Great wall of content: Controlled climates may be creeping into interactive TV

With free reign over tens of thousands of Internet sites, it seems odd that consumers would surf only among content chosen by their service providers. But apparently, that's what many favor.

"Walled gardens" - constrained, easy-to-use, safe online environments where consumers go for information, communications and commerce services - will modify the next generation of the Internet, said Craig Enenstein, vice president of business development and strategy for Liberty Digital, the interactive TV and Internet affiliate of Liberty Media. Such settings offer a complete product via pairings with various content and retail providers.

The concept already is used by America Online, Excite@Home and Road Runner through their Internet portals. And walled gardens will be the model for interactive TV, said officials at the National Cable Television Association convention in New Orleans earlier this month.

"Television in the interactive world is going to have a world of walled gardens," Enenstein said. Multiple systems operators and satellite providers will be able to create the highest quality, most complete environments. "They'll give [consumers] so much information in this walled garden that [they] don't desire to leave."

After a disastrous start, interactive TV seems poised for a second try. Excite@Home produced an interactive version called ExciteTV; Microsoft has WebTV; and AT&T expects to roll out its own broadband product within a year. AOL also is expected to launch an initial version of AOL TV - an interactive TV offering that will let consumers simultaneously access more than 300 TV channels, send instant messages to friends, surf the Internet and program their VCRs from remote locations - as early as this summer.

Based on the walled garden approach, AOL TV will offer a backdoor to the Internet, Enenstein said. It will support "not video [but] a more static environment - a data-type environment where people in a constrained world will go to experience interactivity."

Given the fact that users have access to the vast Internet, Dan Levin, chief technology officer and senior vice president of corporate strategy for ReplayTV, initially didn't think walled gardens would work.

His projection was flawed, he said: "People like it. The mass market likes a safe, comfortable, supported environment. They don't really want the choice and control. They want to be taken care of."

Service providers may be pushing the concept, but the walled garden approach raises concerns with consumer groups when it comes to open access.

"The real danger is the investment in architecture and control of the delivery system," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education, a non-profit group focused on open access. "[The chosen] content will be given a competitive advantage because it's so ingrained in the architecture, and other companies won't have reasonable access to the delivery system."

Some consumers will want a walled garden, Chester said, but there must be alternatives. "It's not a walled garden, it's a long-term imprisonment," he said.

One possible draw for providers to closed environments may be potential revenue streams. "Online services charge outside vendors for access to the customers like shelf space at a grocery store," said Jeff Kagan, a telecom industry analyst. "They want a piece of the action and get a percentage of every sale."

But advertising and marketing won't attract consumers. Instead, customers will be drawn to proprietary offerings such as news services, chat rooms, gaming areas and other content that is only available through certain providers, which often charge extra fees for such services, he said.