Page 16 - 11_Bafta ACADEMY_Harry Potter_ok

14
Focus on Interactive
YOU’RESHAPINGTHEF
Does Big Brother 2 and Wimbledon herald the end of television as we know it? Ceri Thomas looks at the present and future state of Interactive TV.
Television used to be such a pas- sive activity. The set sat in the corner of the room, you turned it on, you watched one of four (later five) channels and... well, that was it basically. But the arrival of digital TV has changed all of that.
Not only has it given viewers the chance to watch an ever increasing number of channels, it’s also intro- duced the idea of programmes that you do more than just watch. Programmes that the viewer can choose the make- up of, or vote on the content of or access personalised information about, or even play along with. The age of interactive television had arrived.
Or that was the idea. But for all the high-falutin’ potential of the new tech- nology, does anyone ever really use it?
“I think it’s been a hugely encourag- ing summer”, answers Jonathan Webb, director of interactive content for the Flextech group of channels. “Somebody dubbed it ‘The summer of interactivi- ty’...” And it’s all really down to two bits of programming: Wimbledon and Big Brother 2.
Sky Sports had been running their interactive coverage for almost two years - offering viewers the chance to use their digital handsets to select replays, camera angles, which player to focus on and the like.
In June the BBC took a leaf out of their book and offered a similar ser- vice to digital customers wanting to watch Wimbledon. Not only could viewers access a raft of related info, they could actually pick the games they wanted to watch.
Prefer women’s tennis to men’s? Doubles to singles? Agassi to Henman? No problem - just make a choice. The public loved it so much that the Beeb did it again for the Open Golf.
“The BBC achieved fantastic suc- cess with the launch of its Wimbledon Interactive and Open Golf Interactive
programmes which drew in over five million viewers this summer,” says Scott Gronmark, BBC Head Of Interactive Television.
“Sport obviously lends itself to interactivity because viewers want to see extra facts, dynamically updated statistics and where appropriate the option to choose between matches and events; all of which enhance their view- ing experience. The next challenge will be to achieve the same impact with our interactive programming in areas other than sport.”
The likes of Big Brother 2 perhaps? This summer’s other big interactive success story layered an interactive application behind E4’s live screening of Big Brother 2. It let viewers choose camera angles, pull up tickertape infor- mation and - most significantly - vote for evictions via the remote control.
“Interactive TV was counting for 35% of the overall vote,” explains Peter Good, Channel Four’s Head Of Interactive and Enhanced TV. “ Some weeks it was up to 40%.”
The success came as something of a surprise. “When we first started putting together the project, it was such an unknown,” continues Good. “I think Sky predicted that we’d get something like 250,000 votes for the whole series of BB2. We got that with- in three or four days. We ended up with something like 4.9 million votes through Sky.”
Interactive TV has managed come a long way in a very short time (Channel Four’s interactive division, for instance, has only existed for a year). Initially focusing on trying to turn the TV into a form of home computer by mimicking the structure and operations of web- sites, interactive services have taken a step beyond that as designers realised that they needed to marry the technol- ogy to the very different experience of using the TV.
Head of interactive services for the broadband cable platform Telewest, David Caswell, sums it well: “There was an attempt to port over PC services to the TV as almost
an alternative to
normal broadcast
television.
Services have
been launched
and they function
better month on
month and they
have more con-
tent month on
month but what
they’re not really doing is building on the TV consumer experience.”
In his opinion what does work, apart from enhanced programming like Big Brother, Wimbledon and Sky Sports Extra are things like betting and gaming - Telewest launched a multi- user pay-per-play gaming service earli- er this year (letting users play against members of their own family live on the TV) and estimate that, by early next year, game shows that viewers can actually play along with will be part of their service.
But are we going to have a future where every programme has a ton of interactive extras going on behind it? “Not every show works with an interac- tive element,” says Channel Four’s Peter Good. “They should be as syn- chronised a part of the show as possi- ble, so that it’s not detracting from the viewer experience of the linear show.”
Jonathan Webb of Flextech agrees. “A lot of people will automatically tell you that ‘Pah - drama and comedy are the least enhanceable’ and we should- n’t touch them. By and large I would totally agree with that. If you’ve had a hard day at work, you don’t want to come home and have to decide, say, who shot Phil Mitchell.”
That said, though, Webb does have a plans for an interactive TV drama whose story viewers shapes themselves. Based on their animated internet game, Flash Band (users set up, manage and promote a pop group), he thinks “You can have a totally personalised narrative and
experience through the PC but you can also take the same game and put it onto the television and have a shared interactive narrative.
“You can play the two games in par- allel. You use television for its richer visuals and the ability to make it a shared game with everybody else watching and then when you support it through the PC you have all of the per- sonalised elements and the ability to create new stories outside of the actual cartoons themselves.”
The next year should see the inter- active TV industry consolidate and build on this year’s successes. In October, Sky is streamlining their ser- vices, introducing an interactive ser- vices menu that’ll reduce the need to change channels in order to enjoy interactivity And the other channels all have firm plans for the future,
Channel Four has a second series of the gameshow Banzai planned that’ll allow viewers to compete against each other nationwide for high scores. They’re also working on an application for their At The Races horseracing channel as well as “brainstorming” ideas for adding interactivity to the likes of World Rally, Richard and Judy and So Graham Norton.
The BBC meanwhile are launching Walking with Beasts, the first interac- tive documentary and are also planning to offer interactivity for Children In Need for the first time.
U