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Interactive TV

Trade Reports by Ken Freed

Interactive television is a reality. Here's the story.

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MEDIA
VISIONS

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Early Broadcasters Tried
Interactive Television
by Ken Freed.
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Interactive TV is not new, like Winky Dink and PayTV, but bright ideas do not always survive.
 

Early television was essentially a one-way, passive medium. The family gathered around the TV set as they had gathered around the radio, like their ancestors had gathered around the tribal storyteller at the campfire. Producers of early television programs relied on this passivity to sell advertising. They knew that once the family had tuned in a channel and settled back on the comfortable sofa, they were likely to stay watching that channel all evening. There was no remote control yet, no channel surfing.

However, the idea of interacting with the television screen was not unknown to broadcast television pioneers. Like movies, the goal of television has always been to build on the psychological interaction with the viewer. That "one eyed monster" or the "babble box" was intended to hold a whole family enthralled, a captive audience for commercial messages that massage their minds.

Still, some TV pioneers were more visionary than others.

According to John Carey at Greystone Communications in New York, a consultancy for new media research, from 1953 to 1957, the CBS television network broadcast the regular children's series, "Winky Dink And You," which may have been the very first truly interactive TV program.,

. "The interaction was created through the use of a special plastic sheet that children could purchase at local stores or through the mail," said Carey, who teaches media studies in the business graduate school at Columbia University. "The plastic sheet was attached to the household TV screen and held in place by static electricity, created by rubbing the screen with a special cloth."

In the show, the Winky Dink cartoon character would encounter many problems, like a tiger chasing him to the edge of a cliff. The announcer then asked children to help Winky Dink by using a special crayon to draw a bridge on the plastic screen, so the hero could escape from the tiger. "The technology was very crude," Carey said, "but the children did experience a form of interaction with the television content. They were able to see actions on the screen that seemingly were in response to their drawings."

Yet there was a problem with this format that ultimately drove the show off the air. Some children did not purchase the plastic sheets and special crayons. Instead they used their own crayons to draw directly on the glass of the TV screen. The precautonary reminders from the show announcer were ignored. Parental complaints finally convinced CBS to cancel the series.

Winky Dinky did not survive, but the idea of interacting with the TV would not die. Seedthoughts had been planted. People in the television industry began to wonder if there wasn't some way to make money by getting viewers more involved somehow.

The shift from free terrestrial broadcast TV to subscription cable television is personified in Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who had made broadcast TV history in the Fifties as the head of NBC. He put on "The Tonight Show" with Steve Allen , and he created the "Today" show in the mornins with Dave Garroway and his sidekick chimp named J. Fred Muggs. These two live talk shows helped make the TV set a "must have" for American households. Talks shows were the "killer app" for early televsision.

On his own after leaving NBC, Pat Weaver created "Pay TV" by launching publicly-held Subscription Television (STV) in July 1964. The three-channel coaxial cable network in Los Angeles and San Francisco offered a movie channel, a cultural events channel, and a sports channel -- long before HBO or A&E or ESPN, long before anybody spoke of niche programming. A one-off $5 fee connected you to the service. A weekly $1 charge maintained your service. Special programming could be viewed at 50 cents to $2.50 per selection By November 1964, STV had wired 6,000 homes. Not bad for four months of work.

STV's success scared the socks off local broadcasters and motion picture theater owners. Theaters had been closing since television started keeping people home, but now the rivals found common cause, They joined forces to organize a November 1964 ballot initiative to save "free TV" by outlawing "Pay TV: in California.

Weaver tried fighting the populist campaign, yet the referendum passed. Courts eventually ruled the measure was unconstitutional, but STV had exhausted its cash reserves long before the vote, so the business closed for both political and economic reasons.

Forty years later in 1994 at age 85, Weaver told Cablevision,, "In the market economy, those already in one business and doing it a certain way will fight against anybody who want to come into their league and be competitive with them. And if they can put them out of business before they start, they will." Timeless words.end
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Media Visions Journal
Article exclusive to Media Visions Journal. (c) 2000 by Ken Freed
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Last update: 30 JANUARY 2009

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