These organizations are often struggling for funds to keep their doors open and serve their audiences with plays, exhibits, concerts or other cultural events. And yet they are driving technology and applications development by creating and supplying important intellectual and artistic content. On-line information service providers want to ensure they have access to the information delivery infrastructure, such as telephone lines and cable delivery systems at a competitive cost. They are concerned that their access to the market could be hampered if information carriers such as cable companies and telephone companies are permitted to develop their own content. For television broadcasters, the key to market access will be the development of a system that displays programming information in a format that is not biased toward any one provider.
Televisions today provide a simple, easy to use navigational guide called the tuner control.
Select a specific channel number by turning a dial or punching a button on a hand-held remote control device and the service associated with that number appears. Turn the television off and turn it on later and the last selected channel reappears. Channel selection is in the control of the consumer. Future computer-based navigational guides will be more complex. Instead of the last customer-selected channel reappearing when the television is turned on , certain services, perhaps developed by the information carrier and offered for a fee, may appear first.