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Cable operators and programmers are developing some intriguing program ideas. Jerrold Electronics and Mattel, the toymaker, are putting together a package of games and educational courses, called Play Cable, that the viewer can participate in by using a Jerrold home minicomputer (price: $400). The package includes gambling games and a football game for armchair quarterbacks.
Warner Cable Corp. is testing in Columbus a "two-way" cable system that enables viewers to talk back to their sets by pressing buttons on a hand-held console (price: $10.95). The programs are local news and talk shows on which performers ask questions of the audience. Every seven seconds a master computer scans the 30,000 homes getting the service and tallies how many are pressing a yes and how many a no button; the response totals are flashed on the screen.
Thus, at a town meeting last July, a local planning body took votes on zoning and other questions among citizens watching at home as well as those in the hall. Later, Ralph Nader, visiting Columbus, asked how many watchers would back a petition to change children's advertising (an overwhelming majority pushed the yes button). Advertisers are also making heavy use of the system. Bill Cosby, pitching for Ford Pintos, asks how many viewers want more information on the car; Ford gets a computer printout of hot prospects who voted yes.
The system is very expensive, and rival cable operators doubt that it can be made to pay. But it is already having an impact on cable programming outside Columbus. In March, Warner began selling to cable operators nationwide 13 hours a day of children's programming, approved by Columbus viewers, under the general name Nickelodeon. Sample shows: Pinwheel for preschoolers, featuring puppets, mime and dance; Video Comic Books, showing pages of the Green Lantern and Space Ranger with dialogue balloons, voice-overs and sound effects; and America Goes Bananaz for teenagers, a mix of zany comedy and rap sessions about drugs, birth control, sibling rivalry.
HBO has begun transmitting on a second channel, offering a selection of family programs: G and PG movies rather than the R-rated flicks often seen on the parent service, and a series of quality children's programs. That, says Chairman Gerald Levin, is only the start: "The consumer will be presented with many services from which to choose, each slightly less broad-based, until we get down to a pottery channel."
Anthony Hoffman, cable-TV analyst for Bache, Halsey Stuart Shields Inc., the brokerage house, foresees shows produced by special-interest magazines. "There will be a Popular Mechanics of the Air and a Skiing of the Air," he predicts, and they will reach huge audiences of cultists who rarely read but who watch a lot of TV.