If You Don’t Like the Views on TV, Vote With Your Remote : Channels pushing an ideology already exist, and a balanced offering is planned. Which route will succeed is uncertain.

Imagine television a few years from now.

You turn on the set; a program menu appears, and you use a remote control to navigate it.

If you wanted to watch politics, would you pick a channel airing only the views you already espoused--possibly from one of the more extreme positions on the political spectrum?

Or would you watch shows that broadcast views from all sides and included criticism and interpretation by neutral critics?

These are roughly the battle lines that are quietly forming over the future of politics and television.

In the last six months, three Republican groups have begun ideological TV channels: The Republican Party, a group of conservatives and a potential presidential candidate, Lamar Alexander, the former education secretary under President George Bush.

In the next few weeks, a prestigious bipartisan group plans to announce an alternative--a one-stop shop for political news, an all-politics channel that is ideologically neutral.

The idea behind the American Political Channel represents a change from the direction of recent new cable programs, which are entertainment-oriented or controlled by political partisans.

It also raises provocative questions about the impact of technology on American politics.

If, in the coming age, political interest groups produce political television themselves--rather than having their views filtered and refereed by the news media--will fewer viewpoints rather than more be heard because of the expense of production?

And once Americans have unfettered access to political information, will they listen to ideas they disagree with or simply comfort themselves by hearing their own sentiments reinforced? In other words, will access and technology further fragment the society or help bind it?

“We don’t have anything against the ideological channels,” said American Political Channel co-founder Doug Bailey, “but I think that, as television becomes more interactive, all of these channels will begin to come together.”

The ideological channels already have received perhaps more ink than viewers.

The richest is the 3-month-old National Empowerment Television cable network, which airs 24 hours a day on a handful of cable systems. It is led by Paul M. Weyrich, head of the staunchly conservative Free Congress Foundation.

The second, the 2-month old GOP-TV, is produced by the Republican National Committee and offers occasional programs on cable networks.

The third, the Republican Exchange Television Network, has, since May, aired monthly “Republican neighborhood meetings” to Republican groups. Its founder, Alexander, is a likely candidate for President.

The bipartisan American Political Channel, in contrast, is gambling that more people will prefer to watch political TV in the middle of the political spectrum rather than from the ideological ends. “We are trying to build from the extreme middle and work out,” said co-founder Roger Craver, a leading Democratic direct mail fund-raiser.

The new network, which hopes to be on by September, is the brainchild of four of the best-known names in political media from both parties. Republican founders are Michael K. Deaver, media adviser to former President Ronald Reagan, and Bailey, media consultant for former President Gerald R. Ford and founder of the daily Political Hotline newsletter. On the other side are Craver and David Sawyer, one of the country’s best-known Democratic media consultants.

Its advisory board includes the chairmen of both national parties, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the head of the feminist group Emily’s List and the chairman of the American Conservative Union.

With the political content well on its way, the American Political Channel is at work getting cable companies to carry it and expanding its list of investors. The group projects its programs will be seen in 20 million homes by the 1996 presidential election, and ultimately 45 million homes, when it estimates revenues of roughly $175 million and costs of about $98 million.

In effect, the channel hopes to combine virtues from the traditional media--in which journalists filter political dialogue to maintain balance and accuracy--with those of the new--in which political groups can speak to the public directly, unfiltered and at greater length.

The American Political Channel’s planning prospectus suggests something like this: A GOP show at 7 p.m., a Democratic show at 7:30, an hour of political news from around the country from 8 to 9, a town hall meeting until 10, then half an hour from a special-interest group.

The channel also would provide funds and time for small interest groups that might not otherwise be able to afford television.

The channel’s long-term vision, however, is directed toward a time--perhaps only a few years away--when television is truly interactive and viewers can decide not only which programs to watch, but also when to watch them.

In that era, a television channel would store information from a vast array of sources--local news from around the country, political events nationwide each day, the latest polls--for viewers to watch when they wished.

People interested in politics could peruse the American Political Channel each morning, Deaver said, and get much of the political news they wanted in 15 minutes.

Analysts are divided on which course, ideological or bipartisan, is likely to be more successful. Kathleen Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, suspects that ideological channels will have the advantage of appealing to a large part of a target audience.

And Michael Robinson, a scholar on politics and media, is skeptical about whether any of these channels will change the nature of politics, since they will echo the same information people can get from traditional sources.

But Robinson contends that all of them may survive, at least for a while. “It takes so little money to produce political TV shows that it is viable if it has one of two things--a few people willing to kick in bucks, or a sliver of an audience that advertisers find attractive.”