Telescope Appoints Jason George

Telescope, a pioneer in participation media solutions, has announced that it has appointed Jason George as chairman of the company.
George, who joined the company in 2006 through its U.K.-based parent company, Harvest Media Group, will lead Telescope’s international mobile marketing and participation television services expansion. He will remain based in the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles.
George will work closely with Telescope CEO, Troy Sample, to create and deliver interactive marketing, voting, games, user-generated content, and social networking solutions.
The Telescope Integrated Media Engine (iME) enables scalable management of mobile, phone, and internet communications for brands, wireless carriers, media and entertainment companies.
Estimated at $300 million in the U.K., participation media is expected to grow to a $3 billion market in the U.S. in the next five years.
Prior to joining Telescope, George was an executive at Endemol where he developed the award-winning interactive broadcast productions ‘Big Brother U.K.,’ ‘Fame Academy,’ and ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.’
He pioneered the use of premium rate telephony revenues from Play TV shows, including ‘Brainteaser,’ during this time. Endemol had acquired Victoria Real, where George had served as the chief executive and co-founder. He helped develop interactive TV formats for the U.K., working with BBC, Channel 4, and ITV, in addition to interactive advertising for BT and Pepsi.
George also directed interactive programming at Flextech Television, a U.K. cable network, for which he developed digital content creation and distribution across the company’s channel portfolio. During his tenure, George commissioned the production of ‘Quiz Night Live,’ the company’s first move into participation TV, in which two made-for-mobile TV channels and an online pay-per-view download service complemented the quiz show’s telecast. This was viewed as a groundbreaking cable offering in the interactive gaming and user-generated content space.
(DS)