone numbers and local specials.
"As I'm sure you can imagine, this has a tremendous amount of potential moving forward," said Dish Network spokesman Parker McConachie.
Papa John's already takes 20 percent of its orders via the Internet or cell phone text messages (reaching $400 million in online orders in 2007), so the Dish Network project is just a few steps short of merging online ordering with TV-screen interactivity.
"We're working hard on this," said Jim Ensign, vice president of marketing communications for Papa John's International. "We just can't say when this is going to happen."
Not So Easy
However, taking the next step toward pizza-by-remote turns out to be immensely difficult. Even though people can order pay-per-view movies with a few clicks on a remote, pizza-by-remote seems to bring together all the thorniest problems of e-commerce.
-- First, cable and satellite companies, networks, and advertisers such as Papa John's must decide what interactive commercials would cost to air if they can trigger a pizza order, especially if it distracts you from a TV show or other commercials.
-- Then the system must be simple enough to use so customers can pick pizza sizes, toppings or drinks.
-- Then, the cable or satellite system must be able to recognize individual customers to present specific offers in their neighborhood and match up their addresses for delivery, without violating privacy concerns. Often, one cable or satellite company can have a half-dozen or more kinds of TV set-top boxes -- and not all of them could pull off pizza-by-remote.
-- Then a cable or satellite company must decide who clears the transaction -- the cable company (pizza charges show up on your cable bill) or the pizza company (charges show up on your credit card) and stitch together computer networks to trigger an order at a pizza company.
-- Then the whole collaborative transaction must happen immediately because customers expect a pizza to arrive in 30 minutes, not the next day.
In other words, just one project could require coordination among Pizza Hut, Bright House, MasterCard and NBC. Perhaps for those reasons, Pizza Hut, Domino's and DirecTV officials say pizza-by-remote is not on their priority list.
Projects Cooking
Lately, however, more companies are moving forward on it.
Dish Network recently launched an interactive ordering system with shop-at-home giant HSN that lets viewers order HSN products instantly through their remote control -- a system considered highly advanced in the cable market.
Consumer goods giant Unilever this month made deals with Comcast and DirecTV Group for 20 interactive advertising campaigns for brands such as Degree deodorant and Bertoli foods. Typically, those commercials let viewers do things such as order brochures or coupons.
Dish Network this week announced a broad deal with NBC Universal to run interactive ads on 14 NBC networks and 10 NBC owned-and-operated TV stations. They negotiated a special feature to trigger a customer's DVR to start recording so viewers come back to their show without missing any of the action.
Local cable officials with Bright House Networks say they're aware of the potential of interactive ordering, but they have yet to announce any deals to make it happen.
Verizon officials offered a more cryptic message that suggests pizza-by-remote could be coming. Spokeswoman Sharon Shafer noted that Verizon's Fios cable TV customers can order premium services such as HBO with a remote control click, "and that has worked very well for us since we began offering it a few months ago."
As for pizza by remote, she said, "You can't order your pizza from your Fios TV remote -- yet." When pressed when that could happen, she responded that it's not on the Verizon system "yet."
Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.
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