Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9308250321
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES HADDAD COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO LENGTH: Medium
The people who make your favorite cable shows are scheming how to use your TV to make contact with you - and you with them.
It's all part of what many cable programmers and system operators call interactive TV. What it means is this: Your TV becomes a two-way computer that lets you do things like play video games, order movies to watch or rewrite the plots of your favorite soap operas.
The technology is there to do it. Almost daily, a new technology alliance is announced as companies position themselves. For example, on June 7, Scientific-Atlanta Inc. and Communications Corp. said they would cooperate in the delivery of advanced video and related services to network providers.
But despite the availability of the technology, the industry is holding back, asking itself:
``Do people like it, do they want it, do they need it?'' says Michele DiLorenzo, senior vice president at Viacom New Media, a unit of the cable conglomerate of the same name, which owns the MTV and Nickelodeon networks.
DiLorenzo says these critical questions remain unanswered. Many of the answers will come soon as Viacom, Time Warner and other major cable operators and programmers, as a group, spend billions to test the attraction of interactive TV.
Viacom, for example, is setting up what it calls an interactive test bed with AT&T in Castro Valley, Calif., a suburban community 20 miles east of San Francisco. The system will have 78 channels, 16 of which will be pay-for-view. That is, viewers will be charged, like telephone service, for the length or number of times they use an offering such as video on demand.
``The whole purpose of Castro Valley is to see what people really want - and at what price,'' says David Archer, a Viacom vice president. ``We want to see whether this is an economically viable business.''
At the other end of the country, Time Warner, the second-largest cable operator, is setting up an interactive TV test in Orlando. The company already has a test of video on demand in Queens, N.Y., called Quantum.
How's Quantum faring? Says Time Warner competitor Archer, ``It's doing very well.''
Some of the best interactive TV working models have been done by networks like Nickelodeon and MTV.
At Universal Studios in Orlando, home to Nickelodeon's creative shop, the network has a working interactive TV display in a kiosk that hundreds of children from around the world play with every day.
Called the Soap Box, the kiosk program works like this: A child enters, and turns it on by touching a button on a TV screen. A video image of Clarissa, a Nickelodeon character, comes to life and asks the child to give his or her view on a topic such as the environment. Children are taped as they talk. Viewers can play back and see themselves or other children talking.
At MTV, creative executives took the network's much-celebrated ``Choose or Lose'' spots, an attempt to get out young voters, and turned them into an interactive game for TV. The game combines rock music and funky illustration and graphics to tell the story of the last presidential campaign.
It does so at the viewer's command. He or she stops the presentation at any point, calling up definitions of words, like Super Tuesday, or a candidate's position. But that's just the beginning.
Adventuresome viewers can become Frank N. Candidate - a presidential candidate the viewer designs - picking age, race, background and position. Talking advisers provide conflicting advice. Every move made has a consequence that affects the campaign.
Someday, MTV hopes to offer games like this on TV. If it does, TV will never be the same.
``You're making something that people on the other side [of the screen] are going to mess with,'' says Stephen Gass, MTV's creative director. ``Maybe they'll mess with it in a way you've anticipated and built into the show. Maybe they'll do something completely different.
``All this interactive stuff is really about empowerment for the viewer,'' he says.
\ New York Times News Service
by CNB