Most of us, including Bruce Springsteen himself, have thought it: there’s nothing on TV. This is despite the fact that many people who pay for cable or satellite subscriptions have constant access to hundreds of channels. Many of us lament, or perhaps are overwhelmed by, choice. While channel-surfing and looking for something new, you could consult a paper TV Guide, or its modern-day equivalent, the on-screen "grid" interface.

But now, a new Silicon Valley startup wants to change all that by harnessing a feature that most channels already output—closed captioning. Boxfish captures all closed-captioning information, indexes it, then makes that data searchable in a Twitter-style interface. All in real-time.

The company was founded in January 2011 and launched its "beta" search interface in March.

"We thought that this is a fantastic way to discover television," said Eoin (pronounced like "Owen") Dowling, who hails from Ireland, in an interview with Ars on Tuesday.

"Most people discover television using this grid. We turned this basically TweetDeck-like feed for television into a remote control for TV. So you’re at home and you tell us what you’re interested in, and we pop what’s happening in real time and then you can control your TV with it."

According to NPD’s retail tracking service, manufacturers sold approximately 22.2 million TVs in 2011 within the United States. Sales totaled $12.6 billion. If Palo Alto-based Boxfish can harness even one percent of those viewers (not to mention people who already own TVs), it stands to rake in a fair amount of cash. The company says it wants to sell context-driven advertising alongside the searches, not unlike Google’s text ads.

Given that Boxfish is still relatively new, many industry watchers have only had a brief chance to experience the new site. But they say that so far, it’s pretty impressive.

"Making TV searchable brings that Internet experience to TV," said Ben Arnold, an analyst with the NPD Group (an industry analysis firm). "You think about all that content, it’s not really indexed that well. It makes total sense—seems really cool."

Coming soon: Boxfish Live

Starting in "six to eight weeks," certain cable subscribers in the United States will be able to use this "TweetDeck-like feed." The company calls this experience Boxfish Live, and it's a way for users to interact with their TV in an entirely new way. Now, the site lets users search for various terms, and shows trending topics. These, so far, seem to revolve around entertainment, sports, and political celebrities and news. (Dowling says customers in the United Kingdom are due to follow.)

The new product will integrate the search into the TV, making it possible to switch channels directly from an iPad or other mobile device based on search terms. In other words, if you’re interested (as this reporter is), in the Texas Rangers star Iranian-Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish, you could simply click the box where the word "Darvish" comes up in search terms. It'll reveal that he’s being talked about not only on ESPN, but also on Comedy Central. With the click of a button, your TV would instantly switch to Comedy Central.

"We want to use this layer of information and make TV easier to discover," Dowling said. "We want to be a layer of discovery for television."

So far, the small startup, which boasts "soon to be nine employees," has already received $3 million of Series A funding from Deutsche Telekom.

In the age of Hulu, TiVo, and many other ways to watch TV that don’t require an actual small-screen, Dowling added that he has a strong pitch for potential cable providers and networks.

"We hold the user back to TV—there’s this worry about second-screen social apps," he said, explaining that some networks have expressed concern that TV watchers are distracted by other devices in their home, like smartphones or tablets. "[Networks and cable providers] love the fact that what we’re doing is closing a loop and bringing people back to TV."

Dowling adds that Boxfish has potential deals in the works with major cable and TV satellite network operators, although he declined to name them.

Analysts impressed so far

There doesn’t appear to be any direct competitors with Boxfish as of yet—no other companies are searching closed-captioning TV in real time. Blinkx.com searches video, but only in archival form, rather than as-it-happens TV.

Dan Cryan, a media analyst with IHS Global Insight, says that Multiple System Operators (MSO) (such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable) have been struggling to convince customers that they’re getting lots of value by paying for that expensive cable subscription.

"Which is really important if you’re an operator. When you’re faced with a flat or operating subscriber number, the only way you can make more money is to increase [average revenue per user]," he said, citing last year’s release of the Xfinity iPad app, which has been downloaded 5 million times so far.

Beyond individual customers and MSOs, there may be an opportunity for media monitoring companies to use Boxfish as well. Amy Mitchell, deputy director for Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism, told Ars on Thursday that her organization might potentially be interested in Boxfish for their work, but said it was too early to say.

"The work that we do—it’s extremely important to understand the context, whether the story is really about Obama, or if he’s just mentioned in a stray manner," she said. "Knowing the context around the word, or around the term is an important aspect for the work that we do. If you’re a marketing company, and you just want to know every time your product is mentioned, then word search can work for you. But evaluating press coverage, we need more than that, we’ve found."