The Passive People Meter is straight out of a Big Brother nightmare … [it is also] a powerful computer which links the phone line, the cable line, and the TV with a broadcaster. The current, toggle-switched People Meter … can be reprogrammed at a distance by Nielsen. A more powerful model could conceivably target individual television sets for custom-tailored commercials. This is broadcast’s version of the direct-mail approach … Any vision of interactive television that preserves the ratings economy – would also preserve the current couch-potato paradigm of television watching. A video-mail system, then, is a profoundly dark take on interactive’s bright future, a betrayal of all that the technovisionaries hold dear.
Predictor: Fisher, Adam
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Adam Fisher covers the potential changes in the way the video entertainment industry will measure its success. Fisher writes:”Even proud-parent Nielsen is wary of the changes that the Passive People Meter might bring. In one obvious sense, the Passive People Meter is straight out of a Big Brother nightmare. Yet in another, less obvious way, the Passive People Meter is the vidiot’s dream machine, a beta version of the fabled set-top converter: a powerful computer which links the phone line, the cable line, and the TV with a broadcaster. The current, toggle-switched People Meter already has the capacity to be individually addressable, and can be reprogrammed at a distance by Nielsen. A more powerful model could conceivably target individual television sets for custom-tailored commercials. This is broadcast’s version of the direct-mail approach. Direct-video mail is one vision of interactive television. It is a model that preserves the basic commodity that finances the medium today, the buying and selling of a mass audience, and it could be built in any number of different ways by any number of big companies. However, an interactive video-mail system with a passive input device, one without keyboard, joystick, or mouse, is by definition a system that ensures the greatest potential audience – the prime consideration in a television economy in which the quantity of viewers rather than the quality of the programming delineates the bottom line. This vision of interactive television – in fact, any vision of interactive television that preserves the ratings economy – would also preserve the current couch-potato paradigm of television watching. A video-mail system, then, is a profoundly dark take on interactive’s bright future, a betrayal of all that the technovisionaries hold dear.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Are the Overnights Over? Do Nielsen’s Broadcast Ratings Have a Future in the Coming Interactive Age?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/nielsen_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney