Introduction

In1936,the BBC powered up the first ever television broadcast. Sir John Reith, the director general of the publicly funded radio broadcaster, was decidedly under-whelmed by the new technology. His sober diary entry for the day read: ‘To Alexandra Palace for the television opening. I had declined to be televised or take part.’

Sir John had no way of knowing that television would become such a huge medium, so we can forgive his initial scepticism. But what would he say about interactive television today? It could be heralding a fundamental change to the medium. But it’s difficult to tell. Drastic change may not happen for a long time – or may not happen at all.

One thing is certain, interactive television is having an impact already and millions of people are affected. Declining to take part, as Reith initially did with television, is becoming more and more difficult every day.

This book concentrates on the here and now – the technology and techniques of today – focusing on the job of producing real interactive television programmes and services. It will equip you with enough down-to-earth information to rise above the hype and to draw your own conclusions about the future.

The United Kingdom Interactive Television Industry

Most of the material in this book refers to work done in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is particularly worthy of detailed study because it is the most well-developed interactive television market in the world. This is due to its extensive rollout of digital television (the main transmission platform for interactive television). At the beginning of 2003, there were more than nine million households with digital interactive television – that’s over 40 per cent of the viewing public (of around 24.5 million homes). Although there have been several hiccups (including the closure of ITV Digital, the pay-television part of the digital terrestrial network), hundreds of interactive television services are available on the mass-market digital interactive platforms (digital satellite, digital cable and digital terrestrial), as well as on smaller-scale television platforms that use the telephone network (by means of DSL technology); and many interactive service producers have built up several years of experience.

This level of development means it is possible to draw some firm conclusions about what’s working with interactive television and what isn’t, simply because the services are being used by so many people and have been around for so long – and the producers in charge have had a chance to learn lots of hard lessons. The United Kingdom has got to a stage where the focus is very much on producing down-to-earth services that add real value to people’s lives as well as making money, rather than experimental and pilot works (although there is always a place for these). Moreover, the production tools and techniques for interactive television have achieved a level of consistency across the industry.

It is likely that the lessons learnt and the technologies that have become stable and successful in the United Kingdom will be applied in other countries as they develop interactive television services. It is certainly the case that the big players in the United Kingdom interactive television industry have an almost constant barrage of requests from executives in the United States, Asia and continental Europe, asking for demonstrations and explanations of what they have achieved.

What is Interactive Television?

Interactive television isn’t new. Since the very earliest days of television, producers have been trying to make their programmes and channels more dynamic and participatory. In the case of children’s television, for example, the interactive element often involved desperately trying to get the viewers to sing along, jump up and down or dance around the room. One early children’s programme pushed the boundaries of the often passive relationship between the broadcaster and the viewer. It was called Winky Dink and You and featured the adventures of a cartoon character with a star-shaped hairdo. American children in the 1950s were asked to help Winky Dink out of difficult situations by drawing on the television screen using special transparent sheets, which were sold in shops and by post. Viewers would draw a bridge to help Winky Dink move around and draw a parachute to stop Winky Dink crashing to the ground. From the child’s point of view at least, the fate of a television programme’s star had passed into the hands of the viewer. (Winky Dink is sometimes criticised as being gimmicky and irrelevant to modern interactive television. However, one only has to read some of the memories of Winky Dink and You viewers, 50 years on, to see that its effect was way beyond that of a gimmick. See ‘In-depth: Winky Dink and You’ at the end of this chapter.)

Adult viewers have been won over to the idea of interacting with television in a number of clever ways too. Anything and everything has been tried: asking for feedback, running prize competitions, giving out leaflets with extra information. The telephone, in particular, has proved itself to be a powerful interactive television tool. Nearly every daytime television chat show asks viewers to ring in with their views or problems. And fund-raising shows focus all their energy on trying to persuade viewers to pick up the phone and give money. One memorable example was Bob Geldof looking directly into the camera during Live Aid and imploring: ‘Just give us your fucking money’. More recently, music channels like The Box have installed technologies that allow viewers to ring in, on a premium rate line, to choose a video. The video is then put in a queue and eventually shown to everyone watching the channel.

