Cables and Cassettes-The Television Revolution

This is the first of a two-part feature. Part two will appear Monday.

"The media must be liberated, must be removed from private ownership and commercial sponsorship, must be placed in the service of all humanity. We must make the media believable. We must assume conscious control over the videosphere. We must wrench the intermedia network free from the archaic and corrupt intelligence that now dominates it."

-Gene Youngblood in Radical Software, a journal of new developments and possibilities for the alternate television movement.

IF YOU compare the first two issues of Radical Software with the January 6 issue of Variety, you will get two very different views of the same phenomenon. Radical Software calls it the alternate television movement and Variety calls it the cassette revolution. The names the magazines use and the way they talk about it betray the diametrically opposed positions they take regarding its development.

What the two are talking about are technological advances which will make possible-indeed inevitable-the first major restricting of the commercial television industry since its inception. If the alternate television movement succeeds, television will not be broadcast, it will be narrowest: that is, television will no longer originate solely from the highly centralized monolithic structure the networks now form. The networks will be decentralized, removed from private ownership and commercial sponsorship, free from censorship of any kind. Television will become the center of a revolutionary communications system which could provide the public with instant access to any and all information that can be recorded either visually or by sound. Moreover, everyone will have equal access to the airwaves.

Such a system is technologically possible in the near future-in his book Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood says it is possible by 1978. But if Youngblood's prediction is to come true, it will be in spite of the current communications industry.

Whether the alternate television movement succeeds or not television as we know it is in for some radical changes in the next few years. Video-cassettes and videocartridges will be marketed. Cable television (CATV), heretofore providing only network programming to areas outside the range of broadcast TV, will move into the major urban areas, offering a wider selection and, hopefully, better programming. The larger concern of the alternate television movement is, of course, that a medium with such potential not be limited to televising live home games of the New York Knickerbockers or offering instant access to the Best of Ed Sullivan. But if the eight-page section on TV cassettes in Variety is any indication of how the industry views the new developments, then the power wielded by the corporate giants of the communications industry can only slow down the impending communications revolution.

In order to give an idea of the discrepancy between the communications system television could become and the direction the industry is headed, let me list some of the possibilities as predicted in Radical Software:

10 by 6-foot wall screens;

video telephones capable of transmitting and receiving;

regional video telecommand library systems by 1978. This system would allow the individual to telephone regional video library switchboards ordering programs from among thousands listed in catalogs. The program could then be transmitted by cable to the home television set;

videofax or homofax process of facsimile replications and distributions by which one could receive newspapers, mail, data from libraries over home receivers;

one-hour video tape cartridges and cassettes are now available with 180,000 frames, each of which can be screened individually or sequentially. If two pages of a book were photographed on each frame, 360,000 pages of printed information could be stored on a small, cheap cartridge.

In terms of what can be done with the above hardware-all of which is within the grasp of today's technology-the goals of the cassette industry can only be seen as reactionary. Rather than try to develop a revolutionary communications system, the cassette industry has chosen to try to set up a system by which each piece of information is sold bit by bit. And they have not even been able to do that successfully; at present there are at least thirteen different video cartridge/ cassette type systems, all of which are incompatible (see chart). All manufacturers seem to echo the voice of Gerald Citro, Marketing Manager of North American Philips, who says in Variety, "Standardization will help avoid confusion on the part of the consumer, reduce the price, and encourage the development of new markets." But while all manufacturers agree that standardization is the key to marketing videocassettes, they continue to stick by their own products.

MOREOVER, by charging about $10 per half hour of video recording, the industry is imposing marketing limitations on itself that will preclude any possibility of liberating television in any real sense. Even industry people themselves question how many people are going to be willing to pay $20 to $30 to see the same feature film over and over again, or even $5 to $10 to rent a cartridge of their favorite film. As A.N. Feldzamen of the Encyclopedia Britannica Corporation says in Variety, "People will probably not want to see the same film over and over again unless it is a particularly unusual 'sensation' type of film, viewed to turn on, or another special type. Pornography will probably be an exception to this rule." Indeed Feldzamen and others marketing videocassettes might well be forced to take an interest in pornography-how many people will continue to buy bulky, expensive encyclopedias when they realize that the entire contents of the Britannica can easily be stored on a small $10 videocassette.

