Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 25, 1990 TAG: 9006260414
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The ACTV Co. is experimenting with such a service in Montreal and Springfield, Mass. Cable viewers there can choose from four different camera angles of a concert or a sporting event; they can customize an exercise program to fit their individual taste. Other systems allow home viewers to play "Wheel of Fortune." Bar patrons win prizes if they can predict a quarterback's next call through an interactive game.
These systems are expensive, primitive and, for the moment, frivolous. They require several cable channels, a $400-500 control unit and a monthly fee. That's more than most viewers can afford, but it would be foolish to write off interactive TV. Its potential is staggering and its growth, in one form or another, seems inevitable.
Innovations are being made daily in home computers and video technology. Equipment continues to become cheaper, more versatile and more widely available. Today, computers and televisions are separate in most households, but the growth of cable and fiber-optic communications will bring them closer togeter. Once that connection is made - when home computers, modems, cable systems and television programming are linked together - the medium will be transformed.
Interactive television news, allowing viewers to explore stories as thoroughly or as lightly as they choose, is perhaps the most important option that could be made available. Predictions with a high degree of certainty aren't possible, but if enough viewers are willing to pay for it, television news could achieve the depth and vitality that have been possible for years. Direct voting on public referenda, even elections, is another possibility.
Yes, there will always be a place for the couch potato who simply relaxes and watches. But a generation that has been raised on Nintendo sees a video screen in a different way. They are more likely to think of television as something to be manipulated, not something to be accepted without question.
As Andrew Lippman of MIT's Media Lab puts it: "Interactive television represents a change as fundamental to the world of broadcasting as television itself was when introduced to the existing world of broadcast radio."
Any developments that tie more people to the tube - for even longer periods of time than is now the case - aren't entirely welcome, of course. Still, as the boob tube becomes less boobish, watchers might, too.
by CNB