Ten years ago Bruce Springsteen rasped his way through a new song called ?57 Channels (And Nothin' On),? a bluesy dirge that found the Boss sprawled in front of the tube, remote in hand, waiting for something decent to flicker before his weary eyes. After four verses chronicling a disheartening round of clicking through ALF reruns and infomercials, the singer grabs his .44 and does his best Elvis impersonation, blasting the TV to bits.

Talk about your interactive TV.

A decade later digital cable subscribers have nearly ten times the number of channels to surf, and while we can't make any claims for a concomitant rise in the quality of content, the sheer information overload offered by available electronic program guides (EPGs) is enough to make even the most stoic viewer reach for the Magnum. But unfurl those trigger fingers, because a Cambridge, Mass.-based software company believes it has found an alternative to the data glut.

Predictive Networks, a high-tech firm nestled between the cerebral strongholds of Harvard and MIT, has developed a system for EPGs that lists available programming in order of viewer preference rather than by channel and time slot. According to chairman and CEO Devin Hosea, the company's SmartNavigator guide reflects biometric data collected by analyzing the unique manner in which viewers interact with their remotes.

?It's like a ?tell? in poker,? Hosea explains. ?When people first pick up a remote, they tend to go through distinct initialization routines. They'll either hit the mute button right away or maybe click over to channel 38 or adjust the volume. Everybody does something different.?

These idiosyncrasies may seem innocuous enough, but Hosea says they can actually give the game away. ?Eighty percent of our biometric profiles can be deduced by those initialization routines. We can figure out the remainder through keystroke cadence, by looking at the ratios between clicks.?

By matching the resultant ?digital silhouette? (essentially a euphemism for ?profile?) to the kind of programming favored by the person behind it, SmartNavigator can immediately generate a list of prioritized entertainment options. Upon completion of the silhouette, the program's implicit recommendation engine ? designed to handle up to 10,000 media avails at once ? is automatically set to go back to work whenever the user picks up the remote again.

By building profiles of customer viewing habits, Predictive can help a partner such as OpenTV tailor its advertising to a more sharply focused audience. This could be a godsend, as many observers believe that such target marketing is the only way for operators to make any money from ITV.

To the surprise of absolutely no one ? cue the obsessive Police classic ?Every Breath You Take? (?Every move you make/Every step you take/I'll be watching you?) ? Predictive's software applications have some privacy watchdogs in full howl.

?Their entire business model should be subject to an FCC investigation,? says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. ?They may generate revenues, but the whole thing raises some disturbing issues concerning consumer autonomy.?

Chester says that the Telecommunications Act of 1984, which requires cable companies to notify consumers when personal information is being collected, may not protect viewers from what he calls ?data manipulation.?

?There's always a loophole,? he says.

Hosea refutes any claims of demographic skulduggery, pointing out that each silhouette is generated anonymously, the collected data forming a representation of the viewer's preferences that is in no way linked to a name. ?The information gathered never leaves the set-top box,? he says. ?And no raw data is ever saved. We couldn't if we wanted to; there's just too much of it.?

Thus far, Predictive has inked deals licensing its software for use in Microsoft and OpenTV set-top boxes. At press time Microsoft had announced that it would reorganize its failing ITV unit and, at long last, abandon the pricey Motorola DCT-5000 set-top boxes the rest of the industry rejected in favor of the less expensive 2000 series.

Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, says the SmartNavigator could be the next logical step in the evolution of program guides. ?On the consumer side, this may be one of those applications that is met with an enthusiastic and speedy adoption,? he says. ?If it works as well as they say it does, it could really take off.?

Hosea says the software is going into trials this summer with one satellite operator and one MSO. ?If we can duplicate these results ? if they are anywhere near what we've found in our alpha tests ? we can drive another $50 per year per set-top box,? he says.

Or, as Leichtman puts it, ?This thing might be a real Trojan horse. If the consumers like it and open their doors to it, the marketing possibilities could be endless.?

Back to this issue