ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090036
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SPRINGFIELD
SOURCE: CALVIN WOODWARD ASSOCIATED PRESS
STAFF WRITER MEGAN SCHNABEL CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY.
Presuming Americans will watch, ``place-based networks'' are being set up in more public places.
Market researchers have decided the 24 minutes typically spent by diners at a mall food court are too ripe with commercial possibilities to be wasted in conversation or solitude.
They've decided it is prime time to watch TV.
Television is busting out of the home to all sorts of public spaces. At a growing number of malls across the country, food courts are being surrounded by TV sets bombarding shoppers with ads and fluff.
``Place-based'' networks have been set up specifically for the captive viewer on college campuses, doctors' offices, checkout lines and airports. Regular TV beams from burger joints and auto repair shops.
``It's like we are babies - we need something to hold our attention,'' says shopper Vernon Wooten, 47, sitting through a second video rendition of ``How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?'' from the Cafe USA channel at the Springfield Mall.
Everything is being tried to engage the in-store consumer except peace and quiet.
The Food Court Entertainment Network's Cafe USA is based on research indicating more than 40 percent of shoppers stop at food courts, typically spend 24 minutes there, and shop for another hour.
Judy Tullius, property manager at Tanglewood Mall, said the Roanoke County shopping center considered installing TVs some years back but decided against it.
"It has merits," she said. Particularly in large malls with lots of national tenants, TVs could be programmed to run merchants' commercials. But in a mall like Tanglewood, with its emphasis on local tenants, few would be likely to participate, she said.
Tullius said she'd rather spend the mall's limited marketing budget to advertise in the community and to renovate the food court.
The fledgling channel is in 20 malls, with 15 more being added and 200 more projected. It shows a continuous half-hour national program of entertainment, trivia, skits, ``Sesame Street'' bits and ads, usually from 20 or more sets per food court.
The presumption is that Americans, who watch an estimated four hours of TV a day, are primed for more.
``Folks watch television,'' says Jim Perkins, the network president. ``Importantly, most folks eat when they watch television. The whole notion of television in a food court is not alien.''
But Rutgers University psychologist Robert Kubey wonders: ``Are we becoming less able to just be by ourselves, to entertain ourselves, to be alone with our own thoughts and emotions?''
Signs are mixed about whether people like such forms of public TV.
The Checkout Channel, which was devoted to shoppers in line, has checked out. A costly effort to place screens on shopping carts, hawking specials, also did not catch on.
Even so, when the one big-screen TV goes on the blink at the Willow Lawn Mall in Richmond people ``get very upset,'' said R.J. Mandakas, the mall's marketing manager.
In shopping malls, so far Cafe USA is free to users: The true test will come if costs and more of the ad revenues are switched to malls as planned.
``We were very open to it from the beginning,'' said Theresa Backus, marketing manager at the Springfield Mall. ``Unfortunately, television has become a big part of everybody's lives.''
Kubey, author of ``Television and the Quality of Life,'' is struck by the odd juxtapositions caused by broadcasts in public places.
He took his family to a restaurant where the TV was showing gynecological surgery. People at his gym exercised to a radio station's report on child abuse.
``Increasingly the media products that we only looked at in movie theaters or home are now infiltrating other spaces,'' Kubey said. ``We are truly inundated.''
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Television sets featuring movie clipsby CNBsurround people eating at the Springfield Mall food court Thursday.
color. Graphic: Chart by AP.