LOS ANGELES -- Participants in the American Film Institute's Enhanced TV Workshop spent the last five months designing interactive applications to capture the television audience's attention.
Now if only they can just get cable and satellite companies to sit up and take notice.
The AFI program, currently in its fifth year, was created to allow network programmers and television producers to collaborate with so-called technology mentors and experiment with interactivity in their shows.
"We start with the creative community and give them tools to fuel their imagination," said Nick DeMartino, AFI associate director.
The problem, however, has not been conceiving of ways to produce more compelling television, but rather persuading cable and satellite operators that interactive applications are worthy of investment.
With the exception of Internet content that is synchronized with TV programming, most interactive applications require advanced set-top boxes that have not yet been rolled out, and/or middleware that is largely absent in the current infrastructure.
"Things are happening right now (in interactive television), but the deployment isn't there," said Timothy Shey, an executive at Proteus who served on one of the technology mentor teams.
Final projects from this year's collaborations include:
* An on-demand channel for the Food Network's The Best Of show, listing recipes and resort locations mentioned during the broadcast. Users could also request the information via e-mail or use a wireless interface with localized content.
* A fantasy game called Movie Mogul on Turner Classic Movies that allows viewers to "invest" in classic movie stars and earn points based on how TCM viewers rate their films.
* An Interactive Thursdays concept for TV Land, infusing classic sit-coms such as I Love Lucy with bonus content like factoids and trivia.
* A Sesame Street DVD inviting children to engage in various interactive learning exercises using familiar themes from the TV show.
While proud of what they have created, the television executives at the workshop understand the obstacles they face in bringing their enhanced programming to the public.
TV Land's Michael Gaylord said now that he has completed a prototype for his Interactive Thursdays idea, he must build a business case for it.
He said the questions his superiors at Viacom will ask are very straightforward: Can we make money? Can it enhance the brand? Can it create press and buzz?
And even with all responses in the affirmative, Gaylord said cost might still be an issue.
Richard Steiner of Turner Classic Movies agreed that deployment was a difficult issue, despite having a corporate parent in AOL Time Warner that could single-handedly launch his project on its cable systems. Steiner said many cable executives have to be educated about how his program works.
"The people at high enough levels to give the green light or invest something (in interactive projects) are not buying in enough yet," agreed AFI's Anna Marie Piersimoni.
Nonetheless, attendees at the AFI workshop's finale remained optimistic, swapping stories about the high response to viewer polls during Fox's NFL broadcasts and an interactive production of MTV's European Video Music Awards that generated a record number of SMS messages.
"Our dream is that one day this will not be called enhanced TV. It will just be TV," DeMartino said.