Interactive television can be defined as anything that lets the television viewer or viewers and the people making the television channel, programme or service engage in a dialogue. More specifically, it can be defined as a dialogue that takes the viewers beyond the passive experience of watching and lets them make choices and take actions – even if the action is as simple as filling in a postcard and popping it into the mail, or drawing a picture on the television screen.

Recent developments in technology have really opened up the possibilities for interactive television. In particular, digital transmission technologies have made it possible to cram a lot more information into a given piece of broadcasting space (bandwidth). This allows broadcasters and television platform operators (cable companies, for example) to more easily parcel extra information alongside the television signal, and for viewers to send information back to the television companies. By using digital and other technologies, viewers and television producers now have a myriad of new and exciting ways to interact.

Interactive Television: the Players

The Different Types of Interactive Television

One of the difficulties with interactive television is that there’s no generally agreed framework for describing different types of interactivity. Everyone involved in the industry uses different jargon.

For example, Microsoft (producer of interactive television software Microsoft TV) has a taxonomy that includes:

• Enhanced television – services that allow viewers to interact with a television show.

• Internet on television – services that allow viewers to view and use information currently available on the internet.

• Personal television – services that allow viewers to record and pause television programmes.

• Connected television – services that allow the television to share information with different devices in the home, like personal organisers and personal computers.

On the other hand, consumer research organisation The Henley Centre breaks down interactive television into three principal modes:

• Distribution interactivity – where the viewer interacts to control the delivery of a piece of content, but not the content itself. This covers functionality similar to that provided by a video recorder, where the viewer can decide when to view a particular programme.

• Information interactivity – where the viewer can get to different types of information This includes anything from playing an arcade game on the television, to ordering a pizza, to checking the weather.

• Participation interactivity – where viewers are able to choose between options during a programme or advertisement. This includes the ability to play along with a game show or choose a particular player for the camera to follow during a sporting event.

To muddy the waters even more, I’m going to introduce yet another list of the different types of interactive television. This is a practical book, concerned with the realities of producing interactive television. Therefore, this list is based on the terminology that many of the producers who work in the industry use. The list is not definitive, but is designed to be a framework that will simplify explanations later in the book. (And provide a few buzzwords to use at parties.) Be warned, some interactive television experts and other publications will use different names or different classification systems. There are also hybrid services that combine two or more of the different types.

Each of these types of interactive television is described in terms of the viewer experience of interactivity rather than the technology behind that experience. This is because it is often the case that any given piece of technology or software that makes interactive television happen can be used to produce more than one, even all, of the different types of service listed here. The main types of interactive television, for the purposes of this book, are also all displayed on a television screen (rather than a personal computer monitor).

The different types of interactive television covered by this book are:

• Electronic programme guides (EPGs).

• Teletext-style services.

• Walled gardens.

• Internet on television.

• Enhanced television.

• Video-on-demand and near-video-on-demand.

• Personal video recorders.

Electronic Programme Guides

One of the most useful and important types of interactive television is the electronic programme guide (EPG). Its core job is to tell viewers what’s on the television, effectively replacing newspaper-or magazine-based television guides. EPGs display information about schedules directly onto the television screen and viewers can select programmes to watch from the on-screen list – which is a must-have on services that have tens and sometimes hundreds of channels to choose from. To access an EPG, viewers usually press a button on the remote control (marked TV Guide or something similar) that is supplied with the television service.

Some EPGs simply have a list of television programmes and start times. Others have more detailed information (such as programme reviews and cast lists for movies) and can display information in a variety of ways, depending on what the viewer prefers. Some have useful interactive functions, like the ability to set reminders that pop up on screen when a programme is starting on another channel.

