Cyberspace & TV Land - March 1998

We are raising the post-television generation. Back in '88, when a member of the SageNet team was living in Tokyo, Bob Pittman - founder of MTV and now president and COO of AOL - came to town and stopped in at the Foreign Correspondents Club for a press luncheon. He talked about how we, the television generation, consume media. We're different from our parents, he said. They took in information linearly; we absorb it in large amounts, in multiple subjects - simultaneously.

Linear to lateral - a tectonic shift. Now another one's occurring: Note that Bob was talking about consumption. The post-television generation (spoken of by Nickelodeon president Herb Scannell at the Digital Kids conference last summer), on the other hand, doesn't just consume - or interact, for that matter. It creates, television broadcasters and Web publishers say. The Web, they believe, is the medium that will allow children to create as well as consume and communicate. (So far, nobody's been able to come up with a better verb than "use" for Web users - maybe that's because only a very generic verb works. Or maybe we'll see a brand-new one emerge.)

Scott Webb, senior vp of Nickelodeon Mediaworks, said at the conference, "I think kids are thirsty to understand how the world works, and television can only do so much of that. The Web is a medium that requires thinking and doing, and that's what kids are wired for.... [The Web] is the perfect medium for kids."

Idit Harel, formerly of the MIT Medial Lab and CEO of MaMaMedia (see Part 2 of our December issue for her comments about the Web in 1998), said that the kids born in this decade and the next are/will be "very media-savvy, and they expect to create as part of the total experience."

Jim Steyer, CEO of JP Kids - a new TV, and eventually Web, production company based in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York - said that the Web represents "an opportunity for kids to own their own medium,... to own that brand, to own the stuff that they create,... to build the media environment that they deserve...."

But that was then (almost a year ago!); this is now. This month, we bring you what television pundits are saying now about TV and the Web. Here's our table of contents:

• Perspectives on children's TV from the programmers themselves
• The view from MSN's TV forum
• What Sage has learned from all these guys
• Great children's TV links

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Two perspectives on TV and the Web
The picture that Bob Pittman painted 10 years ago has morphed into a scene more like the early days of TV. Bob added a new idea and a new channel to an existing medium (TV) with a fairly new tool (the remote). Today, with the help of people like Mark Andreesen (creator of the first Web browser) and Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the Web), we're talking about a whole new medium - one that, in turn, is turning its "viewers" into programmers.

In an interview with Sage, Tina Sharkey of Children's Television Workshop, showed how cable TV and its tool started us down this road. She told us that, as the remote was becoming ubiquitous in North American homes, variety shows - like Sonny & Cher, Carol Burnett, etc. - were in decline. The remote allowed channel-surfers to create their own "variety shows" by pasting together different pieces of different shows from the various channels they chose. But the Web and the keyboard empower the audience infinitely more. Now they're not only consuming their own personal variety shows, they're telling the programmers what to produce. And, on top of that, the audience is writing pieces of the product itself - in the community or forum parts of Web sites and online services - by far the most interesting parts of the "programming" to many online users.

Are TV programmers responding? Yes and no. They're feeling their way - trying to figure out how to respond to a new kind of audience at the same time they're trying to figure out this new medium. Here's the view from inside the efforts of two excellent programmers, Nickelodeon and Children's Television Workshop. Representing them are Craig Calder, director of marketing, Nickelodeon Online, and Tina Sharkey, group vice president and general manager, CTW Online.

Sage: Why are you on the Web?

Craig: "Nickelodeon's on the Web because that's where kids are, and it's our goal not just to be a cable TV network - our goal is to be wherever kids are. We see this as an important medium for reaching kids not only because it allows us to provide entertainment, but also to maintain a dialogue with kids. [Could you elaborate a little bit on dialoguing with kids?] It's a tricky subject because of the safety issues - we have experienced that in working with AOL, in chat rooms, though - knock on wood - we haven't had many problems with that. The Internet is great for putting kids in touch with kids and also creating an opportunity for kids to have a dialogue with the network - to tell us what they do and do not like about what the network is doing.... We're very serious about creating an environment where kids rule."

Tina: "We're on the Web because it's an absolute extension of our mission to educate and delight children and their families across all media. Finally there's a platform that's a perfect place to celebrate what we know and believe about the ways in which kids and their families interact with entertainment and education in a real-time environment.

"In many ways if 30 years ago we'd taken a keyboard and plugged it into a TV set, we wouldn't have changed what we did very much.... When Joan Cooney founded CTW she was a pre-school teacher, and she noticed that her little students were singing commercials in the classroom. And she said, 'Wait a second! If advertisers can distill their messages into 15- and 30-second spots, what if I did that for the letter A?' We look at the Web and the keyboard as that same gateway.... We're about collaborative family entertainment - our audience collaborating with us, parents collaborating with their children, siblings collaborating with their siblings and friends - and also contemporary collaboration with a platform. [The Web] is an input device as well as an output device. Traditional television is an output device - pre-produced media. This medium is more about the ways in which you use it. It only starts to become new media when you're engaged with it...."

Sage: What does TV do best, and what does the Web do best?

Craig: "TV obviously does sound, animation, and full-motion video. We're experimenting with streaming technologies right now, but they still can't compete [with TV]."

Tina: "In the current stage of the Web, with limited bandwidth, TV is much better - with moving pictures, audio, video, things like that. TV can engage an audience, but the audience can't respond to that engagement. It's a one-to-many medium. The Web we see as a completely one-to-one medium, where every user is having a one-to-one experience."

Sage: Do the two media complement each other to some extent?

Craig: "They can. I think the real difference is that, from our standpoint, TV is much more effective as a branding tool - we can use sound and motion video to evoke a feeling from our audience - it's hard to do that on the Web. The Web right now is a tool people can use to find information or actually do things in a new environment. That's one thing you can't do with TV." [After talking with both Craig and Tina about this, we understand their challenge - with a very narrowband Web - much better; see "What Sage has learned..." for more on this.]

Tina: "Yes and no. They complement each other because there's a brand awareness and because of limited bandwidth. When you interact with our brands you already have in your mind a character that's been in your life, that you have a relationship with - television establishes that, does that support - you get to know our characters really well on TV. So when you go to the Web, you already know how Elmo laughs, how he talks - you know his personality. So it's instantaneous. Because you know them so well, you understand where they're coming from. If you're a media outlet and can't establish characters in that way, you're handicapped. That's what is unique about a cross-media company like ours."

Sage: What does the Web bring to the party - what opportunities does it present programmers and audience?

Craig: "Way down the line, we see it as another medium to provide programming on-demand, and it also gives us an opportunity to really bring kids together internationally. We have Web sites all over the world right now, and the Web is the perfect environment for kids to interact with each other globally. A goal for us is to be more globally focused."

Tina: "I think the huge benefit of being on the Web, especially for children's programmers, is - rather than sitting in our offices and conceiving our ideas - we have an audience that's providing ideas. Traditionally, even with a ton of audience-testing, programmers were still delivering a package turnkey to their audience. Our goal online is to be messy! - to start a conversation but not finish it. If you finish it, there's no room for the audience. I like to think of them as participants - that our online brands and assets are as much informed by the way people use them as by our ideas. You're never out of beta online.... I love the fact that they named this company a 'workshop' 30 years ago! They had the foresight back then to know that it would always be a workshop, with constant product development.... By listening in our community section [in the Web site], we're engaged with our community in real time. We're no longer a media company that produces - we're a media company that facillitates and enables."

Sage: How could you use the Web better?

Craig: "To allow kids to interact with each other. But aside from chat, what we're doing right now is multi-player games. We've been pretty successful in terms of initial technology - we've got multiplayer trivia games on the site. And now we're working on some actual multi-player games that are more in line with what kids are doing: We're testing a capture-the-flag game right now, where 8 kids can play at one time - a video game with no guns or blood. It's more a strategy and a cooperation game."

Tina: "By paying as close attention to actually what's happening and how people are interacting with our brands and listening and responding to it. Because a large portion of our audience is pre-literate, bandwidth is an issue. The more bandwidth, the better our products are going to become."

Sage: What did we miss - is there anything you'd like to add?

Craig: "We're actually launching a site based on Nick Jr. [just launched last week, 3/4/98], our early-morning pre-school programming block. It'll have activities primarily built around thinking skills, and it's designed for parents and pre-schoolers to go into it together. We're gonig to launch a game every week designed around 'Blue's Clues,' for developing the skills the show is concentrating on that week. That's the only kid-directed area in the site; the rest is parent-directed.... It's so parents can interact with a pre-schooler's Web experience and help them develop not only thinking skills, but also Web skills. My three-year-old doesn't need me now to click around. She's developed those mouse skills. It's the reality that kids are going to be encountering computers earlier and earlier, and this is a way to incorporate that with cognitive skills. The site also has areas where parents can provide feedback to the Nick Jr. people - ask questions, tell them what they do and don't like about the site. Each week a question will be answered by the Nick Jr. research people and posted for other parents to read....

