A machine-like new medium - theoretical examination of interactive TV

The tension underlying interactive television (TV) systems stems from the clash between interactivity as a communication model and TV as an organizing platform. Conventional TV is a communication system with an information-producing-and-distributing center and an information-receiving periphery. Interactive communication, on the other hand, is a catalyst for a power shift away from the center as the media are reorganized into two-way communication systems. The telecommunications firms, however, organize interactive TV following the conventional TV model because it is a historically familiar and successful economic model and an exemplary control mechanism for the production, distribution, and consumption of information. Thereby interactivity in interactive TV is reduced to mechanical query-response/request-delivery processes. Since interactive TV does not unleash the new liberties of communicative action offered by new technologies, the supposedly new medium is not really a new medium.