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t's not often you get inside the office of someone in charge of television. Not television programming, not television business, not even television technology-just television. There is, after all, but a relative handful of people occupying a position to say, "This is what it's gonna look like," and then steer the programming people, the business people and the technology people in that direction
Edward D. Horowitz is one

IIONOIIIITZ
convinced they need. Refreshingly candid, he'll probably be proved right with his plans and predictions of upcoming neat gadgets and goshwow capabilities. Of course, for every one of those gadgets and capabilities, a price is paid, either on a monthly bill or in terms of civil liberties. Once your private-channel choices are made public to marketers and others with lists of what you download from the cable-company computer, your TV may be transformed into a ntt'trtitor of your viewing and shopping activities.

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of that handful. As chairman and CEO of Viacom Broadcasting-one of the four divisions of the conglomerate Via-

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Paramount Pictures, Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon and much else-Horowitz, 46, is

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in charge of making sure the company keeps up with

changes in society. From who's

watching Rcn t Stinrpl, 10 how we read CD-ROM manuals, to the reasons why we
channel-surf, Horowitz has to anticipate the curve and react, or risk his company's obsolescence. As Viacom prepares a living experiment in California's Castro Valley-site of an interac-

largast ert.tet'tain.ment
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in, arrd what are you workirrg orr

teclnologically? Ed Horowitz: \We clearly

are a programming and entertainment company

tive cable-TV/computer field test-that means walking a minefield strewn with the bodies of eight-track tape and Cartrivision-format VCRs. It also means-despite his Columbia University MBA and a respected, 20-year career in
cable and broadcasting-that Horowitz has to be both a visionary and a carnival barker. A salesperson, first and foremost, he unapologetically espouses the gospel of giving customers what they want, or thlnk they want, or can be
?

first. \We develop content. I use the word "content" versus programming because in the world we're migrating into, which is the computer environment, programming means something different. The same with "software." So we create one-hour and 30-minute content for traditional television distribution, or we stack product togethqr along with other people's product and create a network like MTV or Nickelodeon.

Ve are now looking at changing

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the

paradigm of programming. The first iteration of

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that is the development of games. Ve're taking

content and characters that have been developed on our networks and shows, and using that as the basis to create spinoffs like the Rocko

game fbased on the Nickelodeon animated series Rorkot Modem Life). AYI: Acnally, that doesn't sound uery reuolutionary. People have bcen making games out of
pLtp-culture characters since

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Orphan Annie.

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EH: No, I would say it is probably not I mean, television isn't revolutionary, but then MTV came along and changed television. So there's an element
revolutionary.
rame along of, "Are you doing something radical in tech-

nology" or, "Are you doing something

and rhanged radical in content?"

televisirn

"

AYh Okay, thereCastrtt Valley: Arc

in techrroktgy, doing something radical in content?
doirrg sonrctling radical

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EH: Castro Valley is a community south, and

little bit east of San Francisco. It's a pretty good reflection of the overall U.S. demoa graphic, and it has
a

cable system we've rebuilt

from scratch over the last two years. Ve've applied the latest in communication technology into that environment, and what we've created there is an environment where the consumer can get bandwidth on demand.

AYI; Meaning...?
EH: Meaning you can get what you want to watch when you wanna watch it.

at three in the moming,

AVI: So if I get the urge /o see Terminator I can just call it up?
EH: That's correct. Ve have created
a

tech-

nological transportation environment that is capable of supporting this. Ve call it videoon-demand.

AVI: Nor "pay-per-uiew"?

3

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EH: No, it's not pay-per-view. You'll pay for

the movies as you view them, but pay-per-view typically is Imovies starting at] prescheduled ftimes]. Video-on-demand is at 3 in the morning, or 2'47 in the morning, or 11'16 at night. You can pick any title out of a library, and it'll start at the press of a button. You will have VCR functionality, so you can start it, fast-forward it, rewind it, until you're done watching it, and then it goes off.

missed. Rlghts are going to be our biggest chal-

lenge in all of this. However, there are certain stations that lend themselves to this pretty well, MTV and Nickelodeon, we own most of the rights. Showtime is another one.

LYlz This sounds like a take on the "interactiue teleuision" we'ue all heard so much about. What do you think of the term?

EH: It's like "500 channels"-it

AVI: I
gather consumers don't like the term
"pay-per-uiew"?

doesn't

mean anything anymore. The terms "interac-

tive television" and "new media" have lost all

a great term to use. lt's

EH: It's probably not

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very consumer-friendly category, and part of it's in the name. not

a

meaning. "lnformation superhighway" has lost all meaning. In my view, the act of getting information when you want it is interactive television, that's one level. The second is being able to order what you want when you

'interafiiue

AVI So you're calling

it

"uideo-on-demand"? else.