A typical modern EPG will include a mode that displays television listings across the whole television screen. Lots of channels can be displayed – usually in a grid format. Viewers can quickly compare programmes, select a listing by genre and, if the functionality is available, set reminders for programmes that look interesting. The programme information is usually shown to viewers in text format, but some trail-blazing EPGs incorporate photographs and video windows showing the live picture from each channel on offer.

Now/next Boxes

Some EPGs can display information about what’s on televison now and what’s on next in boxes that are overlaid on top of the television picture. Viewers can then keep watching television while reading the EPG information. The boxes may even be semi-transparent (so the video picture can be seen underneath), so they are less likely to distract people’s attention from the programme. These are sometimes called now/next or present/following boxes.

Viewers can use these boxes to quickly check whether anything else interesting is on (without needing to switch channel) and read information and reviews. Usually, different options are selected using the arrow and other keys on the remote control. If viewers see a programme they are interested in on another channel they press a button to switch channel. Usually these now/next boxes appear for a few seconds every time a viewer changes channel.

Teletext-style Services

Analogue Teletext

Teletext-style interactive television services take their name and style of presentation from a technology first developed over 30 years ago. Millions of viewers – particularly in Europe, where the technology became much more widespread than in the United States – are familiar with the useful services that analogue teletext technology provides. It works by transmitting text and simple graphics to suitably equipped sets.

Analogue teletext technology has a particular style of on-screen presentation for the content. Viewers usually press the Text button on the remote control, while watching a particular television channel. This directs them to information carried with that channel. The information tends to be relevant to the channel. So, for general entertainment channels, viewers can usually find information like television listings, news and weather. For more specialist channels, like MTV, there is often more specialist information (in MTV’s case, music news, reviews and so on). The audio from the channel usually continues in the background – giving the viewer the impression of keeping in touch with the channel. Viewers access different pages of information by pressing numbers on the remote control. They type the number identifying a page (for example, page 100), then wait for that page to be displayed on-screen.

In the 1980s, an extra piece of functionality was added to analogue teletext. Known as fast-text, this makes it possible for viewers to very quickly access up to four other pages that are likely to be requested (in the broadcaster’s view) after the one currently on-screen. So, for example, on a news page, the fast-access pages might be a news headline page, a sports news page, the top news story page and the main index page. Viewers can jump to any one of the four other pages by pressing one of the four coloured buttons that were added to the remote controls of televisions with the fast-text function.

Digital Teletext

The technologies of interactive television have moved beyond the bulky graphics of analogue teletext. Today, photographs and thousands of colours are possible – and even groovy functionality like email and text messaging. However, analogue teletext technology has set expectations within the minds of some viewers – expectations that continue when people upgrade their television service. Because of this, some broadcasters, like the BBC and Sky in the United Kingdom, have decided to keep analogue teletext-style presentation up to a point, even on their latest and most high-tech digital services. Specifically, these broadcasters have kept the idea that the viewer can access information by pressing one button (usually a button marked Text on the remote) while watching a television channel. They have also kept the idea that some kind of connection remains with the television channel that the viewer is watching, after he or she has pressed the Text button. This is done by continuing to have the audio from the television channel in the background of the interactive information or by having the television picture from the channel inserted into the interactive page.

Some digital teletext services have kept the concept of page numbers, and viewers are able to press the number keys to jump directly to specific pages. Others have redesigned the navigation completely, with viewers only able to find information by selecting items on menus. In a number of services, the coloured fast-text keys have new-found importance as key elements of the navigation system.

Some digital teletext content can be accessed in ways other than using the Text button. For example, on the United Kingdom’s digital terrestrial platform, digital teletext services from the BBC and Teletext Ltd are available via their own television channel numbers (which viewers access using the EPG). And, just to add to the confusion, some digital platforms provide both analogue teletext services and modern digital text services, although these are usually accessed in different ways.

Walled Gardens

Some interactive television platform operators offer a whole collection of different interactive content and services from a variety of different companies under one umbrella. They aim to provide a secure, controlled and easy-to-understand environment for different types of interactive television – a so-called ‘walled garden’.

