and infrastructure companies and, on occasion governments
wanting to develop industry or infrastructure.
The earliest TV systems were two-way communications
devices; after the broadcasting model was established,
systems such as QUBE in the 1970s used cable systems to
provide interactive services involving home audiences, but failed
to offer sufficient return on investment (Carey, 1996 #184). The
1980s saw the development of videotext, either broadcast or via
a telephone modem, around a model of information searching
and browsing. In the 1990s many expensive proprietary
interactive television projects were set up, or at least
publicised, by technology and network companies anxious to
realise long standing science fiction dreams, bolster share
prices and generate new revenue streams. Although many of
these projects may have ‘failed’, they gave birth to huge
numbers of spin-off sons and daughters: media and technology
products and formats, business opportunities, engineering and
business knowledge and experienced personnel. In addition,
much was learned from these trials and services, not least that
the services, content and the audience/users are the key
factors and these need more that just vast amounts of cash to
develop.
In the last years of the 1990s, the Internet, and more
particularly, World Wide Web content, have emerged to offer a
way of providing many i-TV services more easily and cheaply
than some of the more technology heavy and commercially
integrated systems. In the same way as earlier technologies
were grasped upon to provide interactive television, the Web
and Internet became one of the poles of attraction for system
and business development. Unlike previous systems, the
Internet and the Web are attractive because there is a huge
amount of readily available content and millions of existing
users, the development costs are being shared between many
companies, and business use is covering much of the