NEWSPAPERS COULD FIND THEMSELVES IN THE TV BIZ

By: Martha L. Stone Web Users Seek Interactive Experiences

Newspapers may wake up one day to find themselves in the TV business. Or maybe it's already happened.

As the Web moves toward broadband transmission, media companies are planning for a time when most Web users may expect a TV-like experience with interactive capabilities.

Last month, for example, NBC and WebTV teamed up to present the first generation of interactive news on WebTV, which consists of a TV window, surrounded by contextual links during NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Dateline, and the Today Show. The contextual links take viewers to related stories and features, such as instant polls and chats.

Sure, this example involves one of the big three broadcasters, but newspapers should pay attention, industry leaders say.

?Interactive TV is platform neutral,? said Merrill Brown, editor in chief of MSNBC.com. ?There will be lots of broadband ways to get interactive TV.?

Some newspapers are already plunging in. Dallas-based Belo just announced a partnership with Geocast Networking Systems to develop full-motion video, CD-quality sound, and interactive features for its 17 Web sites, including those for The Dallas Morning News and Providence (R.I.) Journal.

Geocast will build the network, including hardware and software infrastructure, on Belo's digital broadcast TV spectrum, and Belo will provide local programming in 16 markets. A receiver will connect to users' PCs, and will accept live broadcast feeds.

Meanwhile, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive recently announced an interactive content relationship with MSNBC, which operates the most visited news site on the Web, with an estimated 1.5 million visitors per day.

Internal sources say CNN is developing interactive television content for its Web site, but declined to elaborate on its plans.

Is the market ready?

While everyone is rushing to develop interactive content, some news executives are asking, ?Why?? So far, few people are able or willing to connect to bandwidth-hogging content. Broadband is not expected to be in even a quarter of Internet-connected homes for another three to five years, according to several studies.

?We deal with content from (our) newspapers, TV, and radio stations,? said Steve Yelvington, who heads editorial operations for Cox Interactive Media, which does not have immediate plans to delve into interactive TV. ?We do some streaming audio and video, but it is relatively minor.?

Yelvington expects interactive TV will be one of many choices for news formats on the Web, and not the only direction the medium is headed. ?It's never an 'or' universe, it's an 'and' universe,? he said. ?We will have more opportunities in the future. We will have more media to manage, more databases, more online communities.?

Vin Crosbie of Digital Deliverance in Greenwich, Conn., said newspaper companies should be planning for the future of the Web medium, which he says is neither broadcast nor print.

Crosbie thinks the future is building interactive TV on a computer platform like a number of upstarts are doing, including CyberRadio.com, in which live audio radio programming is supplemented by streaming video of disk jockeys performing live broadcasts in the studio, using Microsoft MediaPlayer.

Nonetheless, ?publishers online have to add video,? Crosbie said. ?Newspapers need to develop an interactive platform.? Video is clearly one component of that.

?Interactive TV makes a two-way experience possible,? MSNBC.com's Brown said. ?We are trying to recreate the next generation of storytelling, while national newspapers are scrambling to get their arms around the multimedia game.?

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Martha L. Stone (martstone@aol.com) is principal of Advanced Interactive Media Group and a frequent contributor to Editor & Publisher Interactive.




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