Networker: Zero interaction

“Television, drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation”,
sang the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy a few years ago. From its early
days in the first decades of this century, television has been a one-way
medium.

Early television was similar and different to film. A film projector
operates by passing light through a rapidly moving series of film “frames”,
creating an image on the screen that our brain interprets as continuously
moving.

The earliest television technologies were mechanical, based on this
principle: a signal was broadcast to the television receiver, which assembled
it into a frame, and then projected it on to a surface. That technology
lost out to the electronic television we all know: a signal is received
by the television, and one or more electronic beams then strike the inside
of the picture tube, line by line, to paint the image we see.

While people would gather in cinemas to watch movies, television created
a fragmented audience watching from their homes. A cinema audience may
laugh or gasp collectively. For television to get the same effect requires
adding “canned” (recorded) laughter or applause or taping shows before
studio audiences — a pretence that the individual viewing at home is part
of an audience, rather than one of millions of isolated viewers.

There is no audience feedback with television. If you are really angry
with the show you're watching, you could break the television but the broadcaster
would not be aware of that.

Suddenly we have interactive digital television or iDTV. Have things
changed? According to the hype, they have. If you are a sports fan you
will be able to choose which view of the game you want, or switch between
them. You will be able to surf the internet, send emails, and even order
pizza. The viewer is in the driving seat.

There is an obvious problem here. No matter how many views you have
of a football match, you are still a passive consumer of the sports industry.
And no matter how many views my television gives me, I won't be able to
watch Norths playing rugby league any more because they were abolished
by the big business-dominated rugby league administration because there
were “too many” teams for maximum television programming profitability.

Leaving that aside, does iDTV offer an interactive experience? The process
can work a few different ways. When you watch a game, there are really
several channels broadcasting it. By selecting a different view, you are
channel hopping between these channels. You may be able to pull up some
statistics, or save and rerun some parts of the game (but don't bet on
being able to block the advertisements by running your own highlights).

Another way is the Electronic Program Guide, the facility offered in
hotels in which you select from a menu of television channels or purchase
the viewing of a movie.

It can also involve internet access and email capability. This gets
back to how the viewer sends information to the television broadcaster
because the television is just a passive receiver (although this is not
true of cable television). You need some sort of box that connects the
television, a keyboard and a telephone line.

In this case the user suffers a double or triple disadvantage: the operation
ties up your telephone line, the quality of the picture is dreadful (much
worse than a computer screen) and the service you are offered by the iDTV
companies may or may not even connect to the internet. The only identified
advantage is that it is cheaper than buying a personal computer.

Rupert Murdoch and most other media moguls have traditionally hated
the internet. Media companies are now hoping that iDTV will turn the tide
against the internet, win back viewers and advertisers, and make them lots
of money. At the moment they don't even seem to be in the game.

BY GREG HARRIS

From GLW issue 423