CABLE PUTS SOME EGGS IN PAY-PER-VIEW BASKET

Cable television seems to have rekindled its love affair with the movies.

Once again, cable is looking to Hollywood to provide the home medium with the hook to capture the interest (not to mention the dollars) of the American viewing public. Savaged in the past two years by the burgeoning home-video business, cable is hoping that pay-per-view movies will get people out of their local video stores and back in their homes.

That was the clear message Tuesday during a well-attended panel at the annual convention of the National Cable Television Assn. Executives of three companies that plan to launch national pay-per-view networks in coming months told cable operators that the new technology might be the last, best hope of cable to stop the home-video onslaught.

“Obviously, we’re all here to say that pay-per-view saves us from the home-video devil,” said Scott Kurnit, executive vice president of Showtime/The Movie Channel Inc.

If cable can show movies on a pay-per-view basis at the same time that they are being released in videocassette stores, industry officials believe viewers will opt for the convenience of seeing them that way instead of driving somewhere to pick up a tape and back again later to drop it off.

Showtime/The Movie Channel had announced Monday that it plans to launch a new national pay-per-view satellite program service this summer.

Long contemplated by the cable industry and long sought by Hollywood movie makers, pay-per-view is a relatively new technology that allows home viewers to order specific programs for one-time-only prices, much as they buy movie theater tickets--or as they rent videocassettes.

Showtime’s unexpectedly aggressive entrance into the pay-per-view field is only the most visible of a number of similar efforts now being undertaken by programmers.

At least four other firms have announced plans similar to Showtime’s. The latest came here Tuesday when the Playboy Channel unveiled its concept for a pay-per-view service, due to begin July 1.

Ironically, the individual representing Hollywood on the pay-per-view panel Tuesday was Frank J. Biondi, the former chairman of Home Box Office Inc., who is now executive vice president of Coca-Cola Co., parent of Columbia Pictures. Biondi, publicly and unceremoniously fired last year by HBO, engineered the much heralded pay-TV assault on the motion picture industry in the early 1980s that, for a while, looked as if it might turn all of movie making into one vast subsidiary of HBO.

The videocassette saved the Hollywood studios by breaking pay TV’s financial grip on the video distribution of motion pictures. HBO and the other pay-TV firms have been reeling ever since.

Now, cable and pay-TV appear to be taking the offensive. They are telling Hollywood, in effect, that cable will provide the means of distributing movies to millions of homes at once, if Hollywood agrees to provide pay-per-view services with movies at the same time they are released on cassette. According to Biondi, Hollywood is more than willing to listen.

“From a supplier’s point of view, I’m not sure it’s fair to discriminate between pay-per-view and home video,” Biondi said.

He added that pay-per-view offers cable the “possibility to become a platform for major (entertainment and sporting) events” as well as motion pictures.

Joining Biondi on the panel were Jeffery Reiss, one of the founders of Showtime, who is launching The Exchange pay-per-view service, and Rick Kulis, head of the Los Angeles-based Choice Channel pay-per-view network. Both hope to begin service late this year.

“We will revitalize the life cycle of pay television,” Reiss insisted.

Notably absent from the panel was a representative of industry-leading Home Box Office, which has resisted pay-per-view and, officially at least, says that the new technology is a “gimmick” with only a limited future. HBO especially is concerned about the impact that pay-per-view might have on its existing pay-TV service.

Nor is HBO alone in questioning the long-term benefits of pay-per-view. On Monday, representatives of the two largest cable operating companies, TeleCommunications Inc. and American Television & Communications Inc., also downplayed the new interest in pay-per-view.

That the cable industry cannot reach agreement on pay-per-view is itself a strong indication that cable has not yet fully come to grips with the impact that home video has had on TV viewing. Likewise, it indicates cable’s inability to formulate a consistent, unified battle plan against the newer medium.