"We also do an entire teachers' site, built around Nickelodeon's Cable in the Classroom. It includes lesson plans, teaching materials, video tapes. Last month a lot of the plans were based on Black History Month. My daughter's teacher, who vaguely knew I was involved with Nickelodeon, came up to me recently and said she found it such a great resource - she downloaded a [science] lesson plan on air [what we breathe], based on the 'Mr. Wizard' show."

Tina: "We're not for children, we're for families, of which children are a key member.... We've always developed our media in parallel form. That's an important distinction at this moment in time because this is not like a TV set that you can just turn on; you have to be engaged in order for this to be an effective platform, so the parent is more important than ever."

Sage: Would you share with us some of your favorite kids' Web sites [not necessarily TV sites]?

Craig: "Here are some of my choices for well-done kids' sites: Head Bone Zone, FreeZone, Bonus.com, and 'On2,' an Online NewsHour for students."

Tina: "Purple Moon (for girls 8-12), KidsCom, The Discovery Channel Online (see comment in our links list at bottom), Bonus.com, and AOL's kids-only site (keyword: "kidsonly")."

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Out of MSN
Unfortunately, to see the work of Larry and Taylor Hyrb, managers of the Microsoft Network's Television Forum and husband and wife, one has to be an MSN subscriber (if you are, the URL is http://forums.msn.com/television). Take our word for it, it's a great area for anyone interested in television - especially good, old conventional (mostly) network TV. They created the forum for MSN from its earliest days and have been running it ever since. Clearly not satisfied with what programmers have accomplished on the Web so far, Larry and Taylor offered some advice from a pundit's perspective.

Sage: What do you think the Web can do for TV viewers, for TV shows, for broadcasters?

Taylor: "I think it's really a necessary addition to watching TV because there's so much more information that you can get on the Web, especially from the network shows.... I think if you want the full TV experience, you really need to visit the Web sites for the shows. The best example is Martha Stewart. She was going so fast demonstrating how to make sushi, immediately after the show, I logged on to marthastewart.com, found the recipe for sushi, and printed it out. If you're a parent, and you need to know what "Bananas in Pyjamas" [Australian Broadcasting Corp. children's show] is about, you can go to ABC [abc.net.au] and find out if the show is appropriate for a child to watch. We're almost at a loss now if we don't have the complement of a Web site and get the full spectrum of the show."

Larry: "The Web provides the depth. You might have just seen a National Geographic show, but you want to see more on the Web about the rainforest."

Sage: What would you tell TV folk to do on the Web?

Larry: "Really focus on getting feedback from their core audience. The Web seems to be so one-way still. Broadcasters really need to have it going two-way. Right now they're using it primarily as a promotion vehicle. They could develop community more in their sites. They just want to promote their products - the PR people are interested in what viewers have to say, but only them [not the programming side]. What has to happen is that programming needs [to use the Web] to get in touch with its audience. If a child gets an e-mail one day - and in a perfect world this could happen - from Barney, that really cements the bond, because it's on a personal level. That's what [broadcasters] should be doing."

Taylor: "I think the Web is probably where we were in the late '50s. I don't think we know where we're going to go yet with it.

Sage: What are the signposts?

Taylor: People want to belong, and they want to belong to a community. There are great TV sites that provide an enormous amount of information, but they're not friendly. People want to feel important. If you make them feel important, you'll be successful."

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What Sage has learned about TV & the Web
There are some real visionaries in children's programming. In our interviews, they gave us some glimpses of the future as well as of the considerable challenges they face in keeping up with changing technology and audience expectations. Here are two of their biggest dilemmas: 1) broadband (TV) vs. narrowband (the Web right now) - what to invest in (financially and intellectually) and when; 2) how the Web's arrival affects their audiences' expectations and behaviors.

On the former, we learned that the Web doesn't complement other media for children the way it does for adults. Adults can go to the Web for the in-depth information they can't get on TV. Children don't use the Web that way. As Tina put it, "Because a large portion of our audience is pre-literate, bandwidth is an issue." Text doesn't engage children. Children can use the Web to "drill down," get more depth or personalize their TV experience, in a different way: perhaps to get closer to a single, favorite character they see on TV.

