CAREERS : SHIFTING GEARS : Interactive Promised Land : Cruising Information Superhighway Won’t Be a Walk in the Park

It’s going to take a lot more than a pick and shovel to build the information superhighway.

Workers who want to join what is touted as the next great economic boom will need high-tech skills in everything from computers to electronics--not to mention such old-fashioned creative talent as knowing how to recognize a good story or having an artistic eye.

That’s the early consensus among employers involved in the initial stages of the interactive television business. But these executives caution that because the technology of the information highway is still evolving, it is difficult to know exactly the kinds of jobs that will be available.

Employers don’t even have real names or titles yet for the kinds of workers they want.

Dick Green, president of Denver-based Cable Labs, the technology research consortium of the cable TV industry, says cable TV operators and telephone companies building the information superhighway are looking for people who are “flexible enough to have a foot in the computer business, know about networking, telecommunications, cable and consumer electronics.”

Many of the jobs will be in the so-called computer-collar class developing the software and programming that will flow over the fiber-optic pipeline into homes. But there will also be jobs at the hardware end of the information superhighway--literally laying the fiber-optic foundation, installing and maintaining the sophisticated equipment, and running the complicated transmission systems.

As cable TV systems around the country begin offering services that have historically been provided by telephone companies, cable operators will be looking for technicians who understand operating systems and can write the software to run them.

Cable companies “are looking for highly technically trained employees, possibly coming from (the) aerospace industry, but also Bell Labs, the regional Bell companies, AT&T; Long Lines, McGaw Cellular, MCI,” said Bruce Gillman, vice president of human resources at Viacom Cable.

Technicians, who know how to deploy fiber-optics and understand digital as well as analog transmission systems, will be needed. There will also be a demand for engineers and managers who can make the technology “customer friendly” and enticing to consumers. Because the cost of bringing the fiber-optic lines into homes is three to four times more expensive than traditional telephone or cable service, people with the marketing savvy to wring more dollars out of customers will be particularly prized.

One area where the skill base is already high--and getting higher--is on the software side.

At the outset, interactive media was dominated by people with computer backgrounds, but this is no longer the case. Increasingly, it attracts people with more traditional skills--writers, producers, graphic designers.

Evidence of the shift in skills is turning up at the training grounds for the entertainment industry.

UCLA Extension is offering a new curriculum, “Multimedia and Digital Technologies,” where students can take classes in the game paradigm and interactive communications, and virtual reality. The American Film Institute inaugurated classes on interactive design. New York University offers a graduate program in interactive telecommunications.

Indeed, the aspiring multimedia producer in the not-too-distant future is going to have to be as knowledgeable about arcane topics such as cross platform interactive multimedia and optical storage as they are about what agent to call for the next hot writer or up-and-coming director.

Viacom New Media, for example, has hired 100 people in the past year and is looking to add 50 more. The Viacom Inc. unit develops interactive games for the CD-ROM market, but one day such programming is expected to be delivered over cable or telephone lines.

It can take more than a year to develop a single CD-ROM title with a team of eight to 12 people. They include writers, computer programmers, graphic artists, game designers, interface developers and beta testers--not typical of the people found on a Hollywood set.

“This is not just imitative,” said Michele DiLorenzo, vice president of Viacom New Media. “We are combining animation, video, writing, graphics, and combining it in some way to come up with a new experience.”

Much of the programming for the information superhighway is being developed by small computer-game companies that have been pioneering interactive media for several years. And that is where many of the new jobs are expected to materialize.

ActiVision, a Los Angeles-based video game producer, placed an ad in a Hollywood trade magazine a few months ago announcing that it was looking for “producers, programmers, artists and technologists.” The company got more than 400 responses.

Similarly, Industrial Light & Magic in San Rafael, the company famous for creating the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park,” recently hired 100 new employees and trained them in the use of high-tech computers to create special effects and animation.

So where do people learn the skills they need to produce, say, interactive programming? Tom Williams, who oversees digital production at Industrial Light & Magic, said he goes to multimedia industry conventions, such as SIGGRAPH held every summer in Anaheim, to recruit potential employees.

But he also notes that technical knowledge--the ability to work with a computer, for example--is not as valuable sometimes as innate talent. ILM hires many artists to help design special effects, and Williams notes that the necessary training can be done in-house.

Entertainment is not the only area in which interactive producers will be needed. Education and home shopping programming, which some experts believe will be major components of the information superhighway, will employ growing numbers of producers and designers.

One of the biggest demands will be for artists who can work at computer work stations creating the software for the programming that, for example, would show a sweater from a clothes catalogue in every style and color and from every angle.

Although such projects can be as technically impressive as a NASA shuttle launch, they are years away from resulting in meaningful employment opportunities, cautioned Steven Koltai, senior vice president at Warner Bros.

“The jury is still very much still out as to what is going to be entertaining to the consumer,” he said. “We’ve had an interactive video business for six years and in the pay-per-view business, the lion’s share of the (business) history has been (for pro) wrestling.”