Wired up for tomorrow’s world — today

Press, 5 March 1982, Page 16

Wired up for tomorrow’s world — today

• The stay-at-home society is just a cable’s length away. Already American families (like the one below) can literally live in their living room. A trip to the shops or the cinema is now simply a matter of pressing buttons from an armchair, thanks to the cable linking their television to a computer. And if they venture outdoors again, the same system will keep a watch for burglars. It could happen in Britain, too, writes RICHARD BROOKS, of the London “Sunday Times.”

When the heroine of a soap opera got caught in a love tangle, the TV scriptwriters in Columbus, Ohio, knew where to turn for advice. They asked viewers to decide — by pressing a button — which of two men she must leave. Such outlandish solutions to everyday problems come easily in Columbus, Ohio. For one thing it .is the town where James Thurber was born, for another, it is the birthplace of a revolution in cable TV. Columbus is a wired city, offering 30 channels of cable television. But what makes it different from almost every other American town with cable TV is the two-way system enabling viewers to “talk back” to their televisions. And not only that. The same two-way system has made possible electronic v ' shopping, information services and home security devices linked to police, fire and ambulance stations. More than 55,000 Crilumbus homes are wired to the Qube (pronounced Cube) system, which is owned by Warner Amex, a group formed in 1979 between film giant Warner and American Express. Among the subscribers are Bob and Becky Appleyard, who live in Upper Arlington, one of the more affluent suburbs. "Our home is a cinema, shop and police station all rolled into one,” Mr Appleyard says. They can also join in local TV debates, voting on political br consumer issues. They can take part in quizzes. Questions are flashed on the screen and viewers push a button on their living-room console. Their replies are immediately fed into the Qube computer and - the results put. back on the screen. There is even a 24-hour weather channel — particularly useful for Mr Appleyard, who is a service engineer. A radar picture of Columbus shows rain or snow moving across the city. One cold evening recently, Mr Appleyard watched a snow storm move across the screen, and could tell exactly when it would stop, so he could go out on a call. All this costs just $3O a month, including a $l5 premium charge for pay-TV movie channels. For another $l6 (plus $BOO installation), the Appleyards, along with another 5000 Columbus homes, also get the cable home security system. Doors and windows are wired with direct links from the house to the Qube computer, and then on to the police station. “It’s just like having a policeman in your house,” says Upper Arlington police chief Ken Borrer. For years the district had a rising crime rate. “Now it’s starting to fall,” Mr Borrer adds. “I’m convinced it is because potential thieves know about the Qube system, and because our men can very quickly be on the scene of any crime.” The Appleyards’ home also has a couple of smoke detectors linked via the computer to the fire station. Some homes have ah emergency button for alerting the ambulance., “We reckon to have saved up to 50 lives in the year since we have had the system,” says Mike Korodi, president of Warner Amex Security. Mr Korodi would like to expand the service with links to plumbers, electricians and doctors. “Rather than have to thumb through the Yellow Pages and take pot luck on an unknown plumber, we would offer a reliable service at the push of a button and a return phone call.” Mr Korodi, an engaging Hungarian emigre, believes that the service side of cable will be as big as the entertainment side within 10 years. Among his other cable

plans are energy ■ management - getting the computer to turn the heating on and off — and traffic control. Columbus has already had a small trial, in which the lights were changed depending on the density of the traffic.

Qube has now spread to Cincinnati and Pittsburg nearby, and will shortly arrive in Houston and Dallas. Like amoebas , more than 4500 different cable systems are working their way across the United States. Virtually all at present just offer oneway TV programmes, to about 24 million homes, But extra services are growing. Gus Hauser, president of Warner Amex Communications and the guru of the American cable industry, reckons that by.the end of the 1980 s at least 60 per cent of United States homes will be cabled, against 25 per cent now.

Big business realises that cable will be a prime communicator of the future, and is now grabbing its share. Time Inc.', publisher of the famous news weekly, now owns Denver-based American TV and Communications, the largest operator in the United States with 1.7 M subscribers. Time also owns Home Box Office, the New York pay TV movie channel. Last year Westinghouse paid .S7OOM for America’s second-largest cable operator, Teleprompter. Other big firms, like General Electric and United Artists, have also bought their way into cable. So have newspaper groups like Dow-Jones and the New York Times.

Most are now making money, though during the cable laying there was considerable expenditure. Even now, cable is still regarded more as a future investment. In 1980 total revenues for the operators from subscribers reached $2,238M, with profits of just SI6BM. The fastest rising sector is pay-TV, for which subscribers pay a premium in return for no advertisements to interrupt viewing. Pay-TV revenues in i 960, reached $574M, against'just SI9IM in 1978.

