The slides you see on this page are some of the screens I designed and coded for playback on a large screen HDTV set in the Baby Grand Piano Bar for the owner-operator John “Pitch” Picciurro.  I built the PC, put a web server on it and used WiFi to transport content to the HDTV.

I was attempting to work a startup called virtualCable.TV  thinking (foolishly) businesses with TVs on the premises would use one or more of them for on-premise marketing. It was not to be.

My design and coding talents and skills lend themselves well to designing, coding and deploying content to what the “big boys” were to call OTT deployed to so-called “SmartTV.”

The rest of us know it for what it is: for the most part the content consists of slideshows developed using WWW coding played back by “Digital Signage” apps which are themselves websites or variants of the same. 

For an experienced web design-builder this type of content and coding is easy-peasey as we can write “responsive” code that automatically resizes the content to whatever size screen may be needed; HDTV sets typically use a 16:9 aspect ratio in what we call landscape mode. Building a business from that is as I was to discover an entirely different thing.

Most food and beverage providing business owners finally have a website these days but those in and around Milwaukee and all of Southeastern Wisconsin have for the most part refused or failed to learn to use it with –any– of the HDTV sets they use on their premises; some having more than a dozen sets all (mis)used for sports and only sports programming most of which are reruns so to speak.

They pay a lot of money to buy sports programming from satellite or cable TV services that run advertisements in their programming; advertisements that can and do directly compete with food and beverage offerings the bar and tavern owners typically  prepare and sell to customers themselves but will not do so using an HDTV on their premises. Some of these business geniuses spend tens of thousands of dollars on kitchens but IMO fail miserably marketing the food and beverages on their premises.

I mean who would pay big money for programming on HDTV sets that advertises food and beverages from other providers without marketing their own food and beverages right then and there? Answer: bar and restaurant owners. Brilliant business owners and operators ainna?

The Restaurant News and other industry commentators advocate the use of digital signage on premises but why it has not become –widely– adopted anywhere in the USA remains a mystery that only suggests bar owners and those who own restaurants simply do not understand the value of marketing what they sell on their own premises.

Why would –you– leave money on the table?