Inglese (testo di attualità) (3847)

ESAME DI STATO DI LICEO LINGUISTICO - 2002

Tema di: LINGUA STRANIERA

TESTO DI ATTUALITA' - LINGUA INGLESE

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

It has become a familiar refrain the last decade: This is the year for interactive television. It has not

happened, but media and technology companies say 2002 may be it. Really.

Cable companies, satellite television services, media conglomerates and Microsoft Corp. have all

made interactive television a key part of their strategic visions. They are pouring billions into a

flurry of deals.

In recent weeks, Vivendi Universal SA put $1.5 billion into EchoStar Communications Co., an

investment that will allow Vivendi to introduce its interactive television software to EchoStar

subscribers. Microsoft, continuing its forays into the digital entertainment world, backed Comcast

Corp.'s $47 billion bid to buy AT&T Corp.'s cable unit, hoping to gain access to 23 million

television households.

The big problem seems to be that viewers in the United States are slow joining the parade.

So far, Americans remain largely apathetic about interactive TV, and not many even understand

quite what it is.

In the United States, interactive television - a catch-all term broadly used to describe everything

from video-on-demand to digital video recorders to television commerce - has been driven more by

corporate competition than by consumer demand.

"Viewers in the U.S: can't even define interactive television, much less demand it," said Arthur

Orduna, vice president for marketing at Canal Plus Technologies Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Vivendi

Universal that creates interactive television technology. "No one in the U.S. has ever stood up and

said, 'I want interactive television.' "

Still companies remain optimistic because across the Atlantic interactive television is already

gaining critical mass in Europe, particularly in Britain. Viewers there can use their televisions to do

such things as place bets on races, change camera angles on sporting events, interact with game

shows and get more. information on what they are watching.

But in the United States, companies have tried since the 1970s to convince viewers that they want to

do more with their televisions than watch. The last big wave of interactive television experiments

came in the early 1990s and included a much publicized failure in Florida by Time Warner Cable, a

unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.

In part, analysts say, the different response to interactive TV among Europeans and Americans

stems from the relatively higher penetration of personal computers and Internet access in the United

States: Tasks that Europeans might do on the television, Americans perform on their desktop PCs.

Much as Europe leads the United States in cell-phone use, it has also developed an 18-month head

start in rolling out interactive television, say analysts, with more than 15 million European

television sets already receiving some type of interactive service. As of the end of 2000, 7.2 percent

of Western European households had access to interactive television service, according to

International Data Corp., a research firm.

In France, horse racing's first year on interactive television generated € 61 million in revenue for

Pari Mutuel Urbain, the state-owned wagering service. In Spain and Italy, viewers regularly check