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The Touchable TV
The idea of a touchable
TV is nothing new:
it’s almost as old as
television itself.
In 1953, before my father was even born,
a show first aired on CBS called Winky
Dink and You that most consider the first
ever interactive television program. The
show’s creators, Harry Prichett, Sr. and
Ed Wyckoff, had quickly realized one of
the fundamental differences of television
versus the movies as a medium: that
television sets were in people’s living
rooms, and that kids could walk right up
and touch the screen, like they could any
other piece of furniture in their house.
The show prompted millions of kids to
get involved in the animated adventures
of a boy named Winky-Dink and his dog,
Woofer, by drawing on a small piece of
plastic that stuck to the TV’s screen with
static electricity, using a special set of
crayons, all sold as part of a Winky-Dink
Kit, available in toy stores or by mail. At
critical points in the show, kids could get
involved by drawing, for example, a bridge
for Winky-Dink to cross, or trace letters
onscreen to reveal a secret message. While
wildly successful, and one of the most
popular children’s shows on TV, this early
experiment went off the air four years
later in 1957, among concerns about
radiation and complaints from parents
about kids who were drawing directly
on their TV screens (sometimes with
permanent marker).
Over the next fifty years, televisions
became enshrined as untouchable objects
in the household – built into cabinets,
placed on pedestals, and eventually hung
on walls as flatscreen art objects, becom-
ing more and more like the large movie
screens they were once such a revolution
against. And over that same period of time,
a small but creative group of people within
broadcasting, producing, cable and tech-
nology companies have tried any number
of methods to keep the dream of interac-
tive television alive. For many years it was
the one-screen, set-top box-driven applica-
tions, popular in Europe, that seemed like
the working model: driven by an interac-
tive layer of enhanced content, polls, trivia,
games and on-demand video, delivered
over a cable or satellite connection and
controlled by remote control, but this was
always limited by adoption and standard-
ization of set-top boxes, especially in the
U.S. in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
the widespread adoption of text messag-
ing worldwide allowed for SMS-driven
interactive TV, most notably in American
Idol, which became the first interactive TV
broadcast to become truly mainstream,
even if the interaction was limited to vot-
ing for contestants on the show.
Meanwhile, a hit series that was per-
haps closest to the spirit of Winky Dink
debuted on Nickelodeon in 2000: Dora the
Explorer. The bilingual show is produced
with natural pauses for young children to
talk back to the screen, sing along with the
characters and solve puzzles, and while it
employs no actual interactive technology,
anyone who has watched Dora with a child
knows this is no real drawback: the young
viewers vividly imagine the connection,
and play interactive Dora games on their
computers or their parents’ phones,
seeing it as a continuous experience with
the television show.
But in the mid-2000s, a truly interactive
form of video storytelling emerged, not on
TV, but the Internet. The rise of YouTube
and original web series delivered by pod-
cast and flash players, consumed largely
on web browsers, personal media players
and mobile phones, for the first time put
content in a produced, serial video format
within reach of a mouse click, and over the
years creators have made the experience
increasingly interactive. Hotspots within
video, such as YouTube’s Annotations
feature, have allowed producers to create
linked videos, branching storylines
and choose-your-own-adventure plots,
and even games built from videos,
such as Barely Political’s wildly popular
“Chris Brown Punch-Out” and “Rush
Limbaugh Punch-Out” YouTube games.
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Experimentation in online video has
included interactive films and music
videos shot in 360° Quicktime VR, allowing
the viewer to pan and scan in any direction
during the timeline; interwoven stories
with multiple simultaneous plotlines, such
as HBO’s Voyeur, which allow you to look
into any number of windows of an apart-
ment building in a “Rear Window”-like
storyline; and experiences like ChatRou-
lette, which blur the line between channel-
surfing and two-way communication.
For the first time in history, we’ve
put a two-way storytelling device
capable of connecting millions
of people worldwide in people’s
hands. For producers, inventors
and engineers, this should be a
time as exciting as those early
days of TV, or the first years of the
Internet: the era of touchable TV.
Now, with tablet computers, there’s a
perfect confluence of elements for interac-
tive video: a wireless Internet connection,
a big, touchable screen and a processor
powerful enough to enable almost any
interactive experience storytellers can
devise. The earliest forms of entertain-
ment were interactive, as dramatists and
poets tailored stories to the audience’s
real-time responses. Two thousand years
of technology, from paper to the printing
press to radio and TV, made broadcasting
– a one-way form of storytelling – our dom-
inant medium. But now, for the first time
in history, we’ve put a two-way storytelling
device capable of connecting millions of
people worldwide in people’s hands. For
producers, inventors and engineers, this
should be a time as exciting as those early
days of TV, or the first years of the Internet:
the era of touchable TV.
2
The question is, what will we create? Tim Shey runs Audience Development at
How will TV look different when people Next New Networks (nextnewnetworks
can take it into their own hands? Imag- .com), the first department of its kind in
ine: branching storylines, or multiple online television. He’s focused on building
perspectives on a story, could be chosen the largest, most loyal and engaged
by a viewer. Extras in the background, audiences for every Next New Networks
formerly set dressing, could be new char- property, working with producers and
acters you could tap with your finger and partners across the web to promote
suddenly shift to follow their story. The episodes, to optimize and scale the com-
world-building we typically see in games pany’s distribution platform, and to design
or novels, especially in genre storytelling, better experiences and interactions with
could become part of TV, even allowing its viewers and communities.  Tim has been
fan-filmed stories to become linked into working as a designer and producer for
a show (imagine clicking on a few Stor- projects in television, mobile, and the web
mtroopers in a scene from Star Wars, for for more than 15 years.  He is also an acad-
example, and launching into Kevin Rubio’s emy member and has served as a judge
great 1997 mockumentary, Troops.) While for all three of the Emmy Awards, the
watching sports, concerts and other live Webby Awards, and the Streamy Awards.
entertainment, viewers might be able to
choose in real time from multiple cam-
era angles, and touch players, teams or
areas of the field for enhanced informa-
tion. In a CGI-animated scene, you could
touch and drag to pan and zoom a virtual
camera. And, harking back to the days of
Winky Dink, viewers can finally draw on the
screen without driving their parents crazy;
the backgrounds and sets of our future’s
Dora or Sesame Street could include graffiti
from their most loyal viewers, drawn from
locations all over the world, as well as a
layer of annotations, response videos and
fan fiction left by everyone who’s watched
before, making every episode a wiki-like
collaborative story.
Thanks to the iPad, and more tablets
to come, touchable TVs are out there.
The question now is, what will we create?