"Interactive Television - Commercials?"

Online - The BIG Idea - September/October 1996
by Bayard Saunders

A creative Detroit television production takes a bold step toward the interactive future, combining broadcast and online media, but as advertisers, are we ready for...

There have been many failed "experiments" in the pursuit of the this decade's home-entertainment holy grail known by the tired buzzword, "interactive television." We may not know exactly what it is, but from these costly failures, we know some things which it is not.

It is not merely being able to order from a library of downloadable videos to show immediately on your screen, or worse, to choose from a variety of endings to the story (did you really want to vote with your family on whether or not Romeo dies?). It is not just a new way to shop for groceries or do your banking or get news. That's not enough to sustain a new medium, or to entice us to change the way we do these things already.

But we have seen an historical event recently, perhaps the closest we've come to the true face of interactive television; the vision which will profoundly change the medium. It was not from CNN Interactive or MSNBC (both of which plan to start interacting with the audience, someday real soon now), but from Frank Turner and Dave Manney at WXYZ-TV in here in Southfield, Michigan, who took the assignment of a television show about crime prevention, and came up with THE BIG IDEA of producing a completely new, interactive, entertaining and informative experience.

The show, Directed by Don Bosquet, is called "Know Your Enemy," and takes an investigative journalism and analysis approach to common crimes: home invasion (break-in), rape, and car-jacking (auto theft). WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Newscaster Frank Turner hosts the program, with a live studio audience, and features victims of these crimes telling their stories, along with Detroit's Chief of Police, Isaiah McKinnon, who offers credible, expert commentary, but this is where mere broadcast television ends and the interactive experience begins.

As the first victim describes the crime on pre-recorded video by the show's Line Producer, Christy McDonald, the studio audience members are armed with a voting device, from Gail & Rice Productions, which allows them to indicate which course of action they would choose to take in a similar crime situation. At the same time, toll-free telephone numbers from Broadcast Phone Poll in Florida, are shown to the home audience to allow them to vote as well (they receive 8,400 calls in one hour). Also at the same time, a video-teleconference, set-up by MetroTel, brings images of the show to a live audience across-town at the BIG Surf Cyber Cafe (via telephone lines vs. standard microwave or satellite TV remote), and brings their video image and voting results back to the studio.

Also at the same time, on an Internet World Wide Web page, with WXYZ-TV's Diane Fiolek's graphics and published online from the Birmingham Internet Group, a survey form allows an online audience (presumably watching the television broadcast, but not necessarily so) to vote. The online audience is also able to participate in a live "chat" session (like a CB radio channel transcribed to closed-caption), usually commenting on the story or vote, which all of the audiences can view on the bottom of their TV screens.

While the votes are being tabulated, the same video-teleconference technology is used for a live link to the Ryan Correctional Facility, where inmates convicted of the same crime respond to questions and emotional comments from Frank Turner, and from the studio audience (speaking into microphones like a talk-show) and the cafe audience (via e-mail to Producer Dave Manney).

The results of the polling are displayed, other crime topics are examined, and the end of the show is also decided by asking all audiences to choose between seeing a listing of the most-often car-jacked vehicles or seeing a re-enactment of a typical car-jacking (over 4,000 calls decide in favor of the listing). While the audience is voting, six volunteer off-duty police officers man a bank of telephones to answer questions from the home viewers about crime prevention (which continues for an hour after the program ends). All of the connections and interactivity working properly is due in large part to Trip Kraniak and the WXYZ-TV engineering staff rising to the technical challenge.

The ratings for the program match the ratings for the previous week's time slot regular scheduled show (ABC's NYPD Blue), and actually increase during the hour (most amazingly opposite the NBC 1996 Olympics coverage). Scripps-Howard Broadcasting is discussing producing the show in other TV markets, and the response from the public is overwhelmingly positive, with E-mail describing viewer families staying up late to discuss the show, and the excitement they feel being a part of it.

The loudest wake-up call I've ever heard for Creative Directors is during the program's commercials. They, of course, are not interactive. That's what is missing. No asking for opinions, no online links, no immediacy or audience involvement, and a tremendous loss of interest level. We return, for 15 and 30-second helpings of mass-communications, to a format over 50 years old, and it is a let-down. As the audience, we don't know how to be involved using new technology as an integral part of the entertainment, but we want to be. And when we are, advertisers will have to deliver compelling interactive communications to reach us.

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