Should we base a new generation of consumer products on an old platform

TV or not TV? That was the question debated by computer executives and media industry watchers, with help from a very vocal and often passionate audience, as they tried to separate technology from content during an informal evening session at Digital World called, “The Great Television Debate.”

When the 90-minute session came to an end, it seemed that everyone was in agreement on only two points: one, that TV, as a media delivery platform, won’t disappear anytime soon; and two, that when it comes to content, broadcast television is for the most part a wasteland (Northern Exposure, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour and The Simpsons were among the exceptions noted by audience members).

The existing infrastructure. The TV issue is lent urgency by the entertainment and cable industries (as evidenced by the industry representatives who appeared on this and other Digital World panels), already looking for ways to use existing TV and cable broadcasting infrastructure to deliver new forms of digital media, such as videotext and interactive or “smart” television. It is also very relevant to people who hope that interactive technology will somehow “fix” television and to people striving to create new art forms who earnestly want to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Calling the question. Thus, the intention of the panel was to call the questions: Is television still a useful medium for a one-way, noninteractive form of visual communication to a mass audience? Can you separate the medium from its content? Will the merger of interactive computer and TV technology usher in a new, more useful medium?

Debaters included Bob Stein, cofounder of the Santa Monica, CA-based Voyager Company; Sueann Ambron, cofounder of Apple Computer’s Multimedia Lab and now vice president of advanced media for Simon & Schuster’s Technology Group in Sunnyvale, CA; John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Washington, DC-based Electronic Frontier Foundation; Kathleen Tyner, executive director of Strategies for Media Literacy, a San Francisco-based, nonprofit organization that promotes media education beginning in elementary school; and Diana Gagnon Hawkins, a veteran of the interactive TV industry and founder of Interactive Associates, a Portola Valley, CA-based consulting group for interactive TV and virtual reality.

DOES TV REALLY DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE?

The starting point for the debate was Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, which all five panelists (and many audience members) had read. Mander’s central theme, which he supports via the four arguments of the book’s title, is that technology is not neutral, therefore you cannot separate the medium of television from its message.

Saying it’s “optimistic to believe that TV could be eliminated,” Barlow launched into a criticism of both the medium and its content, saying that everything from news broadcasts to situation comedies distorts and misrepresents reality. “TV is an incredible denial machine that allows us to edit the shadow out of reality,” he said, citing the lack of Persian Gulf War coverage on Iraqi casualties as one example. He argued that TV does not provide information, but rather “simulates experience and strips [experience] from any context. It just comes at you and you take it.”

No going forward. Stein of Voyager, a publisher of interactive entertainment and digital information products, is skeptical about whether TV deserves a second chance. “Technologies have inherent ways in which they are used best,” he said. “Telephones promote two-way communication. Broadcast TV is a one-way medium good for manipulating people on the other end of the screen. TV is bad at context. I think the question should be ‘Is this a technology we want to develop?’, and not ‘It’s here and let’s try to go forward with it’.”

Media Literacy’s Tyner, whose concern is with content, said that viewers should be more critical of the things they watch and be aware of hidden messages. She showed a powerful, frightening video of a commercial for Mars candy bars, first showing the commercial without annotation, then again with voice-over reading the advertising agency’s original instructions on what the images are supposed to convey and how they are intended to manipulate the viewers’ emotions.

Somewhat contradictory to the video’s message, Tyner said that “TV is not a passive process … viewers are not just passive recipients of information. The audience negotiates meaning.” However, it is clear that the vast majority of today’s TV viewers do not have the faintest idea how to negotiate the meaning behind the complex, psychologically laden imagery of today’s commercial and political advertisements.

Advertising must change. Tyner added that “it takes some cognitive process and everyone builds their own narrative. I don’t think people want to turn it off. They want to understand it better,” but based on audience reaction to her video, it seemed clear that viewers, at the very least, need access to tools that help them understand it better.

In fact, Tyner’s presentation of an advertisement brought into focus yet another vital issue for the new generation of media: how it will pay for itself. Advertising dollars are plummeting as the “store-and-forward,” remote-control generation either hits the mute button when a commercial comes on, or fast-forwards through it. Will the process of making TV a custom, interactive experience also bring us ever more intrusive advertising, since those on the other side of the TV screen will be much more able to target our likes and dislikes?

DON’T BLAME THE MESSENGER

Both Ambron and Hawkins argued that TV-as-technology is only as good as its content. Mastering TV, they agreed with Tyner, implies mastering the visual language of television.

Hawkins said she sees promise for interactive television because it will engage viewers. “Kids are passively absorbing information now when they watch TV. In school, they sit and passively absorb information. By making [TV] interactive, you change how they learn. Interactive TV, like video games, can teach cognitive skills. So don’t blame the tool, look at the content.”

Ambron also discussed the positive educational uses for both TV as it exists today and for the smart TV of the future. Her examples included educational broadcasts to remote sites (i.e., remote classrooms); and interactive educational presentations that will put control of the content into the viewers’ hands, as well as offer viewers a chance to access different points of view on the same subject. Paraphrasing pioneer TV journalist Edward R. Murrow, Ambron said, “TV can teach, illuminate, and maybe, with smart TV, even inspire.” But she warned that without care for the message and the content, “it is lights and wires in a box.”

What was most fascinating about this debate was the sometimes blind passion unleashed when conference participants got their chance to weigh in. Many TV supporters seemed particularly unwilling to discuss the medium’s problems and how they might be addressed, and were incensed that anyone would deign to open the subject to debate.

The fact that such questions were even being discussed seemed, to one or two in the audience, to provide evidence that Godless Commies are still wreaking havoc with The American Way of Life. As with politics and religion, it seems that television is one of “those” topics that must be approached with more than customary diplomacy.

But while one camp decried the entire concept of the panel as “absurd” and the other considered it a vital challenge to the status quo, the truth is that these questions must be discussed if we are to move forward responsibly. In an era where the new mass media is destined to be “not a book, not a movie” — in other words, something completely different from what’s come before — can we really look to television to be its delivery vehicle? How will it pay for itself? Can the TV paradigm as we know it today hold its own in a new era, or will it blow apart as digital, interactive programming starts coming down the pipeline? The debate must continue.

Connie Guglielmo, Denise Caruso

ADVERTISER VS. CONSUMER SPENDING ON TELEVISION
(Courtesy of Bob Pepper, Office of Plans and Policy, FCC)

1991 U.S. television advertising expenditures: $28 billion (and stagnant)
1991 expenditures by consumers on television: $32 billion (and growing)
This breaks down as follows: $20 billion in cable fees, $12 billion in video rental.
Who says consumers will not pay for information and entertainment?