Interactive Television: Future of Television

Television is something that people tend to take today self-evidently. But actually it is a pretty recent invention: according to Wikipedia it originated from the late 1930-s. Apparently, the first live TV broadcast in the world was provided from BBC studios at Alexandra Palace only in 1936 (Wikipedia, 2007).

Since I am not a technology expert then television to me is tied strongly with TV-set I own at home. I don’t know almost anything what actually lies behind the blue screen. So I will not step over my limits of competence and instead attempt to write an essay from a viewpoint of a so-called consumer of television.

Former director of Estonian National Television, Mr Ainar Ruussaar told in one of his public speeches about the opportunities that currently expanding digitalization of the TV provides (presentation at conference JuhtimisAju, 30.03.2007). According to him, the technology of the digital TV enables the viewers easily control the time-factor of our currently well-known Television. As coupled with a simple recording device (such as VHR or a DVD or hard disc recorder) the digital television enables to pause or review, skip or split any of the audio or video signals. Time Warner Cable has similarly established its Start Over service that allows customers to watch a TV show from the beginning if they come late to the screen. It however lacks the possibility for fast-forwarding (Atkinson & Klaassen, 2007).

Hence the viewers can easily manipulate from around the commercials that are the main source of income for TV stations. For this reason TV stations are forced to completely rethink their business models. We have seen one part of practice already: there are several pay-tv stations, especially in film-only or adult-TV channels where the screen is either fully or partially scrambled or the audio distorted unless you have paid for a renewable chip card. But there are other - much more elegant possibilities for getting around this. Apparently during watching a football match the TV station can program the Digital TV to affect the TV receiver in a manner to make the ball disappear. What would be the fun of watching that kind of match? Therefore - if the viewers are really up to enjoy the match they would need to send a pay SMS to disentangle the screen and make the ball reappear.

But then on the other hand my imagination should be running much wilder than simple reiteration of the obvious truths of incremental improvements of current technology. Probably TV-sets as we know them today will soon go out of date and it’s quite positive that different systems are going to be combined or joined. In the future there is no need to hold different systems like PC, radio, TV-set. They probably will all be united into one. There is a currently ongoing debate on whether the TV sets of the future will be small iPod like portable creatures or huge domestic entertainment centres that allow for a wide range of experiences. One possibility that has been left out of previous discussions is the opportunity of affecting other human senses. Currently the TV allows us to see and hear. The highest quality enables to view a crisp-clear picture of HDTV together with 7-channel surround sound that increases the chill of a horror movie. However, the live experience would be way more real if also the TV picture would be 3-dimentional, the TV set would emit smells to our living room and vibrations to our chair which would most probably make watching Indiana Jones movie a true adventure. Interesting - of course! Doable??? I’m sceptical, but it doesn’t mean, that it would not happen one day.

It might also happen that every person will have his own list of favourite channels and he can access them wherever he is or whatever system (new TV-set, PC, self phone) he uses at any given moment.

In the nearer future it might happen that every household has its own web camera. Whenever you feel desire for sharing your life with others, you can do it. Whenever you want to see somebody’s life, it is your possibility. There will be few families who would be extremely famous and huge celebrities. Something like this is actually already happening: in the ITU Telecom World 2006 forum director of Alacatel-Lucent presented My Own TV: users of this would create a Personal Channel with their own TV content. Users have possibility to upload their photos, videos and share this to their friends or other people (Hall, 2006). But this isn’t still the qualitative leap we would be hoping for.

Another example of wide possibilities of TV we can find in Liverpool where the residents of the city found a way develop democracy. Tenantspin is an internet TV station organised and run by and for the residents of Liverpool’s tower blocks. One purpose of Tenantspin was to increase community participation and it enabled to residents to produce, record and broadcast their own programmes. Finally it ended up by creating a new community (Stanistreeet, 2006).

It is rather entertaining to visit their website www.tenantspin.org and read about the experiences of a group of elderly grannies and grandpas from the same neighbourhood who have already more than 7 years of experience in trying to master the usage of video cameras and editing equipment to come out with the video shows of their own that they target to their nearby community. In warm-heartedly written feature story Stanistreeet describes the experiences of the participants in the TV programme:

“We’ve done around 350 shows now,” Mavis says, “some have been good, some have been awful, everything from quizzes, talent shows, look-a-likes, to interviews with people […]”

“It's been like a big adventure. And it's not over yet. When I first came here I knew nothing about computers. We used Mondays to train. We learned to use sound systems, cameras, we had to set up computers, and on a Wednesday we'd go out on the internet. That went on for about 18 months”

“We initially envisaged a virtual community”, says Alan. “For one reason or another, that hasn't really happened. But it has produced a real community of people from all the different blocks”.

