November 4, 1990

A LIFESTYLE change of potentially seismic proportions is starting to gather a following throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Called “interactive television,” it’s the attempt to shine grow-lights on society’s couch potatoes and maybe stimulate them into thinking a little bit. This isn’t a new concept, but technology is catching up to the vision and it’s beginning to catch hold.

I didn’t know much about interactive TV until last week, when I attended a fascinating conference on interactive entertainment in New York City. What I discovered really surprised me. Not only is interactive TV off the drawing board, but some very successful pilot programs installed throughout the U.S. and Canada are helping prove its viability.

A few names involved in the field today are Interactive Network, TVI and NTN Communications. NTN is the Carlsbad, Calif.-based marketer of QB1, the popular interactive football game that’s found in sports bars and restaurants. Interactive Network, based in Mountain View and funded by A.C. Nielsen and a bunch of other heavies, just finished successful a Sacramento trial of its Interactive Control system, where 225 subscribers could play along with sports and quiz shows.

This kind of programming sounds insipid to me, since I hate watching sports and don’t care about TV game shows (except when I’m in France and can see Des Chiffres et Des Lettres), but statistics like those IN are posting make me hopeful. David Lockton, president of IN, said 82 percent of the system’s users said it changed their overall viewing habits. “It challenges me to think more,” said one. “I like the fact of participating with my television,” said another.

TV that challenges you to think? And people like it? Sounds like the end of the world as we know it.
Probably the most successful company to date is TVI, the Montreal-based subsidiary of the Videotron cable system. After eight months of operation, more than 40,000 households in Montreal and Quebec subscribe to TVI’s service called Videoway, based on pioneering technology by the New York firm ACTV Inc., and they say they can’t make enough boxes to supply demand.

It’s also preparing a giant pilot project in Southampton, England, which is especially exciting because cable companies are just now entering there. “They’ll never know cable without interactivity,” said Faille.

Videoway’s interactive programming, which is available from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., costs an extra $16 per month over regular cable. The extra includes regular TV, pay TV and pay-per-view, more than 109 videotex products, educational games, video games and (horrors!) an audience meter.

That was the only dark subcurrent of the conference for me — how ITV will allow advertisers to know precisely who’s viewing their commercials. Most will be able to tell by what you select, but some programs will ask you to register your gender. I’d like to start petitioning now for ITV companies to include a way to block my selections from being read by anyone outside my home, kind of like how phone companies let people block 900-number access today.

That aside, there’s two different ways the technology works: some companies use what’s called simulcast or “play-along” — the interactive portion of a specific broadcast is poured, if you will, in between the invisible blank spaces of your TV signal, then data and signal are either broadcast together down the cable wire or onto the airwaves. IN uses the FM radio sideband as well, which means you can pick interactive programs off the airwaves while using a portable TV.

TVI, however, uses the more complex ACTV system, dubbed “video manipulation,” which actually allows you to affect what happens on-screen. During an interactive news broadcast, for example, four separate channels are sent along with the main program. When you select one of the four stories via a special remote control device, the box on top of your TV unscrambles your selection and pops it up on your screen.

More such stimulating programming is already under development. TVI has two massive educational projects underway right now — an interactive literacy program for Radio Canada, its national version of PBS, and a similar program on numeracy for Radio Quebec.

If things continue in this direction, services like TVI’s Videoway will actually pump a whole adult education network right into the own homes, costing taxpayers not a dime and costing each family not too much either. And there’s delicious irony in the fact that the ultimate couch-potato activity, TV sports, really started the ball rolling. So to speak.