Study: Subscribers want their interactive TV

From...

by David Lake

(IDG) -- The future of digital television will be in the hands of the Federal Communications Commission beginning this week. While the FCC considers how the business of interactive TV will be regulated, it's still controversial to assume that consumers actually want it. A recently released study, however, suggests that existing cable subscribers are ready for interactive television.

Almost 80 percent of digital-cable subscribers and 55 percent of analog-cable customers say they would like to have interactive television, which includes services such as personal-video recording, video-on-demand and Internet access, according to the nonprofit Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

These new findings conflict with earlier studies that say consumers aren't that interested in interactive television. A recent Cyber Dialogue survey found that 60 percent of American adults had no interest in interactive television. And Jupiter Research found that 4 out of 10 offline consumers couldn't think of a single interactive TV feature they were interested in.

But according to the association's study, the outlook among existing cable subscribers is much stronger. Almost 60 percent of digital-cable subscribers surveyed would like to use personal-video-recording services -- the No. 1 category -- that would allow them to easily store programming. More than 50 percent said they would like video-on-demand and the opportunity to interact with TV programs.

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Surfing the Net and making purchases are slightly less popular activities. Forty-three percent of digital-cable subscribers said they were interested in surfing the Web on TV, and 31 percent said they would like to make purchases.

A little marketing seemed to help boost the optimistic findings from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. After contacting the 525 respondents through a random sample of cable subscribers in six urban markets, the nonprofit showed them a brief video of what features they could expect from interactive TV.

This glimpse might have enhanced consumer enthusiasm for an unknown and largely untried service. "It's hard for people to respond to a concept if they don't understand the service," says the association's CEO and president, Char Beales. "We had people sit at a computer and view a video clip of interactive television and then interviewed them."

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Federal Communications Commission

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