“Community”, Vera says, “was only a word before […]. Now we have different things going every day for tenants in these high-rises. Years ago, you only met neighbours in the lift. Now there is something going on every day on every block. I'm not just talking about where I live, not only our block. Every block has something going for the tenants. When it was the council running the flats, nobody really cared about each other. You just lived there and that was the end of the story. And now everyone knows everyone and we send cards when people are sick. It is community living now. Tenantspin has made people friendlier. It's brought a lot of people out who wouldn't have come out. It's brought people together.” (Stanistreeet, 2006)

This is certainly one development of the future. There will be more community televisions and as television is often being accused to have too much of attention of people that they don’t find time anymore to their friends then Tenantspin surely proves opposite. So TV can be seen as an improver of democracy or just a tool what brings people together in their real every-day life. But as interesting as it is, even this still is not the qualitative leap I was searching for.

Where should we go next? As internet is very common nowadays, there are more and more people who have web cameras. You can sit in front of the computer screen and communicate online with others. By using web cameras television might have the same qualitative change or leap as web already has had by changing to web 2.0. Instead of being just giver, transmitter of information (TV-shows, films, videos, text-TV) television 2.0 might enable direct communication with other persons. This might lead us to new process – to the knowledge creation process. If we added here the community aspect then the result would be very interesting. It offers wide possibilities for example to professionals who can discuss, argue, show or do something like this in television and at the same time something new is born. This can be very successfully used in universities. As the essence of work is more and more knowledge-based the need to improve your skills and develop your competence is constantly growing, it means that lifelong learning and accessibility to the education will be crucially important.

Interactive television has already been used as a tool to deliver distance education at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University. There are around 20 studios which have connection via satellite. Learning sessions are in real time and students must (still) physically be in one of the studios. In all the studios students can see and hear the tutor on a TV monitor. It is possible to interact with the tutor and co-students. Students and tutor in different studios can not see each other. Although this is interactive television in its beginning (it has a limited interaction, if there would be possible to have a online picture of every studio, it would be a qualitative change), the possibility to interact with each other was highly valued among the students and lectures. As educators did use virtual learning environments (VLE) these were a little bit more popular as students found that interaction in VLE was more supporting (Mash, Marais, van der Walt, van Deventer, Steyn, Labadarios, 2006).

The sky above the interactive TV is definitely not cloudless. There are several critics about, too.

A columnist of PC Magazine John Dvorak (2006) has written that already the conventional TV provides him with enough interaction possibilities that he needs: to turn it on, or off, to change channels, to switch to the TV text. He is afraid that the interaction that the TV moguls have in mind should instead be labelled invasive TV – the kind of television system where the TV stations would have the chance to mark the items shown in TV series with price tags and offering the viewers a chance to “immediately buy the same kind of sweater that Jennifer Aniston is wearing in a Friends episode.” However, this kind of intrusion would quickly become disturbing and replace the pleasure of enjoying the shows with annoyances.

He furthermore argues that even greater dangers would be brought about by the introduction of TV “spyware” which would start monitoring the actual behaviour of viewers.

It does not however matter too much what kind of name-tags we put on the changing landscape of the media. The fact is that the TV is changing and will not remain the same as it has used to be. And in the end it does not matter what is the key channel that we use it through – whether through a huge home theatre or tiny iPod screen. It still probably remains largely influential in the lives of people.

What concerns the content of TV shows, it is self-evident that this is going to expand. With the introduction of new Community TVs or MyOwnTVs, the future is also for BBC News-alikes that have been considered reliable and trustworthy sources of information. As the supply of information is increasing then it might call for further specialisation and integration for some of the channels. It also requires higher degree of media literacy of the providers and customers.

So there is nothing more to say – the television is dead, long live the television!

References:

Atkinson, C., Klaassen, A. (2007), “BEWKES: FUTURE OF DIGITAL IS CABLE TV”, Advertising Age 78 (16), http://search.epnet.com, [accessed 30 Oct 2007].

Dvorak, J., C. (2004), “The Return of Interactive TV”, PC Magazine, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdpcm/is_200411/ai_n7182224, [accessed 30 Oct 2007].

Hall, K. (2006), “Put Your Own Stuff on TV”, Business Week Online, http://search.epnet.com, [accessed 26 Oct 2007].

Mash, B., Marais, D., van der Walt, S., van Deventer, I., Steyn, M., Labadarios, D. (2006), „Assessment of the quality of interaction in distance learning programmes utilizing the Internet or interactive television: perceptions of students and lectures”, Medical Teacher 28 (1), http://search.epnet.com, [accessed 26 Oct 2007].

Stanistreeet, P. (2006), “Ways of seeing further”, Adults Learning 17 (10), 22-25, http://search.epnet.com, [accessed 26 Oct 2007].

Tenantspin (2007), www.tenantspin.org [accessed 30 Oct 2007].

Wikipedia (2007), “History of television”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television [accessed 30 Oct 2007].