Cablevision Plans to Test ‘Interactive’ Service in ’95

The basketball goes up, teeters tantalizingly on the rim of the hoop, then slips through the net. There you sit, dying to see a replay. Instead, the network broadcasting the Lakers game cuts to a shot of Jack Nicholson applauding in the audience. Drat.

For all those armchair directors who want to pick their replays, for those who would prefer a close-up of the player with the ball to a long shot of the action, Ventura County Cablevision believes it has the answer.

Company officials announced Wednesday it plans to launch a limited test run in early 1995 of a new service that allows viewers to interact with their televisions.

The interactive programming, called the L.A. Project, is a joint venture among ACTV Inc., Prime Ticket Network and the Westlake-based cable company, a subsidiary of the San Francisco media company Western Communications.

Ventura County Cablevision has 90,000 subscribers in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Santa Paula, Ojai, Fillmore, Westlake, Agoura and Calabasas.

Company officials said up to 1,000 households in eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County will be used for a six-month test run of the service. How the test households will be selected has not been decided.

Interactive television programming is being tested by several other companies in markets throughout the United States, including Castro Valley and Cerritos in California. But Western Communications Director of Marketing Richard Yelen said the company’s new service is the most advanced example of the new technology being offered.

“It’s different from a lot of those pie-in-the-sky ideas,” Yelen said. “It is actually operational.”

Yelen said ACTV Inc. has successfully tested the services in Montreal and London. In Canada, the service has been available for nearly five years and is used in about 200,000 households.

*

Besides allowing viewers to select from four camera angles during Lakers and Kings games, the service would also let them call up statistics on individual players.

“They’ll be able to play the director at home,” Yelen said. “This is no longer the Jetsons, this is today.”

The service will air educational programming as well, he said, and viewers will be able to take pop quizzes on what they have learned. After they plug in answers with a specialized remote-control unit, the television screen will respond, telling them whether they are right or wrong.

Interactive games will also be available through the service, Yelen said, including card games such as poker.

“What if there were a real dealer on the other end, in the television?” he said. “Well, now you can do this at home, you can play alone at home. Although, of course, you won’t win any money.”

*

Some choices will also be available during the commercials, he said. For instance, as the commercial break approaches, the television will announce an upcoming car advertisement from a major manufacturer. The viewer gets to pick from a selection of four versions of the ad. Don’t feel like seeing a minivan pitch? Opt for the sports model version instead.

But viewers who prefer to have their television running the show will not be jolted from their couches, Yelen said. All the interactive services are optional.

“You can be totally passive,” he said. “Many customers don’t want to interact with their television. They just want to sit back and do nothing.”

Installing the system will be simple, Yelen said, requiring changing control boxes and remote-control devices in the test households.

The companies have not yet established what the increase in cost to the consumer will be.