Interactive TV's unclear picture - the real future of the telecommunications revolution - Cover Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 20, 1993 | by Philip Chalk

Issues of free speech and equal access will almost certainly arise during the nation's transition to interactivity. Paradoxically, the sheer capacity of cable appears to eliminate what for nearly six decades has been the federal government's principal justification for regulating radio and television - the scarcity of broadcast frequencies. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Media Education, says the latest commmunication revolution will have "profound democratic and social consequences." His chief concern is access - especially to information necessary for informed citizenship.

"There was a quid pro quo - a compact developed in 1934 between the government and the broadcasters - that the broadcasters would serve as a public trustee, and there would be a certain amount of information available to the public for free, paid for by advertising," Chester says.

But as the notion of scarcity disappears, so too will the idea of public trusteeship. "Then we enter a world in which the flow of information is unregulated, where there are no requirements and everything is available on a pay-per-view basis," he says.

"Overall we believe that the price of essential information, including local news and weather and the goings-on of the city council, let alone of the national government, may become too costly for middle-class Americans, let alone low-class Americans;' says Chester. He would like to see publicly subsidized access to cable transmissions, and the treatment of "a certain portion of cable ... more like a utility than a private entertainment enterprise."

Such elitist-pricing fears are "1930s economics," counters Thomas DiLorenzo, an economics professor at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Baltimore and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. "You could say the same thing about Cadillacs and expensive shoes: If there is something that costs a lot of money, there will be an elite. But it doesn't follow that just because every single individual in society doesn't have it that the government should run it."

His solution to concerns about the affordability of information deemed necessary is a sober focus on "economic growth, which reduces poverty." Says DiLorenzo, "The logic seems to be, |Well, we want to make it cheaper, so let's put the government in charge.' But you've got to ask yourself, |Where has that worked?' Government controls just create massive distortions."

With years to wait before the arrival of full-fledged interactive television, its prospects remain guesswork. Dave Bross, managing editor of Video Service News, thinks the fate of interactive TV will mimic that of cable television and VCRs. "Like any new quantum leap, the technology is going to work its way from the youngest [people] to the oldest," says Bross.

Still, rather than damning or enlightening humanity, a turbocharged home entertainment and information center most likely will be put to the same everyday uses as were its ancestor appliances - in short, to make life a little more diverting, inspiring, productive and convenient.