I Don't Want My Web TVWhy Yahoo's plan to merge the Internet and television isn't the future of home entertainment.
Posted Friday, Jan. 9, 2009, at 5:19 PM ET
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StumbleUponThe best TV innovations at CES manage what you might call passive interactivity. Rather than try to give you whole the Web on TV, they bring streaming videos—the Web's version of television—to your living room. Apple TV, TiVo, and other devices already make it possible to get YouTube on TV, and last year Netflix, which runs a fantastic video-on-demand service available to subscribers of its DVD rental plan, began embedding its software in set-top boxes and Blu-ray players. Tomorrow's TVs won't require those peripherals—LG, Vizio, and others announced that some of their new models would come with built-in WiFi, allowing out-of-the-box access to your Netflix queue and all the splendors of YouTube. Vizio is reportedly in talks to bring Hulu, the Web's best TV channel, to its TVs—a development that ought to terrify cable and satellite operators. If you currently pay $30 a month for broadband and $50 a month for cable, why keep paying the higher bill if your TV can get The Daily Show through the Internet?
I also like some of the interactive features that programmers are building into their channels. Later this year, ESPN plans to launch on-screen widgets that let viewers take part in interactive polls and bring up additional stats during games. If your cable box or TV runs advanced programming software called Tru2Way—the technology covers about 90 million homes—you'll also be able to personalize the ticker that runs across the bottom of the ESPN screen, choosing scores from certain teams, sports, or geographic areas. Bryan Burns, ESPN's vice president of strategic business planning and development, told me that the channel added these features in response to popular demand and after lengthy usability studies with focus groups. He added that ESPN plans to run advertising sponsorships for these features, but at the moment, those ads won't be targeted to users based on their behavior—that is, if you choose to see scores for teams in New York, you won't be presented with New York-specific ads. But he didn't rule out such a scheme in the future.
If there seems to be a natural tension between the Web and TV, targeted advertising is the glue trying to hold them together—one of the primary reasons that entertainment companies, Web companies, and telecom companies are pushing for Web-TV hybridization. The more you interact with your Internet-connected TV, the more it'll know about you—all the better to serve you ads tailored to your desires.
Programmers know that TV already has a rich life on the Web: The best shows inspire vast tracts of online discussion and reference works. (Check out the sprawling Wikipedia entries for The Wire and The Sopranos, complete with organizational charts and deep biographical info about every character.) At the moment, entertainment companies play little part in those communities. Interactive TV may change that. In a talk at CES, Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, said that her network is planning to create Web-connected widgets that would help center these communities around the tube rather than the PC. For instance, there might be a Lost widget that would let people chat with other fans during the broadcast of the series finale in 2010; ABC, of course, would sell advertising on these widgets.
Perhaps there are some Lost fans who'd like to connect with other fans through their TVs, but I'm still dubious. It's much easier to express whatever you want to say with a keyboard rather than a remote control. In 2010, I'm guessing we'll be watching the last episode of Lost in the same way we consume every big TV moment these days—with one eye on the TV and the other on the laptop.
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