Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260245
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED BARK KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
TV OF THE FUTURE? STAY TUNED
Is television going to explode again - or might it implode on itself?Will viewers be well-served by interactive, limitless channel universes - or will primal screams reverberate throughout the land?
Do we need a Channel 429, new home of The Needlepoint Network? Will the national "electronic town hall meeting" convene sooner than we think? Are we advancing humankind by making "Meatballs 4" available every 15 minutes on six different pay-per-view channels? Is it worth paying $2 for a "Roseanne" episode? Or $4 if you want to watch it without commercials?
And what about ABC, CBS and NBC? With the advent of "digital compression" and fiber optic technology, will they continue to be networks? Or will their programs merely be part of an a la carte video room service available on demand throughout the day and night?
Tufts University communications Prof. Russell Newman, author of "The Telecommunications Revolution," has some chill-down-the-spine news for the lords of Model-T TV.
"Using a word like television will be like using an awkward word like horseless carriage," he says. "The number of channels becomes completely meaningless in the year 2000, because you've got as many channels as you want. You want to watch a particular episode of `The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' you call it up. Television will really be under your control. The premise that television is advertiser-supported, that it is built around a network and network decision-making, will be a wonderful historical anecdote."
Newman's visions of a not-too-distant future were cockeyed to some and 20-20 to others attending a recent day-long "Future of Television" conference sponsored by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Home Box Office cable network. Divided into three panel discussions, the conference included academics, network executives, political pros, cartoonist Matt Groening and Panamanian singer-actor-activist Ruben Blades, who said matter-of-factly, "I think we risk becoming the best-informed society that ever died of ignorance."
It was his way of restating an old axiom: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
High-minded forecasts of television's future assume there will be that much more room for cultural enrichment. Jennifer Lawson, executive vice president of programming for PBS, says America needs "a new vision of the possibilities of television. I find the possibility of 500 channels quite exciting. . . . We could have a greater connection with other societies in other parts of the world."
Blades, president and founder of Panama's new "Movimiento Papa Egoro" political party, wonders whether the appetite for "mindless" television will continue apace, whatever the number and quality of channels.
"It's a wonderful thing, that we're going to have the opportunity to choose from among a tremendous variety of programs," he says. "The question is whether people are going to want to see those programs. And whether we're going to be able to understand what we're seeing."
Groening, creator of "The Simpsons," says he is "not looking forward to 500 channels because I have a satellite dish and I already get 200 channels. And there's not a lot of extra great stuff on."
His children, ages 1 1/2 and 3 1/2, already provide a preview of the next century's typical TV viewer. Both know how to rewind and fast-forward a VCR, Groening says. "And they won't put up with commercial television. The 3 1/2-year-old won't watch `The Simpsons' because it has commercials. He just walks away."
CBS entertainment president Jeff Sagansky holds fast to the belief that viewers will go back to the future rather than face the prospect of programs, programs everywhere. Network television, the "cultural glue that certainly has held this democracy together ever since the war," will outlast the technology looming ahead, he says.
"How does a [new] show get marketed if there are 5,000 different choices?" he asks. "How does one decide what shows are going to get made? Will there be any culturally shared experience in this country, which is basically what network television has been providing?"
Sagansky cites CBS' critically praised but ratings-starved "Brooklyn Bridge" series as a virtual impossibility in a pay-as-you-go TV universe where viewers could shop until they dropped.
"People have to know there's a `Brooklyn Bridge' on," he says. "And it's not going to get marketed and sold with 5,000 different channels and no network. I don't think that's ever going to happen."