Sure, the screen's tiny, the hosts are unpolished, and the fare is unlikely to draw comparisons to anything currently on television. But if watching an eclectic cast of personalities wax poetic about issues that probably score high in your personal Nielsen ratings, then ISP-TV just might be your kind of network.
Transmitting regularly scheduled video segments via the Web, this not-ready-for-TV Guide network serves up 24 hours of cable-access-style programming seven days a week on a QuickTime-size display. ISP-TV's all-talk stew ranges from dead serious to downright silly, with shows about politics, comics, technology, and hobbies.
Programs air both live and prerecorded, and ISP-TV maintains an archive, so if you'd rather be drinking beer on Monday night than watching the network's beer show Head!, you can always download the program for viewing at a more sober moment. If you're partial to debate, ISP-TV also offers Meeks Unfiltered, where journalist Brock N. Meeks locks horns with Washington wonks to hash out Internet-related issues.
A subsidiary of Beltsville, Maryland-based Digex Inc., ISP-TV rolled out the network in September 1996. Viewers who want to watch in real time can log on to the ISP-TV Web site (isptv.digex.net/) or one of the network's reflec-tor sites after downloading Enhanced CU-SeeMe software. The arrangement limits ISP-TV to around 1,200 potential viewers at a time, but that doesn't bother manager Doug Mohney. "If you buy into the idea of narrowcasting - that is, reaching a smaller, more targeted audience - then ISP-TV is very viable," says Mohney, who estimates most shows draw roughly 150 viewers. "If you're small and can't afford time on a national cable channel, you can put your message on the Internet and have access to a worldwide audience at a very low cost."
Once high-bandwidth pipe becomes more common, Mohney expects ISP-TV's potential audience to expand to 10,000. While confessing that the major television networks and cable providers aren't exactly running scared, he sees a future where anybody with a video camera and a computer could have their own show. "On the Net, Wayne's World becomes commercially viable," Mohney says. "You may have only a few screwballs per audience, but all of a sudden you have access to a whole world of screwballs."
SCANS
Live, from Cyberspace
