INFORMATION OVERLOAD — LITERATE TV: TO READ MORE THAN TO VIEW

Television used to be something you watched, but more and more these days it’s becoming something you read.

From stock tickers on CNBC to news updates on CNN Headline News to rock ‘n’ roll minutiae on VH1’s “Pop-Up Video,” textual information is enhancing — some would say cluttering — the airwaves and cable channels.

Since July, ESPNews has been offering local sports information twice an hour on its bottom-of-the-screen crawl.

MSNBC, which regularly flashes breaking headlines, recently added weather updates for Manhattanites, a service it may offer elsewhere. CNBC may add real-time stock prices to the screen so viewers can track a stock’s path during major announcements, such as corporate mergers.

Also, Headline News is exploring the idea of updating viewers about airport delays over its ticker, and the Fox News Channel is considering adding sports scores to its bottom-of-the screen banner, which features financial updates.

Bombs away

But the real explosion of this trend may be triggered by digital cable and soon digital television, which provide networks with virtually unlimited ways to offer on-screen data, industry experts say.

While network executives say providing this information gives them an edge over competitors, a nagging question remains: Can viewers process all this stuff?

Dr. James Fletcher, editor of the scholarly “Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media” and telecommunications professor at the University of Georgia, thinks they can. “The brain is designed to handle lots of information. We know how to tune out,” says the professor, who’s also a psychophysiologist.

People home in on things of interest when the screen is too cluttered, adds Eli Noam, director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and a Columbia University business school professor.

“Humans can do that — just as in a crowded room you can listen to a cocktail conversation of three people,” he says.

But Eric Braun, vice president of new technology for Magid Associates, a media consulting firm, thinks some viewers become annoyed when there’s too much on-screen information to process.

“It’s generational. Over the age of 45, we remember nice, clean, uncluttered pictures,” he says. “To the video game and computer generation, no problem.”

A prime example of a crowded TV screen is Bloomberg, a channel available over the air and on cable and satellite systems that shows stock tickers, major market indexes and news snippets that eat up more than half the screen.

‘A lot of grief’

“I used to get a lot of grief,” says Michael Bloomberg, president and chief executive, but he feels vindicated now that other networks have moved in his direction.

“We don’t want people to wait any longer than they have to [for information],” Mr. Bloomberg says. Viewers of his channel usually scan for tidbits that interest them and even absorb things subliminally, he says, adding: “Nobody is trying to read all of our screen.”

But even Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t like things too busy: To reduce the on-screen clutter, he recently removed a few graphics and colors.

Commenting on the Bloomberg screen, Jim Willi, president of Audience Research & Development, a Dallas-based TV consulting firm, says: “It’s fine with the people who watch that [channel]. If Peter Jennings showed up with that information around him, people would have a problem with it.”

Some industry research suggests viewers like on-screen data and don’t find it distracting. The combined results of two recent ESPN surveys found that two-thirds of the 600 people questioned had a favorable impression of the sports ticker on ESPN 2 and ESPNews. A quarter said they scan it every day, and of that group, 80 percent watch the rest of the program that’s on.

While 12 percent said the ticker detracts from their viewing enjoyment, 24 percent said it adds to it. “Overall, there’s a net benefit to having it on the screen,” he says.

Learning to crawl

Mr. Willi of Audience Research says that continuous crawls featuring news or sports scores are creeping more and more into local newscasts. “It kind of engages people more,” he says.

KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, for example, has a morning crawl with information about weather, traffic, top stories and sports scores. “Within a minute you can get all these things,” says Larry Perret, news director. He says it took a while for people to get used to the on-screen info, but now they rely on it.

“More and more, people are able to handle that information,” he says, noting that studies show viewers aged 18 to 34 report they often watch two or three programs — and not just sports — at the same time.

Will there be even more textual information filling screens in a digital environment? The answer, industry experts say, is both yes and no. On the one hand, more on-screen data will be available, but on the other, viewers will access it when they desire — probably by clicking on a remote — and keep it hidden the rest of the time.

Industry observers say the sky’s the limit on the types of data that can be offered to viewers over digital television. Among the ideas: links to Internet sites, access to a dozen foreign-language subtitles, detailed stats about sports stars, zoned newscasts, extra footage from interviews and video classified ads.

Columbia University’s Mr. Noam says the end result will be more viewer control and customization. He envisions a day, for example, when a viewer can program a digital TV set to receive an on-screen message that another show — a ballgame, say — will start in five minutes.

coming attractions

For a harbinger of things to come, one need look no further than interactive services like WebTV, Intercast and Wink, which seek to enhance traditional TV viewing experiences by providing Internet connections or more information about shows.

WebTV seeks to synthesize the TV and the Internet, providing links to Web sites related to shows and picture-in-picture capability so users can continue to watch TV while surfing the Internet

Intel’s Intercast technology enables computer users to view certain broadcast and cable networks on their PCs and receive complementary information about the shows. NBC, CNN and the Weather Channel are already aboard.

Wink, a service available now in Japan and as of this summer in the United States, takes a similar approach, but the free data is available on the TV screen instead.

Crain News Service