1
INTERACTIVE TELEVISION OR ENHANCED TELEVISION?
The Dutch users interest in applications of ITV via set-top boxes
1. Introduction
For at least three decades now the promise of interactive television (ITV) as a
revolutionary new medium has not been fulfilled. Already in the 1970s several two-way
cable TV projects were launched in de US and Western Europe, to be followed by
particular two-way cable services under the label of video-on-demand in the 1980s and
full-service networks in the 1990s. None of these innovations resulted in the breakthrough
of ITV. Up to this time the rise of the Internet and broadband connections using not only
cable but also telephone wires and satellite links has not produced popular ITV services
either.
The reasons for these market failures may be technical (lack of standardization, bandwith
and applicable hardware or software), economic (lack of investment owing to failing
prospects of returns or the present general ICT business crisis) and social-cultural (the
habitual use of one-way television consumption in leisure time). But the most important
reason might be found in the answer to the key question whether there is a sufficient users
interest in practicing some kind of interactivity in watching television. This is the key
question from the demand side (the viewers or the actual and potential users of ITV). The
equivalent key question from the supply side is whether ITV really offers something
completely new as compared to traditional television? The new thing would be
interactivity. But what exactly is interactive in interactive television?
There is no agreement on the definition of ITV (Rafaeli, 1988, Rada, 1995, Steur, 1995,
Carey, 1997, Jensen & Toscan, 1999, Stewart, 1999, Van Dijk & De Vos, 2001). The most
common and simple definition comes from Jensen & Toscan (1999: 16): ‘”two-way TV”,
in which the viewer can make programming choices and produce user input.’ In most
definitions more user choice and the possibility of user input having more or less direct
influence on programme content, that is making a real difference to programmes, are the
prominent parts. However, more choices would not be a revolutionary change of the
medium of television in the era of the VCR and multiple channels. But user input directly
influencing programme content could be such a change. It would mean acting or
interacting with the medium of television in stead of only reacting to and zapping on the
medium. These four kinds of activity could be labelled as viewing or using ITV and placed
on the following continuum. See Table 1.
Table 1 Continuum of indications of interactivity in definitions of ITV
Actor indication
Activity indication
Activities concerned
‘Users’ ‘Exchanging’,
‘Interacting’
Communicating
‘Acting” Producing
information
‘Reacting’
Choosing from menus and
making transactions
‘Viewers’ ‘Zapping’
Choosing
programmes
and
channels
Page 1 of 15 
Convention