Interactive TV: Ready, set, click

Would you like to interact with Pamela Anderson?

OK, so it's not exactly an intimate conversation with the buxom star of the campy action show "V.I.P." But over the next month, fans of the syndicated TV series who are also among the million people who get Microsoft's WebTV or UltimateTV services will be able to play trivia games, get "vital stats" on lead characters and buy stuff as they watch. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

TV networks have been developing interactive TV programming for years for WebTV or cable-only services like Wink Communications. But most of these clickable TV tests have felt like the proverbial tree falling in the forest - they were out there, but who knows how many people saw them or played with them?

The long-promised, pricey set-top boxes that were going to introduce millions of living rooms to the full range of interactive TV services are still years away from the mass market. A slowing economy has cable system operators shying away from the high-cost rollout of these devices.

That doesn't mean interactive TV is on hold. TV programmers and other interactive content producers aren't waiting for the elusive, futuristic gadgets any more. Instead, they're developing and testing clickable applications for the millions of American homes that now have access to some form of interactive TV or for the some 20 million households that have a PC in the same room as the television set.

Some four to six million U.S. homes will be interacting with their TV sets via cable or satellite connections by the end of the year, industry researchers estimate.

ABC estimates that more than 3 million people turned to the Web to play along with their "enhanced" TV programs in the 2000 season.

"The shift is clearly toward developing enhanced services through existing hardware that's in homes now," says David Witus, director of content programs for Microsoft TV Group.

Connected couch potatoes in the U.S. are already getting hundreds of hours of clickable programming every week-features like pop-up boxes, polls, sports scores, financial services and games that appear during TV shows or commercials, asking them if they want to get more information on a product or service.

For example, NBC programs 400 hours a week of interactive programming and just expanded its multi-year deal between CNBC and Wink Communications, says Carla Sinatra, vice president of business development at NBC Digital Media.

Enhanced BattleBots
More interactive programming is on the way. The cable network Comedy Central is working on several interactive TV projects. It plans a full-season of enhanced episodes of "BattleBots," the popular robot demolition derby for UltimateTV viewers.

The cable network is also negotiating with an unnamed cable operator, a technology design firm and an advertising sponsor to develop an interactive TV project called "digital sandbox" for later in the year, says Kevin Delaney, the cable channel's interactive director.

"We're cautiously optimistic that iTV and 'enhanced' TV will have an impact," says Delaney. "We want to be on the cutting edge of this stuff."

There's also a boom in what's called two-screen "enhanced" TV services which simultaneously deliver Web-based content with shows. In fact, the Web and TV initiatives like ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" or "Monday Night Football," sporting events on ESPN, or "CSI" on CBS are considered by some analysts to be at the forefront of the clickable TV movement.

"These are early attempts at merging the two environment of the Web and the TV," says TS Kelly, director of media strategies at online measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings. "Enhanced TV is great way to see what consumers want to do at the same time and what works and what doesn't."

Indeed, what consumers want and how many of them are already clicking are the big questions for the advertisers who are looking to sponsor interactive TV.

"A lot is being shoved down the pipe without a lot of thought of how it's going to engage the customer," says Russell Booth, interactive executive at Mediacom, a division of agency giant Grey Worldwide. "Not every consumer looking to scramble for the remote control and interrupt their experience."

To be sure, much of the so-called interactivity is still pretty rudimentary.

On Wink, the most widespread interactive service, a small "i" appears in one corner of the TV screen as a prompt that the program or commercial has enhanced elements. People can then call up five-day weather forecasts from the Weather Channel, for instance.

"The simplicity is on purpose," said Maggie Wilderotter, president and CEO of Wink. "It's a free, mass-market service that we don't want to have so much going on that the consumer is confused and doesn't want it."

Numbers game
In addition, nobody really knows how may people are actively using enhanced TV, either through the boob tube or the Web.

In its first-quarter report released on Thursday, Wink claimed that 62 percent of all connected households click an average of 11 times a month, up from 6 times a month last quarter. Wink's Wilderotter claims the Weather Channel's forecasts alone get between 800,000 and 1 million "clicks" a week.

As they gradually reach a bigger audience, Madison Avenue is showing interest.

Coca-Cola is sponsoring the "V.I.P. Interactive" shows with national broadcast commercials. The Coke logo appears on the on-screen interface.

As it is interactive TV gets only a "tiny percentage" of media budgets, says Tim Hanlon, director of emerging markets at Starcom MediaVest Group, the media-services holding company of Bcom3, but advertising clients are "warming up to it."

David Adelman, senior vice president of convergence media at The Media Edge, a division of agency giant Young & Rubicam, says its marketing clients are just starting to explore sponsoring interactive TV content.

"You can brand the appearance of content that a person can play with while watching the show," says Adelman. "You can have a conversation with viewers that lasts 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds."

"Our group of clients are desperate to use this stuff, but they want to know if I'm testing a technology that gives them a sustainable competitive advantage at the end of the day, or am I just testing a better form of 800 number?" says Mediacom's Booth.

While some criticize these TV enhancements as little more than "eye candy," undoubtedly big name advertisers are paying closer attention to the new shows as they look for sponsorship opportunities.

"Our clients understand that things as they exist today aren't the way TV will be experienced five years from now," says Hanlon. "They're literally trying to sift through the myriad of opportunities out there."