Each one of the services in a walled garden is usually specially prepared for use on television and has a commercial arrangement with the operator of the platform. The services are accessible via a set of on-screen menus. To access the menus, viewers press a button on the remote control that is normally labelled something like Interactive or Services. The term walled garden is used because a defined boundary stops viewers accessing unregulated content like that found on the internet.

Telewest in the United Kingdom has a typical walled garden on its digital cable service. This is made up of a series of menus that offer different types of content and service – games, news, email, banking, shopping and so on. Usually, the operator of the interactive television platform will either own or control the walled garden. However, some broadcasters put their content within platform operators’ walled gardens as an alternative or addition to their digital teletext services.

There is nothing stopping platform operators from offering an assortment of walled garden services from different sources. In fact, in the United Kingdom, the regulator has decreed that Sky Digital, a satellite platform, must allow other companies to build their own walled garden services on its platform. Therefore, if the viewer presses the Interactive button on their remote control while they are watching any television channel, they are taken to a menu that includes a number of companies supplying a range of different walled gardens. Each walled garden has its own set of retailers and/or other services.

Usually, the most popular part of a walled garden is the games section. Indeed, some walled garden services only contain games. Games on interactive television include anything from fast-action arcade-style zapping to strategy or word games. There were a number of walled garden games services launched in the UK in 2002 and 2003, including GoPlayTV and Sky Gamestar.

Internet on Television

Internet on television allows viewers to access the millions of pages and communication services already available on the internet. Internet on television services break down the garden wall to give viewers the opportunity to roam beyond the confines of what the platform operator thinks is suitable. The theory goes that viewers can then get all the advantages of the PC-internet but at a much reduced cost, compared to a computer – and all in the comfort of their own living rooms.

The practice, unfortunately, is that many web sites, which are designed for viewing on a personal computer, look awful when viewed on television, and some don’t work at all. Compounding the problem, television remote controls do not lend themselves to being used for navigating PC-internet sites that are designed for a mouse, while graphics designed for a personal computer monitor can look terribly small when viewed from two metres away on the living room sofa.

Perhaps because of these problems, many internet on television services attract only small numbers of customers. NTL’s analogue TV-internet service (which used a box attached to a normal phone line to access the internet) closed down in 2001, due to lack of interest. Production of the Dreamcast, a games machine that had internet on television functionality, stopped the same year. And the biggest web on television service, MSN TV (formerly Web TV), has been relaunched several times in the United States in unsuccessful efforts to achieve mass-market appeal.

The solution to layout and readability problems with the internet on television is to ask the owners of PC-based web sites to spend some time designing alternative versions of their sites that will work on television. Unfortunately, to date there are very few sites on the open internet that have alternative versions that work really well on television. Companies are not prepared to spend the time and money involved in redesigning their sites and services for television, until the number of users and the level of usage make it worthwhile. Users won’t sign up to an internet on television service until there are lots of good-quality services. Catch-22.

Most surviving internet on television operators have focused on trying to get a small number of specially redesigned sites and pieces of content to work well on their services. In effect, they have become walled garden services with internet on television access as an added attraction.

An innovative variant on the internet on television model involves producers offering video content via the television and complementary web content designed to be accessed on a personal computer positioned in the same room. In the United States, this is called two-screen interactive television and is reasonably popular. Scarborough Research in 2002 reported that more than one-quarter of American adults aged 18–34, who took part in a survey, said they surfed the internet and ‘always’ or ‘often’ watched television at the same time.

Enhanced Television

Enhanced television can be defined as any interactive television service that makes an existing television programme better, while that programme is running and shortly afterwards. Enhanced television service providers typically add overlays, text and graphics to programmes, so viewers can interact while they watch.

