TVWeek (free registration required) may have been the first to report this, under the headline ‘Interactive TV Gets a Big Boost’ – CNN has launched their first major one-screen interative TV application. I was the product manager on this effort, and it’s great to see the trades picking up on it. If you have Dish, please check it out and let me know your thoughts. The app combines photos and stories from CNN.com you can read while the CNN linear network continues to play in squeezeback. So for those couch potatoes among us who want a little more control over your news, this one’s for you! The TV Week story goes on with an interesting quote from Ian Olgeirson, an analyst with Kagan Research: “Certainly, being able to deploy the application to more than a small amount of customers is pretty critical to making the model work on any level,” he said. Still, ITV is not likely to lure new customers, he said.”

• TV Newser has also picked this up.
• CNNMoney.com has the PRNewswire story.
• Multichannel News and UPI also have short mentions.
• What’s Happening at CNN has a slew of screenshots.

Update (2/20/06): MediaPost has a story focused on the OpenTV back-end details. A nice quote from Joel Hassell, the SVP/GM at OpenTV who notes the value of the application providing content from CNN.com to a satellite television viewer:

technorati tags: cnn, echostar, itv, etv, dish network

technorati tags: opentv