Apart from pay-TV, however, cable is an ideal medium for the men from Madison Avenue. One crucial factor is that cable often has an identifiable and clearly targeted audience. So, for example, a small cable company in a particular town can bring in local advertisements, in much the same way that the local paper does.

Although advertising revenue from cable was only SIOOM in 1980, compared with $lO billion for television, the figure could easily reach $4 billion by the end of the decade as cable eats away at network TV.

Procter and Gamble is the first major company to take cable seriously as an advertising medium, having committed S2SM over 10 years to U.S.A. Cable Network, the fifth largest cable programmer.

The audience is becoming increasingly defined by the cable programmers and producers. Though the most popular channels are movies, entertainment and sport, specialist channels are fast catching on.

The Christian Broadcasting Network, with 14 million subscribers, is second only in size to WTBS, the Atlantabased movie, news and entertainment channel. Other specialist channels, all among the top 20 in popularity, include Black Entertainment Television, Spanish International Network, and National Jewish Television.

Last summer 13 nuns entered the fray, starting the Eternal Word cable channel from Birmingham, Alabama. The equipment cost SIM, and they have to pay $60,000 a month for use of a satellite.

They are broadcasting four hours a day of prayers and religion, arid so far have signed up 300,000 subscribers. The nuns, like most cable programmers, are not yet making money, because of the considerable start-up costs.

Only a handful of programmers, such as WTBS, which goes to two-thirds of all cable subscribers and Home Box Office, are cur-

rently making money, though many more will as subscribers and advertising grow.

The new world which Columbus and parts of America have discovered will be found in Britain during the next few years. About two million and a half homes already receive 8.8. C. and I.T.V. by cable. Another two million live close enough to the system to be connected with ease. Last autumn Rediffusion was the first of seven cable firms to start a two-year experiment offering a movie channel, showing recent releases in five towns for about $23.56 a month. Rediffusion, like Visionhire, Radio Rentals and Greenwich Cablevision, which are following suit, do not expect to make money out of the trial. “We are putting down a marker to show what we are capable of doing, and that we would like to do more,” says Richard Dennis, director of cable at Rediffusion.

At present about 30,000 have taken subscriptions for the trial channels. The healthy sign is that very few have dropped out after paying for the first month or so. But until more join, other cable services, such as sport or council debates, which several cable firms are eager to start, cannot be ■justified financially.

Even so, Greenwich Cablevision is showing the way by letting local people put their own shows over the cable. This month Cablevision (Southall) announced it had raised $2.3M to install cable in the London suburb to relay its own community programmes, many of them in Hindustani for local Asians.

The Government is under increasing pressure to give more freedom to cable, not only from existing relayers but also from cable manufacturers like 8.1.C.C. and S.T.C., and electronics firms. Plessey Telecommunications managing director, Des Pitcher, a keen advocate of cable, believes that different consortia of companies should be granted licences to

install hardware and connect up customers. “Britain has both the hardware and soft-, ware capability to get the wired society into the country relatively quickly,” Mr Pitcher says.

Mr Pitcher is well aware that the Home Office, which still controls all broadcasting, is not a cable enthusiast. So the battle is now on between Home Secretary William Whitelaw and Kenneth Baker, the cablebacking Information Technology Minister.

For the past three months Mr Baker has been telling all about his $23 billion plan for the re-cabling of Britain. This would mean putting down new broad-band cable for two-way use, not just for TV and satellites, but also for telecommunications, home shopping, banking, security and remote meter reading.

A similar plan is to go ahead in West Germany, and has greatly interested British ministers and industrialists. The Department of Industry is anxious to set up an experimental wired city, ideally in the Surrey Docks development area. It would link homes, offices and factories. This year also sees the start of some trials in remote meter reading in Milton Keynes and parts of London, plus an extension of Tesco’s electronic shopping experiment.

Meanwhile the Cabinet office’s information technology committee has recommended relaxing the present restrictions on cable. Its report, based on a six-month study, calls for an early decision by the Government. The Prime Minister and Sir Geoffrey Howe are keen on the idea in principle, particularly as this is Information Technology Year.

A favourable announcement seems more than likely this year, particularly as satellite TV, which has to use cable to get into , homes, received the go-ahead recently from the Home Secretary. It will be a tricky path to navigate, but Columbus has shown the way.