From: larry@cs.com (Larry Spence)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: TV - flawed message and/or medium?
Date: 4 Sep 92 03:26:21 GMT
Organization: Computer Support Corporation,  Dallas,Texas

In article <1992Sep3.031048.2646@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (cyberpunk) writes:
>In article <1992Sep2.204551.15829@unixg.ubc.ca> turkel@unixg.ubc.ca (Bill Turkel) writes:
>|
>|Some recent postings have suggested that the problem with TV is the content,
>|not the medium itself.  Consider this - you get around 100 channels of 
>|information on TV.  Information comes  at a set time.  You cannot interrupt
>|the flow of information (to think about what you are receiving, for example)
>|without losing part of it.  TV embodies the rule that "the few speak and the
>|many listen".   Now look at a book... the smallest library or bookstore has
>|two to three orders of magnitude more channels of information.  You can
>|consume as many books in parallel as you can keep track of.  You read *when*
>|you want to.  "The many speak to the many".  You can interrupt the flow of
>|information to criticize it.
>|
>|I realize that videorecorders allow one to compensate for the shortcomings
>|of the medium, to an extent.  The fact remains that the number of
>|simultaneous channels of information, and the range of levels and content
>|are much greater for books than for TV.  To an extent, the *medium* of TV
>|is flawed.  The message is, of course, problematic.
>
>This definition refers to TV as the medium exists today, but that is
>certainly not the end of the line for television.  I suspect that it
>will always be changing as technology develops.  For instance, I
>imagine that as soon as ISDN becomes practical this definition of
>television and the complaints about it will be laughed at.  Many
>developers have said that they want to make it as interactive as
>possible, which would include television behaving just like a moedrn
>day VCR.  Fastforward, rewind, pause, Timer viewing, etc.  Basically,
>watch what you want when you want and how you want.  It's not that far
>away, I'd guess.

After many years of reading books, usenet, listening to CDs, etc., I find
it increasingly difficult to sit glued to a TV or radio.  I always end up
wanting to "rewind the tape," "hit n," or do a topic search, none of which
my TV set or radio allows... %(

The "problem" I see with interactive TV (and selective random access in 
general) is, wouldn't it make it possible to skip over all the advertising?
This sort of "TV" would have to be paid for almost entirely by the viewers.
And it would wipe out the largest (?) advertising outlet in existence.  I 
would expect Proctor & Gamble, General Motors, etc. to get very nasty if 
their ads were restricted to billboards and balloons. %)  Basically, once 
you can selectively view just the stuff you want, advertising becomes an 
endangered species.  I predict that we _will_ still be force-fed ads, possi-
bly in some Prodigy-like manner.  A nauseating prospect.  But the use of
tape for time-shifted viewing has to have brought this "problem" up already.
Is there any way for ad agencies to get a fix on what % of their ads are
skipped in one way or another?  What is their strategy for dealing with it?

At any rate... what's the "cyberpunk vision" have to say about the future 
of advertising?

-- 
Larry Spence
larry@cs.com
uunet!csccat!larry or sun!texsun!csccat!larry