Interactive television (ITV) represents the convergence of interactive technology and television which allows the exchange of information between the sender and the receiver. Potentially, it offers increased control over programming content by enabling the viewer to immediately respond to the programming--and even alter it. By offering such control, interactive television has the potential to redefine what producers of television and viewers mean by "television" and to redefine communication processes in society.

One of the first television programs to encourage audience interaction was Jack Barry's Winky Dink & You, a children's show broadcast from 1953 through 1957 on CBS. The interaction was created through the use of cellophane overlay that children could buy at local stores and then attach to the television set. In the program, the cartoon character Winky Dink, encountered many problems, such as being chased to the edge of a cliff by a tiger. Viewers were then asked to help Winky Dink escape from the tiger by drawing a bridge on the cellophane overlay.

Interactive television in its more modern form ostensibly began in 1964, with AT and T's picture telephone introduced at the New York World's Fair. With this technology users could see as well as hear each other. It was not widely adopted for a number of reasons, but picture telephones were eventually found to be useful in some criminal justice settings and in business settings for video conferencing.

During the 1970s, the most publicized interactive television experiment was QUBE. QUBE was an interactive cable service offered by Warner Communications to subscribers in Columbus, Ohio. QUBE customers were given set-top decoder boxes with five buttons. Subscribers could participate in game shows, call plays in a college football game, take part in electronic town meetings, simulate a vote on the Academy Awards, participate in a newspaper survey and more. Viewers pushed the appropriate button(s), and their choices were recorded by a computer. When the results were tallied, they were announced on-screen. Unfortunately, the QUBE system was too expensive to maintain and eventually went out of business.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, cable companies and telephone companies began a complex strategy of competition and cooperation in an effort to define the future of interactive television. AT and T and Bell Atlantic conducted interactive television services trials with groups of employees in the Chicago and Washington, D.C. areas. From these trials, AT and T and Bell Atlantic reported strong interest in educational programs for children and games where households competed against each other. In another joint venture, TCI, AT and T, and US West conducted a test of movies-on-demand in the Denver area. And, under a TCI and Viacom alliance, fiber optic lines were laid in the San Francisco Bay Area in order to link several Bay area cable systems to serve as a basis for interactive services provided by the two companies.

As of the mid-1990s only two interactive television services were in operation. Interactive Network, a service in California and Illinois, required a special terminal costing a few hundred dollars and had high monthly charges. Interaction took place not on the TV screen but on a small display attached to the terminal. Services consisted of playing along with TV game shows and trying to anticipate the next play sporting events, but provided no original content. Videoway, a service in Montreal installed at about the same time, developed a large subscriber base with its service that required no hardware costs, a low monthly fee and enabled interaction directly on the TV screen. Videoway's service differed from Interactive Network in that it provided original content, including daily interactive news programming, games and original programming for children.

Interactive television has been conceived in several different forms and configurations. At a most basic level, it is a system that connects the viewer with the broadcaster. The home shopping channels, for example, provide a simple form of interaction by asking viewers to call in and order merchandise and occasionally putting callers on the air. Similar techniques are used in opinion polls in which viewers call one telephone number to register a favorable vote and another to register an unfavorable one.

In a more complex form, ITV is a system that broadcasts an audio/video signal to and from a certain point. The most common form of this is the live news broadcast from the location of an event. Because of the satellite connection, the reporter and news anchor are able to see and hear each other and converse. President Bill Clinton often made use of this technology to hold "town meetings" across the country and to appear at conventions he could not attend personally.

Satellite transmission of two signals is also used in educational settings, particularly in distance learning situations. By broadcasting a signal from one classroom where the instructor is teaching to another remote classroom with more students and in turn, broadcasting the signal from the remote classroom, a "true" class can be held which includes questions and answers from the remote classroom.

The more recent configurations of interactive television integrates computers, television and in some cases cable lines or fiber optic telephone lines. As technology advances, computer power, data compression and decompression, and the systems needed to carry ITV have advanced to the point where video and audio signals can be digitized, sent over high-speed networks to home personal computers or TV set-top conversion boxes enabling viewers to send responses back to the point of origin. Availabale services using this configuration include video-on-demand (movies available 24 hours a day with full rewind and fast forward capabilities), near video-on-demand (movies available at 15-20 minute intervals with no rewind or fast forward capabilities), shopping services, video games (some that allow competition with other ITV subscribers), limited interactive news programming, and educational programming. Experts predict that entertainment and education applications have the greatest potential for growth.

One final developing technology sure to have an impact on interactive television is on-line computer services such as the Internet. These services allow interaction with individuals and large groups of users and are rapidly moving toward more video and audio based transmissions.

The future of interactive television is unclear. No one is sure how ITV will be delivered to homes or even what ITV will look like. What is certain is that when it does arrive, ITV will change the medium of television in ways that audiences and producers have not yet begun to imagine.

-Patti Constantakis-Valdez