The pursuit of interactive tv, that amusingly oxymoronic concept, has provided a long, painful journey for producers and pundits alike and still confounds the technicians and visionaries who would usher it in. In the meantime, interactive programming initiatives for various media have pushed technological boundaries and recently have begun to provide producers with a new set of opportunities and challenges.

A recent partnership between Redmond, Wash.’s computer behemoth Microsoft and Digital Renaissance, a Toronto-based new media company, is offering up one solution to providing interactive programming for the Internet, cd-rom and tv and providing creative opportunities for producers of entertainment and educational programming, cd-roms and advertising.

dr released its Temporal Annotation Generator software at a computer trade show in Atlanta in mid-September. Without intruding upon the main body of audio or video content, tag allows suppliers of programming to add information links to any part of a program using networked databases.

At the same time Microsoft released its new media streaming technology NetShow, which allows realtime delivery of video and audio files over the Internet without the necessity of downloading them first.

In the meantime, Ken Nickerson, managing director of Microsoft Network Canada in Toronto, says some fundamental principles must be established before online programming in all its forms is relevant and profitable.

‘Forget the bandwidth stuff, that has nothing to do with the problem,’ says Nickerson. ‘The real problem is that video is a linear medium; it says to you `Sit back and don’t do anything and be quiet and enjoy.’ But when you put video on a pc screen you have a huge dichotomy there; you have a keyboard and a mouse sitting there saying `Touch me, touch me,’ and a piece of video saying `Don’t touch,’ ‘

The level of interactivity desired must also be determined says Nickerson, and he says tag is one of the first useful tools that bridges the gap between a linear medium and a computer.

Microsoft is gearing up to release the next generation of its Microsoft Network online service and is applying some tv principles to a medium which is interactive by its very nature, on the way to creating a new programming experience.

The new msn, to be launched the first week of November, will take a dramatic shift from what Internet content is today, says Nickerson. ‘The content will have a show mentality,’ he says. ‘We’re applying a tv metaphor to it.’

msn is currently searching for content and is actively looking to Canadian producers to bring programming ideas to the medium. Toward that end, msn is bringing aboard Atlantis producer Marty Katz to act as executive producer to develop new Canadian shows.

msn content development largely follows a tv model, says Nickerson, whereby producers pitch story ideas and pilots are developed with a five-week replacement cycle, to be developed into 13-episode ‘series’ if adopted.

msn varies in look and approach from much of the current Web presentations. The introductory screen does away with visible url data and presents instead a tv-like screen with a number of ‘channels,’ which may be accessed by placing the cursor on them.

Content includes a number of ‘shows,’ each with its own target and look and level of interactivity. Shows range from Under Wire, a program aimed at professional women; V Style, a fashion and design vehicle aimed at monied boomers; to Monsters of the 20th Century, a look at myths and monsters.

15 Seconds of Fame is an interactive game show where hosts ask viewers questions and answers are given online in the voices of audience members. Second City developed a headline news parody program with msn where various news personalities take a Second City approach to current events.

The site also features other components on travel, shopping and a chat room, which creates interactive cartoons with the typed input of participants.

msn programming applications for tag are down the road, says Nickerson, as Microsoft develops compression technologies to handle video online.

Nickerson says msn has hundreds of shows in development and the key to msn programming is high production values. The average show is budgeted at anywhere from several hundred thousand to $1 million-plus, big bucks by Web standards.

Producers are responsible for creative programming, and Microsoft supplies the technical know-how to put the shows online, which Nickerson says can work to the advantage of both parties.

‘A producer or writer or director comes up with an idea and doesn’t know the limits to what can be done; they just say here’s the idea, make it happen,’ he says. ‘Then our people work to make the technology deliver that.’

The financing and licensing model is still being developed for msn properties and varies according to the level of financing provided. Where Microsoft is providing all financing it retains all rights. In the case of Second City, where technical support was msn’s primary contribution, the producer retains some rights.

Nickerson says Microsoft will invest $500 million to $1 billion on msn over the next three years, but the site will not be an immediate revenue generator. The site contains advertising, but Nickerson stresses Web-based formats in general have not been and will not be moneymakers until online programming develops its niche.

Rob Martell, dr’s director of product development, says tag has been in the works in some form for the past five years but only recently have all the elements, like development of the Web as a means of distributing and updating information, converged to help create the technology in its current form.

‘Even six months ago it couldn’t have looked the way it does now,’ says Martell. ‘And a year from now it would be too late. It’s well timed from our perspective.’

Martell says there were a number of challenges in developing an interactive product, including the ongoing question of which of the constantly evolving types of media files to support.

He says dr plans in the next month to add an object tracking component to tag, whereby a user may click on a place in the actual video content to launch information; for example, during a Rolling Stones concert, one might click on Mick’s head for information on lip augmentation. Martell also points to the challenges of bringing interactivity to different platforms.

The tag player will be available, likely at no charge, for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and in an Active x version as an application for Windows 95 and Windows nt, with a java version in development. The tag editor, for creating tags, and TAG Server software will be available for Windows 95 and Windows nt.

tag can also be used with a set-top box for tv applications, and Martell says further challenges lie in utilizing the software with cable, digital broadcast and interactive broadband tv systems.

‘The technology can work in all those environments, we just have to step through some technological challenges to make it work.’

For a creator wondering how to make a program interactive, there are two approaches: adapting existing programming or creating a show specifically for an interactive format. ‘The process can be as simple as taking all the material you used to create the segment to make it a nonlinear experience or as far as going out and creating new content for people to access,’ says Martell.

He says a producer has to determine what sort of interactive experience should be attached to the show and the medium for which the show is destined.

He estimates it will likely be about six months before there is some form of tagged programming on one or all of the tv broadcast formats.