LOS ANGELES -- Click on Jennifer Aniston's dress to buy it, or watch a Friends episode with seven different endings.
Interactive television -- or enhanced TV, as many developers now prefer to call it -- may seem too young an industry for clichés. But these hypothetical chestnuts of next-generation broadcasting are as overused as they are outdated, said TV producers at the American Film Institute's sixth annual eTV workshop Wednesday in Los Angeles.
"Look, we don't want people clicking all over our shirts or sofas, and we don't want seven endings -- we just want the right one," said Todd Stevens, co-executive producer of NBC's Friends.
When AFI launched its enhanced TV workshop in 1998, most U.S. consumers had neither broadband nor cell phones, and TiVo had yet to become a common synonym for "ad zapper." This year, the annual program again unites television producers with mentor groups of technologists, production execs and interactive designers, who will collaborate through early December to prototype new technological possibilities for broadcast storytelling.
Through a hands-on production process, eight jury-selected enhanced TV projects from networks including Bloomberg, ABC, Disney, PBS, and FUSE Networks will be transformed into working prototypes -- some of which, according to organizers, may end up in near-term public release.
In contrast with previous years, this year's workshop seemed marked by participation of higher-profile teams. It also had more prominent backing from networks, cable operators and hardware companies. Most of the eight projects involve current "conventional TV" shows with existing fans and advertisers, instead of the riskier, all-new, high-concept projects common in previous years.
And this time around, enhanced TV isn't limited to television screens. Microsoft is teaming up with developers to create new forms of interactive content for the Xbox platform, and they're targeting wider audiences than gamers alone.
"Soon, you'll be seeing new kinds of narrative entertainment experiences, which are neither games nor conventional film and television," said J.D. Alley, Creative Director for Microsoft's Xbox Project LEO group.
Alley belongs to a team of mentors and producers joining forces on a Battlestar Galactica interactive TV project for Vivendi Universal. The resulting prototype will be presented to a group of industry peers in early December, around the time of the 25th anniversary of the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica TV Series. Universal is also releasing a new Battlestar-themed game for Xbox and PlayStation 2 in September and a six-disc DVD set of the original series in October. It also will introduce an all-new TV series, Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming on the Sci Fi Channel Dec. 7.
Team members say their eTV prototype could be designed for Xbox, PlayStation or both platforms, with synchronized experiences timed to occur while the show airs, or offline content intended for viewing at other times.
Other entries in this year's workshop include eTV projects for the Disney show Kim Possible and ABC's Celebrity Mole II, and an interactive pledge drive project intended to make seasonal public television fundraising drives "less intrusive" for viewers, said KQED-TV senior producer Bernard Gundy.
Funding is also a top priority for AFI workshop organizers.
"TV is a hits-driven business, and it's all about money," said AFI New Media Ventures Director Nick DeMartino. "Reality TV isn't special because people love the form, it's special because it doesn't cost a lot and makes a fortune. When someone comes up with an interactive application that's small investment and high payoff, we'll see a major industry breakthrough."
"Network television production is a vast and complex ecosystem, and enhanced TV is a small but growing part of that world," DeMartino said.
"An outsider might say, 'I don't see anything -- eTV hasn't happened yet,' because it's not on every channel everywhere all the time. But eventually it will be, and we won't call it enhanced or interactive -- just TV."
Some U.S. developers point to News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch's recent purchase of DirectTV as a bright spot for the medium's future: When one company owns both content and distribution platform, the logic goes, new forms of interactive programming may more likely be produced.
Other indicators of life on the eTV landscape include AT&T's recent interactive successes with live SMS and toll-free wireless phone voting during American Idol, and a growing number of viewers claimed by producers of enhanced pay-per-view sporting events like NASCAR or NFL.
Developers may also benefit from growing interest among network execs for TiVo-proof programming such as NBC's new reality show The Restaurant, which features densely embedded product placements for American Express, Coors and Mitsubishi.
"We're starting to see a lot of major consumer brands get involved in eTV now, and they don't consider this speculative R&D," said Ben Mendelson, president of the Interactive Television Alliance, which counts Proctor & Gamble and Kraft among its board member companies. "Automotive companies probably get the most out of enhanced TV right now, because they can afford it and because they need targeted relationships. Corporations like Ford and Chrysler need to push customers to test-drive cars, and the kinds of integrated ad formats that eTV makes possible can help them accomplish that."
But as interactive developers debated the pros and cons of "The Rashômon Factor" -- a term coined by AFI New Media Ventures Associate Director Anna Marie Piersimoni for programs that tell one story through multiple points of view -- some television producers called for a reality check.
"Audiences are lazy and TV still caters to the lowest common denominator," quipped Fifth Wheel and Blind Date Co-Executive Producer Harley Tat. "We're operating from a heady place where we're thinking about the future, but plenty of viewers don't have PCs and haven't upgraded their cell phones in years. If the information isn't right in front of them while they're microwaving mac and cheese, it's not going to happen. ETV has to be so simple that they can do it half-baked and horizontal on the couch."
