A Curious Discovery: An Entrepreneur's Story

by John S. Hendricks

In late 1991, I presented a white paper to my board outlining a future of menu-accessed—rather than channel-accessed—television. Then, over the year that followed, I continued to refine this vision of digital television in which viewers could watch what they wanted, when they wanted. It seemed to me self-evident that consumers would migrate to such a platform, which I dubbed “Your Choice TV.” And so, even without a lot of proof, I set to work with a team designing an entire “on-demand” system, complete with handheld remotes, set-top converter menus, and digitally compressed satellite transponder feeds of individual shows from all the major cable and broadcast networks. We even demonstrated the ordering of airline tickets and seat selections from a TV set. We even made the argument, which proved prescient, that cable operators would at last be able to deliver advertising “addressed” to each consumer based on their interests and demographics. There would also be, we argued, abundant choices of movie selections and many new digital channels, like a Science Channel, paralleling the many popular special-interest magazines found at newsstands.