When will interactive television deliver against its promise?

By Paul Hudson

When will interactive television deliver against its promise? It’s a killer question, and it has been a central theme to part of our work now for the last few years. There has been much written on the subject but the key question of when, and how, is yet to be answered.

There are many social and behavioural reasons that undermine the current take-up of interactive television, especially from a commercial perspective. Primarily, it will take longer for human behaviour to respond and adapt to such radical changes in technology than most analysts predict, as technological change evolves at a quicker pace than behavioural change. In the case of interactive television this can clearly be seen – the technology is far more advanced than current behaviour and user take-up. Furthermore, the technology is still developing, so the ‘turbulence’ for this device is very high, making any predictions of usage difficult at best.

Interactive television success stories are well documented. Big Brother saw a huge (and profitable) success in interactive voting, and over two million people took their own prehistoric safari alongside the BBC’s Walking with Beasts. However, most companies are still struggling to find successful ways of using interactive television as a source of revenue. ITV Digital certainly found it difficult to deliver any meaningful success in the interactivity stakes. So far, interactivity only works when it is either deepening/extending the viewing experience or providing quick and ‘disposable’ gratification. Where companies try to mimic their services on the PC-enabled Internet, they are significantly less successful because an interactive television has different characteristics and behavioural responses.

With the introduction of Freeview, the government, the BBC and Sky aim to bring the age of digital TV to a wider audience, eventually enabling the total switch-off of analogue signals. The BBC has its own digital strategy, attempting to bring a mass audience to interactive television and normalise the social behaviour of interacting with a television screen. But the creation of normative behaviour follows recognisable key stages that take time to occur, such as the experimental use stage and the adaptive behavioural stage. Normative behaviour will only exist once a critical mass of users has been achieved and behaviour has had time to adapt.

These key stages can be supported through the effective design of services that aid the learning process. At first, services needs to be designed to mirror as close as possible current experiences and expectations, and need to be based on simple, easy to follow ‘rules’. Next, opportunities need to be provided to educate and extend the experience and allow the user to see the significance, relevance and meaning of the service to their lives. High quality, well thought-out, relevant services must be provided to support behavioural change and market growth.

So there are still many challenges for the Freeview platform to overcome. However, as a learning ground and potential solution to normalising behaviour, it must offer a key opportunity in speeding up the interactive television promise and bringing closer the successful harnessing of this medium for marketing and revenue creation. And only these will dictate the ultimate timescale for interactive television’s success.

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