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04/09/98- Updated 11:04 AM ET
Interactive TV got tangled in Net
CORRECTION: Everything Kevin Maney wrote in a full-page story on
June 30, 1993, headlined ''TV tunes in to the next century'' is wrong.
The editors wish to apologize. We will slap the writer's uvula.
TV has not been transformed into a medium offering interactivity, movies
on demand, home shopping malls or online video games, as predicted by
several experts quoted in the story. At this point in time, the TV is the
same lame device it's always been, give or take a few thousand WebTV
terminals and the promise of HDTV.
''Your TV will become an interactive, computerized, two-way machine
that will give you total control over what you see - and when,'' the 1993
USA TODAY story said. ''TVs will create as well as show
entertainment, find information and serve as a video telephone or
electronic mail machine.''
We are so appalled that we feel compelled to explain what went wrong.
Interactive TV was derailed by two things: ''Apathy and technology,''
says Gary Arlen, long-time industry analyst. If you remember, 1993 was
before the Internet boom. The sexiest thing on line was Prodigy at 2400
baud. Not even the smartest people saw the Internet coming. TV
seemed like the logical path to an interactive future.
But most people weren't ready for it. All this interactive stuff sounded
cool, but what was it really good for? ''Nothing in the experience of a 30-
or 40-year-old person five years ago made them ready for interactive
TV,'' Arlen says. Relatively few had computers. Fewer were on line.
The understanding just wasn't there. Thus, the apathy.
Then, in 1995, when the Internet did hurtle toward us like a mile-wide
asteroid in a bad movie, the Net stole interactive TV's thunder.
The Internet was immediately available - it had been around for 15
years, but only research geeks knew about it. It worked. It didn't rely on
cable or phone companies making technology breakthroughs. And it was
cheap.
Consumers flocked to the Net. Content producers followed them there.
By late 1995, interactive TV was abandoned like a party that had run out
of beer.
Here are some specific predictions from the 1993 story that have been
proved false:
A televised sports game ''might not be one channel, but four. One
channel would show a typical broadcast of the game. Two others
might show different angles or focus on a star player. Another
would give statistics. You can play TV director by flipping from
channel to channel,'' the story said.
That sounded good at the time, but conventional wisdom now is that
some people would like that while most would not. ''Broadcasters pay a
director who has a lot of experience to choose the best shot for you, and
you like it,'' says Chris Meyer, co-author of Blur: The Speed of Change
in the Connected Economy.
''Movies-on-demand will be one of the most appealing new TV
services - and one of the earliest moneymakers.''
Blockbuster is still standing. The technology to do movies-on-demand that
you can stop, rewind or fast-forward is real and proven.
It just costs so much that, to break even, every home movies-on-demand
service would have to come with a vacuum hose that attaches to your
wallet.
Interactive TV shopping ''will be to the next decade what catalogs
were to the '80s,'' Barry Diller, then head of QVC, said in the
story. The story went on: ''Look for specialized shopping channels
for women's clothing, toys or computer software - maybe even
channels for specific stores, like a Gap channel.''
The Gap channel lives! But it's on the Internet. And along the way,
retailers realized that doing TV requires a big studio, expensive TV
cameras and chirpy, highly-paid hostesses. Doing the Net requires a
couple of 14-year-olds, paid in pizza pies, stashed in a windowless room
with a monster PC. Guess which wins?
We wondered what might happen next in interactive TV. We asked
some experts.
They note that digital television and digital cable boxes, which should add
an element of interactivity to TV, are breaking over the horizon. And this
time, consumers will have had the Internet as their interactive training
wheels.
''We expected too much in the short term but too little in the long term,''
says author Meyer.
Hmm. So what Meyer is saying is . . .
''On balance, the (1993) story is pretty accurate, and we are on course
for the predictions to come true,'' says John Patrick, vice president of
Internet technology at IBM.
Uh, so while the story is wrong today, it might yet turn out to be right?
''Some things have moved a little faster and some a little slower,'' Patrick
says, ''but we are headed right where the story predicted.''
Really? Well, you know, the correction stands. The story is all wrong. A
disgrace. For now. At this moment. But if things change, we reserve the
right to correct the correction. Or retract the correction. Or - oh, never
mind.
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
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