Heartburn |
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| Interactive
TV's Troubles, January 1996 |
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Selling we viewers another kind of television in the midst of a feast
of so many new services is no picnic. The extensive menu of these services
includes pay cable networks - Foxtel/Australis and Optus Vision
- the extension of SBS and additional commercial television stations
to more regional areas, the imminent arrival of fully-fledged national satellite
delivery and the increasing popularity of video rental and sales cassettes.
Then there's new CD ROM and Internet audio-visual products that further
stretch our leisure dollar. Lastly - but by no means the last - there's
planned "interactive" services, promising to titillate our televisual taste
buds. We've all heard about interactive news, banking, education and games to be delivered to the home. But the promises are falling flat in most of the trials of these new services in the US and Europe and are failing to capture the imaginations of the participants. Many trials are being ditched or redesigned as operators discover we viewers won't pay extra for services we're already comfortable with doing out there in the real world - not from the comfort our lounge chairs. The most expensive trial - the Time Warner Full Service Network in Orlando, Florida - has built up a formidable a la carte menu of programming ideas matched to some of the most sophisticated technology available. But the few hundred people on the trial are less than impressed with what's been served up and - with the increased cost associated with such exotic fare - have been opting for a more simple diet: news, movies and sport. In response, media companies are trying a new recipe and plan to simplify delivery of new services by providing high-speed cable set-top-units or boxes that carry ordinary television and also allow rapid access to additional Internet-based information and feedback channels. The old and new channels can then exist side-by-side. And new interactive services - allowing you to call up information, buy products or bid for prizes while you watch - are supported by the older, tried and true programming favourites. Both Foxtel and Optus Vision plan to offer news and sports channels linked to the Internet through your cable box and over the cable and phone systems sometime this year. Other local ventures, like Jim McKay's Interactive Television - after signing some broadcast networks to test their games, shopping and current affairs interactive programs - have foundered. Will we develop an appetite or indigestion from these new interactive delicacies? Only two questions remain. One is whether we genuinely get more out of our two-way televisions. The other? Ask the waiter for the bill. Please. |
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