Tag: waiting room tv

Do I Have the Licensing Rights for Using TV in My Waiting Room?

This question is becoming much more common these days as motion picture companies, television studios and others are sending threatening letters to business owners. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in– if you operate a medical office, restaurant, retail establishment or car dealership, you can be held liable for showing television content that you don’t have adequate permission to display.

And it doesn’t matter how you are playing this content, whether it’s on a DVD, or through a popular streaming provider like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ or YouTube.  Showing that content inside a business is likely against copyright terms, and could put you in legal jeopardy. Hulu’s Terms & Conditions for instance clearly state that their service is NOT for commercial use. Therefore, you cannot use it in a public or business setting- even in a waiting room.

Did you receive a threatening letter from a licensing company?

While there may be many valid points in a letter you’ve received in the mail from a content licensing organization, you should read it carefully, and realize that there is not one licensing body for all content. In a lot of cases these letters are designed to scare you into using a service that they are selling. Many of these services will offer a solution that shows a limited library of uninteresting content, looped on your TV day in and day out. You don’t need to trade away interesting television for “safe” TV when there are options out there that are both safe and interesting.

Just know, you are not obligated to use any specific licensing service in your business or waiting room. You just need to be sure that whatever service you are using has secured commercial playback rights for the content you are showing.

There are TV Providers that Include Business Display Licensing as Part of the Service

While Hulu, Netflix, Sling, Pluto and other streamers do NOT provide commercial licensing at the time of this article, there are other providers who do. And that’s what you want to utilize in order to keep your in the copyright-clear. It’s Relevant TV is one service provider that was built with integrated commercial licensing from day one. It’s cost-effective, easy-to-use, and features a growing library of over half-a-million videos. In addition to being the best streaming option for businesses, it’s also the best cable replacement on the market.

 

DIY TV – Customize The TV In Your Business

As technology grows and becomes more innovative, more and more business owners are turning to DIY solutions and beginning to explore new ways of doing things. We live in an age where reaching out and connecting with people is as easy as pressing a button – though just as easily, someone is capable of finding you and following you online or on social media – which when it comes to businesses, can be a potential client or customer’s first impression of your brand.

It’s Never Been More Important to Reach Your Visitors

Grey-Goose

A business wouldn’t be a business without people coming in and giving you their time and money. That’s why any respectable business will always invest in the comfort and consideration of the people who come to frequent their establishment. The most common means of catering to the comfort of visitors is the Television. TVs hang in the lobbies of medical offices, hospitals have TVs in their waiting areas, and bars and restaurants have them so people can watch as they eat.

Medical Waiting Room TV - Doctors Express Television
Medical Waiting Room TV

With customer comfort being the priority it is, it only makes sense for business owners to invest in ways to make waiting areas more inviting. Those who run something other than basic cable tend to settle on one of a few do-it-yourself alternatives. People try things ranging from stiff looping slideshows, digital signs, and streaming sticks, to playing DVDs. While these options have no regular monetary cost, they provide no real value to your business. Certain solutions may be illegal depending upon what you are showing. (See the article: Using Netflix & DVDs in Your Business).

So what’s the solution?

When homegrown DIY alternatives fall short of providing an ideal the answer is a custom TV network for your business. A network that brings the TV programs in legally and lets you message to your customers at the same time.

With It’s Relevant TV, it’s just easy. It’s Relevant gives you access to a living network, which features short-form family-friendly content designed with business settings in mind. The service allows you to customize your TV, giving you control over which categories play and what visitors see. It’s Relevant can also be used to display posts from social media accounts in real-time. This helps you to further positively promote your brand and get people to follow you online.