The National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), the Kansas-based programming and technology buying consortium for independent cable operators, said that more than 100 members are using WatchTVEverywhere, a TV Everywhere authentication system developed in partnership with MCTV, the Ohio-based operator formerly known as Massillon Cable TV.
That’s up from the 80 members about a year ago. NCTC vice president of communications Dan Mulvenon said the operators that presently use WTVE serve more than 1 million cable homes. The current batch of WTVE affiliates serve as few as 500 subs, and as many as 200,000, the NCTC said.
The NCTC delivers TV Everywhere services via a portal at WatchTVEverywhere.com, where customers of participating operators go to log in and stream content from the consortium’s TV Everywhere programming partners. The site, which is integrated with a range of billing systems used by NCTC members, offers a full list of participating cable operators.
NCTC said the WTVE platform has completed integrations with more than 50 major programming services.
“Few NCTC members have the in-house programming talent required to develop, maintain and improve an authentication platform,” said NCTC president and CEO Rich Fickle, in a statement. “At the same time, many third-party platforms can be prohibitively expensive for smaller operators. The WTVE platform enables NCTC to deliver a viable solution to its members at a fraction of the expense yet ensuring integrity in managing content rights between operators and content providers.”
NCTC, which negotiates deals for more than 950 individual operators, also offers Clearleap’s ClearPlay Authentication system as a TV Everywhere option.
