Interactive television is now available through the set-top boxes attached to 7 million TVs in the UK. That means nearly a third of all British homes now enjoy interactive services and the internet through television. However, unlike the web, the ability to produce it has remained in the hands of the few.
So far the pioneering interactive TV producers have been the big television broadcasters. BSkyB led the way with its interactive sports and news channels while the BBC scored successes with Wimbledon and Walking with Beasts. Channel 4 broadcast interactive versions of Big Brother and the cult game show, Banzai.
Last month, ITV finally announced that it too would begin offering Sky subscribers its interactive service, ITV Now.
Many smaller companies and independent designers have complained that the cost of making interactive TV is too high and too difficult. For this reason, interactive TV's progress has been stunted. Unless you belong to a big company that can afford to develop its own software, the cost of entry has been too high.
Until now, that is. Recent weeks have seen three technology companies launch "authoring" tools for interactive TV. These tools are off-the-shelf software packages that mean interactive TV can now be produced on a desktop PC. Two US companies, Ensequence and WatchPoint Media, have recently set up offices in the UK and last week, the Irish software house Emuse launched its own authoring software.
"We see a whole new market emerging," Michael Rainsford, chief executive of Emuse, told half a dozen journalists who had been flown to Dublin for the launch of its interactive TV software. "We have seen the need for this kind of authoring tool that can change iTV into a mass market rather than a cottage industry."
It has taken four years and millions of pounds to develop Modelstream - a tool that uses the familiar "drag-and-drop" of programs such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver. If adopted, this new software should bring down the cost of producing interactive TV and open up the medium to smaller companies.
"We want to do what Adobe did for desktop publishing and Macromedia did for the web," says Rainsford. "It's like comparing publishing in the age of hot type to what we have today. We want to make the production of interactive TV far less labour intensive."
What each of these companies wants is to put the production of interactive TV in the hands of young creatives. For £10,000 small companies can buy software enabling them to produce interactive TV. Of course, the independents will still have to find a broadcaster to air them, but it is far easier to approach a broadcaster with a working model than a mere set of ideas and a storyboard, says Rainsford.
It is not just the small creatives who can use the software. Granada has already signed up for Modelstream for the next instalment of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. The BBC has licensed Ensequence's on-Q tool, while the Discovery Channel is currently testing WatchPoint Media's Storyteller software.
Despite this, many in the television industry remain sceptical about interactive TV. Studies have shown that while viewers might initially press the red button out of curiosity, they often do not do so on a regular basis. Interactive TV's real successes remain gaming and gambling.
Others say that it is still early days for the medium and that the introduction of authoring tools should open up the market. For the viewer the message is simple: a lot more interactive TV in the future.
