Firms Gambling That Viewers Want to Talk Back to TV

The beer flowed as the Saturday crowd at Hof’s Bar & Grill watched the Angels struggle against the Yankees on national television. It was the sixth inning. Yankee slugger Dave Winfield was at bat.

Moe Weiner knows baseball; he figured Winfield would slap a ground ball into right field. He punched his prediction into an electronic keyboard propped on his lap. “No way,” said Weiner’s pal, Brian Anderson, who forecast a fly ball to left field.

Winfield proved Weiner correct. As Winfield’s ball bounced into the outfield on one television screen, an adjoining monitor flashed praise for Weiner: “Good work, Moe.”

A confident Weiner lifted his mug. “I know what I’m doing,” he said.

What Weiner and his buddies from California State University, Fullerton, were doing was playing an electronic game called Diamondball. At Hof’s in Brea and 200 other taverns and restaurants in the United States and Canada, baseball fans earn points by guessing what the batter will do.

The game is perhaps the simplest form of a new way that viewers are relating to television. For years, it has been mostly a one-way medium: TV puts out programs and people watch. But an emerging technology is starting to make television more of a two-way experience.

Already, Mattel has a toy that responds to televised commands, and this fall children will be able to play a videocassette of Sesame Street’s Big Bird and tell it which songs to sing. An electronic “Wheel of Fortune” game is on the way that allows people to play along at home.

But it’s more than toys and games. In a program being tested near Chicago, viewers are using their televisions to select among dozens of stores and then shop at home for clothing and groceries.

And in Canada, a cable television company is testing a device that, among other things, would allow viewers to select the camera angles they want to see. “If you’re watching a hockey game, and want to focus on Wayne Gretzky, you can do that,” says Jean-Pascal Lion, marketing vice president for Videotron, the cable firm.

Two-way television isn’t new. A decade ago, Warner Communications experimented with two-way cable in the Midwest. Most TV viewers liked to talk to their TVs a little, but not enough to keep Warner from losing millions of dollars on the venture.

Now, some in the television industry think the time has come for two-way or “interactive” TV. Gary Arlen, a Washington consultant, says a generation that grew up with video games, VCRs and other electronic gadgets is ready to play with television, rather than just watch it.

Others in the industry aren’t sure. “Two-way television appeals to only a certain market, and we don’t know how large that market is,” says Robert Classen, president of Comcast Cable Co. in Philadelphia.

Still, Classen allows that two-way TV might be a natural next step in a viewer’s relationship with television. “People seem to flip stations, looking for programs. Maybe the next progression is to flip within a program.”

Until now, a big problem with two-way television has been its cost. Take Diamondball, sold by a San Diego company, NTN Communications Inc. NTN’s sports game, complete with a personal computer, satellite dish, TV monitor and $7,000 price tag, may be ideal for a tavern like Hof’s but too expensive and too awkward to use at home.

Playing Along

This month, NTN is testing a much simpler and less expensive system in several homes in Los Angeles. If it works here and in several other test cities, NTN plans to sell it next year to the nation’s armchair athletes.

Advocates of two-way television think two-way programs are just what are needed to revive a sagging interest in TV. “TV is getting stale,” says Scott Kurnit, president of the cable television movie service, Viewer’s Choice. “It needs a new twist.”

Sports fan Tom Tousignant agrees. Diamondball “gets you into the game,” he said, while he munched nachos at Hof’s last weekend. “You don’t watch it, bored. Playing along is a lot more interesting.”

One thing television executives don’t know yet is how many viewers like Tousignant are out there. National Broadcasting Co., which has invested in a two-way TV venture, thinks a lot of viewers want to talk back to their TVs. “Any time we have a viewer telephone call-in for anything, the response is overwhelming,” says Thomas S. Rogers, vice president for planning and business development at NBC.

If Warner’s earlier experience with two-way TV is any indication, it seems clear interactive shows aren’t for everybody. Using a remote control device, viewers in Columbus, Ohio posed questions to talk show guests and played along with game shows. Just a quarter of the homes that had Qube, Warner’s two-way cable service, used it over the course of a month. Only 2% of viewers watched the most popular interactive program, game shows. The experimental system proved too costly, and Warner discontinued most two-way programs in 1984, after losing $30 million.

“You don’t give (two-way TV) to everyone,” says Kurnit, who was programming director for Qube. “And the price has to be low.”

‘Captain Power’

Experts say Qube’s costs were high partly because it depended on an expensive two-way cable network to relay messages from the viewer. Since then, others have found potentially cheaper ways to send two-way signals, such as using FM radio waves or telephone lines.

“The technology is ready to explode,” says Arlen, the Washington consultant. “How viewers respond to it depends on the programs it’s tied in with.”

Now, the only interactive show that’s widely distributed is a children’s program, “Captain Power.” The show features dogfights between spaceships that “shoot” infrared beams from the television screen into the living room at the Powerjet XT-7, a $40 toy spaceship.

The program, broadcast on Sunday mornings in Los Angeles, has respectable ratings, although its producers say a second season isn’t certain. In contrast, sales of Mattel’s Captain Power action toys are sluggish, far below the toy company’s expectations. It seems many children are content to watch the show without zapping enemy spaceships.

