A host of services via a new “network of networks” combining fiber and coaxial cable … will forever change definitions of channel and audience and will replace one of the boxes on the average TV set: the VCR.
Predictor: Holmes, Geoff
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Broadcasting & Cable magazine, Mike Freeman reports on a speech Time Warner Senior Vice President Geoff Holmes gave at the PROMAX/BDA conference in Orlando, Florida. Freeman writes:”Forget the 500-channel future. Geoff Holmes believes the future is one channel: an interactive taproot into one or many databases, and instant access to programming and a host of services via a new ‘network of networks’ combining fiber and coaxial cable. The Time Warner senior vice president of technology believes such a network will forever change definitions of channel and audience and will replace one of the boxes on the average TV set: the VCR. That was the executive’s message to an overflow crowd at the cable luncheon at the PROMAX/BDA convention in Orlando … And that is not some ‘blue-sky future,’ he told attendees. Time Warner is currently developing video-on-demand capability in its Orlando system. The interactive network should be up by November 1993, Holmes said … A video-on-demand remake of Time Warner is expected to be completed by 1998. Telcos, by contrast, he said, are ‘talking about 20 years.’ Describing the Orlando test as the shape of things to come, Holmes said that a library of 1,000 films can be accessed by a subscriber, and the movie selected can be run, re-run, paused, fast-forwarded and otherwise manipulated as if it were a home video. He also sees a time when there will be links to other film libraries, eventually obviating the need for video recorders.”
Date of prediction: June 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: TV/Films/Video
Name of publication: Broadcasting & Cable
Title, headline, chapter name: Eisner On the Info Highway: Slow Down – Michael Eisner Speaks on the 500-Channel Television Proposal
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Volume 123, Issue 25, Page 26
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney