I’m sure it’s been seen before but here’s a short promo from Seven, 2/10/2000:
Again, the questions have to be asked: Did the dots (which appear to be little more than a piece of cardboard wrapped around a light) actually do anything? If they didn’t do anything (as I suspect), how were the winners of prizes selected?
From what I can tell, it was Seven’s attempt to keep viewers after the 2000 Olympics.
Nine’s response to “Adopt A Dot” appeared to be a $1 Million Cash Giveaway with 20 prizes of $50,000 given away…presumably over the first 20 nights of October 2000 or something like that (from 0:12 of this clip):
Interestingly, it appears that it wasn’t using some fancy electronic means of activation. It appeared to be a film strip which changed colour when exposed to light. The company TV-miles and Channel 7 all claimed that it was extremely important that the dots remain on the screen for the duration of whatever program they wanted you to watch due to their uber fancy encoding system which apparently adjusts itself to the TV screen it’s displayed on (no matter the size or brightness of the screen).
I reckon it was all a bunch of snake oil, and I would put $100 on the ‘activation’ of these dots relying solely on exposure to a bright light (i.e. a TV screen), and it would not matter whether you were watching Channel 7 or the ABC…or if you just popped it next to a 100W light bulb.
The fact that you can’t actually verify whether a dot is activated or not until the prize draw makes it impossible for anyone to refute the promoters’ claims.
Here’s an article about it:
Here’s an article in Portugese (you can probably translate it online yourself easily) which reports on an ‘adopt a dot’ campaign in Portugal:
and here’s another Portugese article which seems to allege that people were sceptical that the dot was able to detect what exactly you were watching.
TV3 did this in NZ, and I can’t remember if it worked or not. I did try.
It might have worked in the same way film is developed (fun fact - in the olden days, camera’s used film), and the pattern was supposed to leave an image on the film? Just a guess, like I said, I really can’t remember if it worked or not.
I really doubt that it would have left a pattern on the film. You usually need some form of optics to actually leave a discernible mark on the film. I guess it may have used a pinhole lens, but I seriously doubt that it was that sophisticated.
Such a coincidence they’ve gone with a 2000s theme, as I was just reminiscing about the old early 2000s promos yesterday! I gotta say, those old promos are quite refreshing than what they have on currently…
I’m still surprised that the Olympics weren’t the launch date for digital - it wouldn’t have been bringing it too far forward, but might have given it a slight extra spike.
Yeah, I guess something like a 1/9/2000 launch for Digital TV could’ve worked but were any portions of the Sydney Olympics being produced/broadcast in widescreen (presumably for overseas markets) to make an early switch worthwhile?
They would have pushed people towards C7 Sport for extra Olympic coverage, they had 2 pay-per-view channels “C7 Olympics” and “C7 Games” for that, they were carried on Foxtel in addition to Optus Vision even though Foxtel never carried the other C7 Sports channels.
Optus have given C7 the right to do their rugby league commitments from 1999 only till the end of the 2000 season (which of course finished in August that year due to the Olympics being held in September), the other major sport that C7 had was AFL (due to Seven), the Olympics deal that C7 had was for Optus & AUSTAR and at the last minute Foxtel accepted the deal but only for the Olympic games and nothing else.
It should be noted that Optus Vision & Fox Sports had dual access rights to NRL pay TV rights till the end of 2002 as part of the peace treaty deal signed at the end of the Super League / ARL war in 1997, in 2001 Optus elected to have a 4 day channel channel “NRL on OPTUS” instead of giving C7 or another group control of their share of the rights, NRL on OPTUS was from the Fox Sport playout facility in Pyrmont, for 2002 Optus had dumped C7 Sport prior to the start of the AFL pre season in March, it also took out the remaining NSL Finals rounds + rugby union, that caused a big up roar and Optus relented and did broadcast some C7 content on Channel 41 or was it 40 either way), AUSTAR was not affected but C7 was shut down around June 2002.
Now going off memory (no research) was it mid 2000 or mid 2001 when the AFL announced the deal with News Limited to sell AFL rights which included web site for clubs (except for the clubs that had existing deals like Essendon with Seven and I think the Swans) + FTA and Pay TV rights, the FTA rights went to Nine & Ten with Ten getting all finals (how Nine let that happen is still mystery) while Foxtel (not Premier Media re: Fox Sports) got the pay TV rghts and started the 2nd dedicated pay TV channel for AFL called Fox Footy Channel (lol Foxtel back then were telling fibs when they said it was the 1st dedicated pay TV channel for AFL forgetting this channel .
Telstra got the website rights and the main AFL website,
Ok back to the Olympics channels, the plan from Seven was to get onto Foxtel system and then stay there by bidding for the AFL rights, the issue not anti siphoning or anything to do with that as News Limited bought all access as they went into the deal with Nine and Ten both on board from the start and as such by-passed Seven which failed to use it last rights matching offer, during the next round of AFL broadcast rights it was Nine and Foxtel going to the AFL (minus Ten) and putting in the offer days before Kerry Packer died, Seven with Ten as a side backer waited the respectful time period after Packers death and used the matching rights deal they had with AFL to win the rights, if I recall correctly there was talk of off loading some games to either SBS or at worst Channel 31, but Fox Sports (not Foxtel) eventually bought access rights for some games from Seven during this period.
I think some limited portions were. Obviously though Seven didn’t exactly embrace widescreen sports coverage even once digital started.
If they didn’t want to multichannel, Seven could have run something like a medal tally channel. I also have vague recollection of there being a online games news channel or something - like a Telstra streaming video thing?