A great example of enhanced television comes from games company Two Way TV. As well as providing walled garden games (which don’t involve television programmes), they put graphical and text overlays on top of television quiz programmes and sports events. Enhanced television services like this give viewers at home the opportunity to try to answer questions before the contestants on the television or to predict what will happen during football matches and so on. Just as the host has finished asking a question or just before a player takes a shot, for example, a range of different answers or options pop up on-screen. The graphic overlays are timed perfectly so they appear and disappear at exactly the right moment – and the key strokes required for choosing the correct answer will only be accepted from the remote control for a very specific period of time that corresponds to the on-screen graphics. The quick-fingered viewer can then try to guess the right answer before the contestants in the studio or predict what will happen next in the sports event.

In the case of quiz shows, the Two Way TV service records the viewer’s score so they can see how they are doing compared to the studio contestants. Even better though, different family members at home can compete against each other, each person with a different remote control. At the end of the programme, everyone can see how he or she has performed against other interactive viewers around the country. This kind of enhanced television completely transforms the experience of watching a quiz show or sports event, from a relatively passive affair to a dynamic event, played out with the rest of the family and the rest of the country.

Another example of enhanced television, this time without such close synchronisation, was the Election 2001 programme from ITV, one of the United Kingdom’s major television stations. At the beginning of the programme, viewers were prompted (by a graphical overlay) to press the red button on the remote control. Once they chose to do this they were taken to pages with detailed election results for different parts of the United Kingdom. The programme’s presenters would never have time to read out the results in full for more than 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom, but on the enhanced television service the detailed results for every area were available on demand. This information was accessible during the programme, so the viewer could continue to watch television while they checked the results. Unlike the channel’s teletext-style service, at the end of the programme the enhanced television content was removed.

The big advantage of enhanced television is that the interactivity takes place in close conjunction with something that is proven to be immensely popular and compelling – a television programme. Because viewers can continue to watch a programme, they are more likely to interact. What’s more, the interactivity can add value to the programme itself, perhaps even changing the viewer’s experience of it.

Video Switching

In addition to enhancing programmes with text and graphics, it is also possible to enhance programmes and channels by allowing viewers to switch between a selection of different video and audio streams, based around a single event or programme. With this type of service, viewers are normally taken to some kind of menu, where they can select the video and audio streams they wish to use.

Sky Digital pioneered video switching to mass markets in the UK. It has produced Sky News Active, which gives viewers the opportunity to choose entertainment, weather and other video feeds instead of the main news channel. For major stories, it’s also possible for viewers to choose to stay with a press conference or event, while the main news channel moves on to other items. Voting, weather graphics and text headlines are also part of the package.

Similarly, Sky Sports Active allows viewers to choose different video and audio sources during big sporting events. Viewers can follow a particular player around the field or choose to hear commentary from fans rather than the professional commentators.

There are endless creative possibilities with video switching services. Other examples include Channel 4’s Big Brother, the BBC’s Walking with Beasts, and the BBC’s Wimbledon and World Cup coverage. A case study on how Walking with Beasts works appears at the end of Chapter 2. A case study on the production of Big Brother appears at the end of Chapter 4.

Individualised Programming

A variant of video switching interactive television, which was pioneered by ACTV in the United States (although not adopted fully on digital television in the UK), gives viewers the chance to work their way through a television programme by choosing the course of action at certain key points. This is like a television version of those children’s books where readers can choose, from a pre-set selection, what page to jump to – depending on what they want the protagonist to do. In the books, for example, the hero might reach a crossroads at the end of the first section; the reader is then told to turn to page 50 if they want the hero to go left, page 60 for right and so on. In the television version, the viewer is able to choose which channel to switch to totally seamlessly, by pressing keys on the remote control. The key feature is that, after making a choice, the video changes without any perceptible jump in the picture, so viewers get the impression that the main programme is continuing (the BBC’s Walking with Beasts, Pyramid Challenge and Life of Mammals went much of the way towards this, although the channel changing wasn’t always seamless). As more choices are made, the viewer jumps back and forth between video streams or segments, all of which have been prepared to begin the appropriate action at the right point. The original ACTV system could also remember a long list of previous choices and on that basis switch the viewer seamlessly to a programming stream that reflected those choices.

