Eye on America

Ziff-Davis might well call its upcoming ZDTV personal-computer cable television channel “Me TV.”

At the recent Western Cable Show in Anaheim, the computer media giant said that as part of its regular programming, ZDTV will air live feeds from 10,000 Web video cameras hooked up everywhere from Silicon Valley boardrooms to teenage viewers’ bedrooms (OK, they didn’t specifically mention bedrooms, but where else do kids have their computers?), giving new meaning to the term “interactive TV.” The audience-participation ploy is the latest development at the still-developing ZDTV, a 24-hour network devoted to computing and the Internet that Ziff-Davis expects to launch in March. At the convention, ZDTV announced the first four cable operators that have agreed to carry the network: Prime Cable in Las Vegas; Harron Communications in Detroit; Televue in Georgia; and Prestige Cable in Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia.

In an interview, Ziff-Davis Chairman Eric Hippeau said ZDTV will launch with 35 to 40 hours of weekly programming in a variety of formats, much of it live. ZDTV is negotiating with anchors and other on-air talent, but Hippeau declined to elaborate.

In September, Ziff-Davis hired Larry Wangberg, former head of Times Mirror Cable Television and StarSight Telecast, as chief executive. The company has assembled a management team comprised of cable and Internet veterans.

Ziff-Davis’ track record producing computer TV shows isn’t great. “The Site,” an hourlong technology showcase that the Softbank subsidiary produced for MSNBC was canceled in September when the Microsoft-NBC joint venture moved to an all-news format.

A 1994 effort called the “Personal Computing Show” bombed after being relegated to “weird times and weird channels,” said Gregory Jarboe, a Ziff-Davis spokesman. “Then CNet came along and trotted down the same path. One of the challenges for anybody doing this is to get across the concept that it’s not something just for nerds,” Jarboe said.