Tune in tomorrow for TV on Web
By Bruce Haring, USA TODAY
05/18/99- Updated 04:58 PM ET
Film director Randal Kleiser's résumé includes such hits as Grease, It's My Party and The Blue Lagoon. So his fans may be astonished when they see Kleiser's latest project, Royal Standard. The drama is one of 30 shows on the new Digital Entertainment Network, an Internet hub of TV-type programming.
Marrying the legend of Camelot to modern technology, the serial Royal Standard is presented in a 2-by-4-inch square on the computer screen. The images are jerky, like looking at TV through a Vaseline-smeared lens; the soundtrack is tinny.
"You can't have wide shots," says Kleiser, cataloging the differences between an Internet show and other media. "There can't be a lot of rapid movement."
At the connection speed of most home computers -- about 28,800 bits per second -- "it's almost like watching a flip book of stills," he says.
So why is Kleiser doing this? "This has been a really interesting experiment," he says. "I was just really interested in the technology and this whole way of distributing imagery."
Kleiser isn't alone on his adventure. Despite the technological limitations of the Internet today, producers, directors and other creative people are piling in. They're hoping the nationwide rollout of high-speed cable modems and digital subscriber phone lines will move the medium from static text and photos into a multimedia world of streaming video and fast sound downloads.
Although such programming has been available in crude form on the Net for some time, the niche has been energized lately by successful video events, most notably a Victoria's Secret fashion show on Broadcast.com that drew 1.5 million-plus viewers in February.
Adding momentum are the billions of dollars being spent by AT&T, Microsoft, Time Warner, America Online and other corporate giants to plan for and implement the day when fat cyber-pipelines capable of transmitting wide data streams across the Internet are in most U.S. homes.
The higher the bandwidth, the more data can be sent each second, and the better the quality of audio and video. Better quality makes it more likely customers will pay for movies, CD-quality albums and other bandwidth-intensive programming, presented with the added ability to create e-commerce via the Net's interactive components.
By 2002, the number of U.S. households with cable modems will hit 6.8 million, according to research firm Jupiter Communications, up from an estimated 1.2 million homes that will have cable modems this year. And Jupiter predicts that half a million households will have digital phone lines by the end of the year, rising to 3.4 million by 2002.
Of course, those numbers are dwarfed by the 41.5 million users connected to the Internet using dial-up modems, a number that Jupiter estimates will increase to 49.6 million in 2002.
But there is one advantage to being early into the "broadband" space. While there are hundreds of dial-up Internet service providers, high-speed delivery services are controlled by a relative handful of companies. Leading the pack is AT&T, which will control the largest share of the USA's cable business if its merger with MediaOne is completed.
There is only so much prime positioning on those services. And that's what is causing the land rush by programmers.
But building an audience on this new turf won't be easy. Despite their edge in speed over dial-up modems, cable modems and digital subscriber lines can't deliver compellingly clear full-motion movies and TV programming. And not everyone is sure that computers are the device consumers ultimately will want to use to watch.
Such concerns haven't deterred the early programmers.
"We're going to be launching a whole series of niche networks," says Mark Graff, president of American Interactive Media (AIM), which now presents a stand-up showcase called ComedyNet and will launch the real-life action hub CrimeBeat next month. "We're creating networks on the Internet -- entertainment-based, heavily streamed destinations."
AIM also hopes to migrate those shows to television. Right now, Graff concedes, it's not that compelling to watch a TV-type show on the computer. But AIM's flag is in the ground.
"It's a way to garner eyeballs today, to get branding identification," Graff says. "And as the bandwidth becomes more available, we'll already have a presence and some marketing behind the networks."
In one respect, it may not be too early. Graff says the demographics and habits of his viewers are forming already and "tracking pretty much identically" to television. "People are coming back at certain times. There's a lot of television already embedded in the Net."
Sometimes, though, they're not coming for the best of what TV can offer.
Take Entertainment Boulevard at www.entertainmentblvd.com. The Internet hub for VidNet (music videos), Screen Clips (movie trailers) and the soon-to-launch Internet Bulletin, a live news site in conjunction with United Press International, the company also is bringing infomercials to the Net.
"We're looking to have over 300 infomercials up by the summer," CEO Stephen Brown says. "We've just struck a deal with Ronco. We take a 30-minute infomercial like Pocket Fisherman and edit it down to five minutes so the pertinent points are there, and it's like watching a music video."
Others are seeking to craft a nobler world. Joe Cantwell, in charge of creating interactive content for cable's Bravo network and Independent Film Channel, aims to create a medium "that's a better combination than just the two individually."
Several projects are under way, the most ambitious of which is with the Independent Film Channel.
Beginning in June, digital video movies will start on the channel's cable modem outlet and then will air on the cable TV network. Information about the film and its makers will be featured with each screening.
The target audience for such fare is "not totally served today by either analog TV or digital TV," Cantwell says. "And we do believe that the whole concept of broadband allows us to do a little bit more for a smaller audience than we'd be able to do on TV." |
