Logic suggests that if the marketers are at the helm, [interactive television] is bound to end up looking more like QVC than the Internet. Fundamentally, interactive television will serve whoever controls the switches. Today, via the ratings system, advertisers do. The history of broadcast has its own inexorable logic, a logic based on selling an audience about which progressively more can be known. The $64,000 Question is whether interactive television will reinforce that logic, taking it to the extreme of one-consumer/one-commercial, or shatter it, creating a decentralized network of citizen-broadcasters, each with his own vision of the future. The answer is television history in the making.
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:”While no one can predict with certainty the future of interactive television, the thrust of history and the force of logic suggests that if the marketers are at the helm, it is bound to end up looking more like QVC than the Internet. Fundamentally, interactive television will serve whoever controls the switches. Today, via the ratings system, advertisers do. The history of broadcast has its own inexorable logic, a logic based on selling an audience about which progressively more can be known. The $64,000 Question is whether interactive television will reinforce that logic, taking it to the extreme of one-consumer/one-commercial, or shatter it, creating a decentralized network of citizen-broadcasters, each with his own vision of the future. The answer is television history in the making.”
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