This, it seems to us, is the opportunity for children's programmers on the Web (not that many of these wise folk aren't already working on this!) - to focus on using whatever bandwidth is available to enrich or deepen children's relationship with characters like Elmo or Nick Jr.'s Blue, for learning purposes. As Taylor Hyrb put it, "If you [programmers] make them feel important, you'll be successful." Bandwidth may not have to be as big a consideration for this if parents can be involved and if e-mail can be a vehicle for interacting - or "corresponding" - with a TV friend. With those pieces in place, e-mail could potentially be more effective - especially for teaching keyboard or writing and other communication skills - than some of the so-called interactive games we've seen on the low-bandwidth Web of right now. But there would have to be an investment in people who could do the corresponding for Elmo, and programmers might've already earmarked the money for future high-bandwidth projects.

The second dilemma, we can see, is how the Web is changing the audience. Even adults will be expecting more and more control - not just the kind their remotes give them, but the kind that interactivity gives them. Increasingly, audiences will not only be telling programmers what they want to consume, they will be co-creating the programming. This is scary to the media moguls of the "good, ol' days" (think how scary it must be for newspaper publishers who are losing their information and advertising monopolies in geographic markets!). But Tina said it's not all bad: "If you totally give back control, it doesn't mean you lose it, it doesn't mean chaos, because you become a facillitator of new ideas - a creative catalyst." If we can be allowed to take that thought a little further, that can be gratifying to the user; the programmer/publisher has the opportunity to develop unprecedented good will and loyalty on the viewer side, and a whole new level of responsiveness on the programmer's - enrichment of all sorts for both sides.

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Terrific TV links
Adventures From the Book of Virtues - Based on William Bennett's book. A wonderful idea, appreciate the inspiration that went into the development and production of the animated series (from testimonials in the site, it's clear that the actors who voiced the characters were inspired, too), but the Web site needs to be more than a very large, hyperlinked press release.

Bill Nye the Science Guy - Why does Bill appeal to kids of so many ages? Even we adult-size kids thoroughly enjoy him. Must be because he has so much fun doing science himself - he exudes delight even in these narrowband, text-heavy early days of the Internet.

Discovery Channel Online - Another favorite for all ages. One of us has an 11-year-old nephew who watches this channel the way other kids go at it with their Sony PlayStations (he does that, too). Site includes volcano dispatches from Montserrat, a feature story on the Iditarod dogsled race, and animal cams following Keiko the orca; Azy, Bonnie, Indah, and Kiko (orangutans) at the National Zoo, and pandas Shi Shi and Bai Yun at the San Diego Zoo. It's a big site.

Kratts' Creatures - Just a favorite show. The site's graphics are a feast for the eyes - downright joyful! There are rich educational creature facts in "Creature of the Week" and "Creature World." It's a creature encyclopedia for kids under 10 - lovely resource!

Muppets.com - Sigh. We know we've reported this before (charter subscribers, please bear with us), but delight sweeps over us when we read the profiles of the likes of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Kermit (nice shirt, Kermit!), Link Hogthrob ("hogthrob" = heartthrob for the likes of ...), Miss Piggy (oh, you do know how to work the camera, luv!), and Animal (you are consistent, buddy!) at muppets.com. (We realize we're supposed to be reviewing children's sites - but they will like this one, too!) BTW, this site, they say, is still under construction.

Nationalgeographic.com/kids - Includes a true story by a Titanic survivor that's probably much more child-appropriate than the movie. Another story is about saving orphaned whale J.J.

Reading Rainbow - You won't find much of this wonderful TV show here, except the winning stories in the Young Writers [K-3] Contest, including their own illustrations. A valuable (to parents) list of some of the exceptional books read on the show is hidden on a page entitled, "Program Descriptions and Activity Suggestions." The activity suggestions are great for teachers and homeschoolers.

Zoom - "A site by kids, for kids." Here's where they can contribute their own material - videos, poems, ascii pictures, skit scripts, and more. This one bears out what some of our above pundits are saying - the "viewer" becomes the producer.

And much, much more.... There are many more sites for kids. For a long list, go to Yahoo!'s children's TV Web sites page. For all the TV categories - production companies, networks, stations, stars, fan pages, etc., here are two other useful Yahoo! pages: the basic TV directory page and the "Yahoo! TV Coverage" page. Will you send us your favorite URLs?

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What TV Web sites, if any, do you and your children find interesting or useful? Please e-mail us the URLs, and we'll be glad to share them with the rest of the Sage community. We'd also love to hear what you think of the TV sites you've been to on the Web, and whether you see your children using media the way programmers think they will. Of course, we appreciate your e-mail any time - whatever the subject.

Next month: Sage investigates travel resources for families on the Web - sites that can help with travel plans, and those that can also help with homework and research!