It’s possible to produce all sorts of compelling interactive programmes like this: dramas where the viewer decides what should happen to the actors; betting programmes where the viewer decides whether to bet and how much; and advertisements where the viewer decides which products they would like to learn more about. It can be quite expensive to produce (as video has to be shot for as many video channels as are needed and it all needs to be synchronised perfectly so the viewer can’t see the jumps), but it does mean that viewers get to experience television in a completely new way. The same sort of effect can also be reproduced with some video on demand services.

Video-on-Demand and Near-Video-on-Demand

From the point of view of the viewer, video-on-demand (VOD) services do pretty much the same thing as video rental shops. Video-on-demand allows the viewer to watch television programmes, sports events and films at any time of day or night. Unlike video shops, however, the viewer chooses from a list of shows displayed on-screen, rather than nipping down the high street. Some services also allow the viewer to pause, rewind and forward wind during the programme. There are innumerable ways of providing video-on-demand technology to the home. Pioneers in the field include Video Networks Ltd in the United Kingdom and SeaChange and nCube in the United States – there are many others.

A similar service, from the viewer’s point of view, is near-video-on-demand (NVOD). Rather than giving viewers the opportunity to select the exact start time of the programme, near-video-on-demand suppliers play the same programme out repeatedly on different channels. The start times of the show are then staggered across these channels. This way, whenever the viewer wants to start watching, let’s say the latest James Bond movie, they will only have to wait for the next start time. On these kind of services, the most popular movies usually start every 15 minutes, although it is not uncommon for viewers to have to wait a couple of hours for films or programmes that are broadcast on only two or three channels rather than several.

Personal Video Recorders

As with video-on-demand services, personal video recorders (PVRs) were developed because of the popularity of video cassette recorders. But, rather than recording programmes onto video cassette, personal video recorders record programmes into a set-top box. This is achieved by using a storage device inside the set-top box, usually a personal computer-style hard drive. Once recorded, the programme can be watched at any time and the viewer can rewind or forward wind any bits they miss or get bored with.

Unlike VCRs, personal video recorders can play back and record at the same time, so they can also be used to stop live television. If a viewer fancies a cup of tea during the big game, he or she just presses stop and the personal video recorder starts recording in the background. After the kettle has boiled and the tea bag soaked, the viewer can pick up the action at the point they left off, and the actual live coverage continues to be recorded in the background ready for later. Clever stuff.

On top of this, with electronic analysis of the viewer’s favourite television programmes and access to the television schedule, personal video recorders can predict what programmes the owner is likely to want to watch. They can then record these programmes without being asked. Star Trek fans, for example, will find a whole galaxy of episodes waiting for them when they get back home each day.

Most of the material in this book is relevant to all of the different types of interactive television service listed in this chapter. However, the book is particularly relevant to digital teletext, walled gardens and enhanced television. There’s an emphasis on these, because it’s these services that the wider production community (broadcasters, production companies, retailers and so on) tend to be closely involved with.

Why Bother with Interactive Television?

Do viewers really want their televisions to be interactive? Even considering telephone polls, mail-in competitions and Bob Geldof-style calls to action, television is generally a rather passive experience. And that’s what people seem to like. Does it really need to be changed?

There are two good reasons why interactive television is likely to become more popular and more common: it can make television more appealing and it makes television companies richer. Evidence for this is outlined in Chapter 3. Unfortunately, when considering how to build a popular and profitable service, it’s not just a matter of ‘you build it and they will come’. The interactive television producer has to bring together a number of different strands: the technology has to work, the commercial model has to deliver, the production has to be on schedule and to budget, and the content and user-experience has to be right. These are all covered in turn in the following chapters.

A Concise History of Interactive Television

In-depth: Winky Dink and You