EH: Ve're going to call it something teleuisinn'

and

I don't know what yet. One other issue is, "Vhat bill does it appear on?" Because if
you're already paying $:o to $+o for a cable bill and then see another $25 worth of ondemand-content bills, how are you going to feel about that? Probably not too good. So we're taking a look at allowing consumers to use their fcredit or charge] cards and have it automatically go to the card account.
AYlz What
else do

want to watch it-to go to a library of content. Or perhaps interactive TV is really personal TV where I generate content as opposed to viewing content. AYI; Cenerate
content?
a

hew media'

haue

EH: Vhere there's

camera in my house and

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I generate content and I send

it to someone

else

and we have a conversation. Just like you being on a computer forum, where you get on and talk

to people by typing in your

messages.

you haue at Castro Valley?

AYL In the recent movie VithHonors, a

lege student's thesis

col-

EH: Ve've built in functionality so that if you want to watch shows that are coming up in the week and you're not going to be home, you just have to push a button fon the set-top cable boxl, and it will inform your VCR to turn
on and record the event, assuming the VCR is on and there's a tape in it. lilZe're also testing a "virtual VCR." Let's say you're home and you want to watch something that appeared over the last 72 hours. You should be able to call it up. Vhat we're going to try to come up with is a list of channels in which we can get the rights-rights are the big issueto let the consumer dip in and watch what he
4

is based on the idea of "elea tronic democracyi' where we'll uote and interact with lawmakers uia computer and cable. Do you see this ever happening?

EH: You have to ask, "does it offer the consumer something he wants?" Right now, 900-

line numbers provide the ability to vote fin polls]. Clearly, the environment already supports that. But it does not offer an environment where you can speak, nor does it offer an environment where your opinion is typed in at home and recorded that way. It still is very
much a Yes/No environment. Also, up to now, these kinds of votes have
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been interesting, but didn't have any definitive effect or consequence. lf the consumer

could participate in his local city council meeting and the council said, "Ve're gonna vote based on the votes that come in," then
there's a consequence. But I have a feeling that

won't happen. The council may say, "Look, we understand what the majority of the present viewing audience feels, but we don't think that represents our constituency, and we're voting on behalf of them and not the views of our specific, moment-in-time view-

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fiink lllfls
as a tape

ership." There's room for voter abuse, and for a kind of immediate, emotional response that may or may not be well thought-out.

AYlz With uideo-on-demand and uirtual

VCRs, are uideo stores going to be
obsolete?

medium uuill he

years fl]Ortld

ftr

another

lett years."

EH: No. First of all, it's going to take 15 until the distribution networks have rebuilt themselves to even consider offering these services. And I think the market will expand, as opposed to share-shift. There are people who don't now Jro to video stores. In
fact, only 20 percent of U.S. households go to the video store. \il/hen HBO was created, we found that the audience that watched HBO

to the movie theater. So what HBO did was exploit an audience base that didn't participate in the movie-going business. I think you'll find that offering content at home will expand the category as opposed to closing down Blockbuster stores.
never went AYlz How long do you
remain around?

think VCRs will

EH: As a medium of tape, or as the ability to record? I think VCRs as a tape medium will be around for another ten years, and what I think is gonna happen is that as computers
become more intelligent, there will be a number of people offering virtual-VCR functionality, even if not in the form of a VCR like we have today. And everyone's going to have

a VCR in the house; they probably won't 42 AuorovlDEo

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throw it away-they'll just use it for watch ing home movies.
AYlz Recordable
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EH: I think it's near-term, within the next few years. It may not be a disc. $/hat we're talking about is a digital storage environment. You may not be pressing a disc, just stor-

deodiscs ?

ing Ipictures and sound] in

RAM

IRandom Access Memory]. The biggest challenge we have is com-

ing up with a navigation system that

allows a consumer to look up what's on

and when it's on, and get to where he

wants to go, right now. The consumer no longer has patience. The fax machine is pervasive, there's no longer a day or two

for a letter to get to you. Between e-mail

and the fax machine, the world has become urgent. Cellular phones have made contact with an individual virtually ubiquitous. Phones in airplanes-right now it's [mostly] one-way, it's going to evolve to two-way. The sense of urgency-and the ability to respond to that sense of urgency-will be the fundamental success factor of any business
going into the next century.

AVI: TTris all makes cttnsumers itfantile-"l want it and I waut it

Is that troubling?

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EH: \7ho am I to judge what the consumer wants? He's my customer. And lf I'm going to succeed, I'm going to give

him what he wants.

AYI

Well, "he" is

us.

EH: And I have the same demands. Vhen I turn on that light switch, I want the lights to go on right now. Vhen I pick up that phone, I want a dial tone right now. And just as we have things that have become what we term "utilities" Isuch as telephones], that's where
we're headed. Cable in the home, it used to be a luxury, now it's a utility. Computers, still a luxury, will evolve into a utility. It's just a matter of time.

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