Despite Captain Power’s lukewarm reception, the show’s producers aren’t turned off to two-way television. “It was a first step,” says Tony Christopher, one of the show’s developers at Landmark Productions. “Now TV can talk back to you. It can be an incredible entertainment or educational device.”

Television experts agree that the success of two-way television will depend on the sort of programs that feature the new technology. “The key to the whole (television) business is program,” says Michael King, president and chief executive of King World Productions, which distributes “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy.”

King says its difficult to create a hit around a technology, such as two-way TV, or the short-lived 3-D movie fad. “You have to start with a hit show. If the technology fits the program, then it can work.” This fall, Mattel plans to market an interactive toy that allows viewers to play along with the popular “Wheel of Fortune” game show. The toy company hopes to sell 1 million to 2 million $60 electronic games to “Wheel of Fortune” fans, according to King.

Besides Mattel, another firm is trying to bring two-way TV games shows into the nation’s living rooms. With funding NBC and United Cable Co., among other companies, the tiny Interactive Game Network Inc. in Menlo Park is devising television game shows that allow home viewers around the country to play along and compete for prizes.

The firm hopes to transmit a game by NTN Entertainment that allows sports fans to call plays while watching a professional football game. Other two-way shows are being planned. “We plan to take existing hit shows and add interactivity as a feature,” says David B. Lockton, Interactive Game Network president.

Test Markets

IGN doesn’t plan to beam any shows into home TV sets anytime soon. In fact, says Lockton, it will be at least two years before the company is ready to offer two-way programs to television stations around the country. Industry insiders say the firm has to find a way to lower the price of the special remote control that controls the system. Right now, it is expected to cost anywhere from $100 to $300.

Other firms are exploring different formats for two-way TV. At the National Cable Show in Los Angeles two weeks ago, two corporations, GTE Corp. and J. C. Penney Co., demonstrated home shopping programs that allow viewers to chose the kinds of merchandise they want to see and buy.

Both programs, now in test markets in the East and Midwest, work in much the same way. Viewers choose what they want to see on television by punching numbers on their telephones or a remote control, thus sending invisible signals over their telephone lines to a computer that controls the program.

By October, 40,000 homes in suburban Chicago are expected to receive J. C. Penney’s shopping show, Telaction. Already, two-thirds of its subscribers are buying clothing, food and furniture from an “electronic shopping mall” that includes Neiman Marcus, Marshall Field’s, and Sears, Roebuck & Co., besides Penney’s.

GTE’s shopping show, Main Street, is being tested in Boston, where the company hopes to reach 500 homes. Next year, it expects to test the show in Philadelphia and in Cerritos.

The systems share one drawback: A home shopper can’t use the phone while watching the shows. Telaction spokeswoman Mary Dale Walters says that problem doesn’t seem to bother its customers.

Perhaps the most ambitious venture in interactive television is being undertaken by Le Groupe Videotron, the second-largest cable operator in Canada. By the end of next year, Videotron estimates, about 50,000 homes in Quebec will receive interactive shows.

Viewers Decide on Show

Videotron is using technology developed by ACTV, a small New York company that has also licensed its technology to the View-Master Ideal Group. The toy company plans to sell a $125 interactive videocassette processor for children this fall, featuring cassettes that star Sesame Street and Walt Disney characters. Children will be able to “tell” Big Bird which song to sing, or which story to recite.

Using that technology, Lion, the Videotron marketing vice president, envisions exercise programs that allow viewers to chose workouts suited for their weight and age or sports events that let viewers chose the camera angles. That’s not all. Videotron has a deal with Lotto Quebec to develop an interactive version of the government lottery that would allow viewers to play along and win cash.

By pressing buttons on a special remote control device, viewers will “tell” their TVs what version of a show they want to see. Videotron plans to market the remote control with a terminal that can receive stock quotes, weather reports and other information. The new service is expected to cost cable customers $10 a month.

At the same time, Videotron has formed a venture with ACTV to test two-way shows in the United States. The companies hope to test the shows in at least two cities next year.

U.S. cable television firms are watching the Canadian venture closely but remain skeptical. Warner Communications, a pioneer in interactive television, turned down a chance to introduce the ACTV system in the U.S.

What bothers Warner, and other cable firms, is that ACTV signals are transmitted over four channels. The operator of a 36-channel system, the most common in the U.S., would have to clear four channels to offer interactive programs.

Few U.S. cable firms are willing to sacrifice revenue from four channels to experiment with ACTV. “No cable operator is going to do that,” Geoffrey Holmes, a Warner vice president, says flatly.

ACTV expects U.S. cable firms to be more receptive to its two-way system as the firms add channels to their systems. The tiny technology firm expects broadcasters to continue their reluctance, however. Michael J. Freeman, inventor of ACTV’s two-way system, acknowledges the system is cumbersome for broadcasters because they would need to beam two versions of a program--an interactive version and a non-interactive version.

Besides, he says, broadcasters don’t have the channel space available to cable firms.

Though Videotron has a 36-channel system through most of its market, Andre Chagnon, Videotron chairman, favors two-way TV. He expects Videotron to sign up 140,000 more customers with the new cable programs as an attraction. The new revenue will more than compensate for the loss of channels, he says.

“The viewers are telling us they have enough entertainment shows or religious shows or what have you,” Chagnon says. “They want something new.”