The videocassette industry is not going to get off the ground on a large scale unless it is successful in creating its own highly specialized markets. Obviously TV cassette manufacturers will be able to sell their wares to cable TV stations for programming, but corporations that are interested in developing a mass market on the order of the recording industry or the printing industry have begun to create their own marketing schemes. Some talk in terms of creating special entertainment programming for airport or hotel lobbies. But most distributors have economic interests in other parts of the communications industry and are not about to forget it. The question then becomes: Will the Britannica Corporation market a $10 videotape of their product when they can charge hundreds of dollars for the same thing in a different form? Will Twentieth Century Fox release their films without considering how it will affect theatre box offices? Probably not.

Equally disturbing is the fact that the industry is determined to market its product in as closed a form as possible. Only four of the thirteen major videocassette/cartridge units are being marketed with record capability, thus wasting what is probably the single most attractive and versatile feature of the unit. From a piece in Radical Software by Frank Gillette: "Ostensibly, CBS has fused a film cartridge and television monitor for purposes best rationalized by image resolution and the range of information already committed to available film. This is a flimsy excuse. The research time and money represented by EVR would have equally sufficed to develop and perfect a tape system subsuming EVR's picture resolution and information access while also having a record mode compatible with most TV cameras. Excepting time-choice, EVR does not alter the general complexion of television viewing....EVR is an extension of the CBS network, a tautological tool-not a tool for creating a new variety of network. It fails to put the 'consumer' in direct contact with the processes directing the in-formation he receives-his information continues to be directed exclusively by external sources."

If the videocassette industry continues to develop along the lines the industry is directing it, viewers will simply have a wider choice of programming and the advantage of being able to see it at their own convenience. The videocassette industry is, for purely commercial reasons, ignoring the special property of videotape-information storage-and instead is using the cassette as a means of distributing that information. Cable television-not cassettes-is the most efficient means of transmitting the information that videotape can store, and, together with videotape, is capable of restructuring television in such a way as to eliminate the need for mass marketing and allow the transmission of anything, regardless of how limited its marketing appeal may be.

IN Expanded Cinema, Gene Young blood tells us that "man is conditioned by his environment and that 'environment' for contemporary man is the intermedia network. We are conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature. Once we've agreed upon this, it becomes immediately obvious that the structure and content" of television is of cardinal importance.

In this context, it becomes obvious how the profit motive and resulting structure of the television industry are solely responsible for its paltry content. The very fact that television programming is bought by commercial sponsorship means that the primary function of any program is to sell the product that sponsors it.

Moreover, commercial television, unlike what is envisioned by the alternate television movement, operates on a closed system of aesthetics as well as a closed communications system. From Expanded Cinema again: "To satisfy the profit motive, the commercial entertainer must give the audience what it expects, which is conditional on what it has been receiving, which is conditional on what it previously received, ad infinitum. Situation comedies, suspense, westerns, are all redundant in that they operate on the basis of what is probable. This noninformative quality of television is particularly true in terms of the highly centralized structure of television. Because it is broadcast from such centralized sources, the programming must appeal to millions of millions of viewers and be able to manipulate them along the same lines of conditioned response. By these means, not only are the more discrete social enclaves in our culture entirely ignored, but also the destructive habit of unthinking response to formulas is perpetuated. And not only are shows broadcast because of their lowest-common-denominator appeal, but also they insure their own popularity by destroying the audience's ability to appreciate and participate in the creative process.

The only way to break out of this vicious circle-and it is vicious when you realize that television is the most frequently used means of communication in this country-is through a real structural change in the television and this is something that the videocassette/cartridge industry is not about to provide. Cable television can, however, provide that needed change.