A Comment Note From Ruel:

Emmys.TV and The Developing .TV mindset

This commentary originally appeared in the
August 12, 2000 issue of the Ruel.Net Interactive TV Report.
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August 12, 2000 - One of the major news items this past week was the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences getting a .TV domain name at www.Emmys.TV. So instead of clicking over to Emmys.org or EmmyCast.com, you could surf over to the Emmys.TV website address. The Academy started forwarding the .org and .com surfers to the new .TV address. The official Academy announcement says, "Over 40 broadcast organizations have adopted the 'tv' suffix in recent months."

Imagine this: During the annual Emmy Awards show there will be someone mentioning the Emmys.TV address on the TV every five to ten minutes or so. That will be a lot of publicity to inform the general public that there is this .TV domain suffix. A lot of everyday non-techie people will then have it in their minds that there is .TV in addition to .COM ... and it will all make sense because televison is TV and the .TV domain is television on the net. The interactive television technology is here. You can build it, but people will only come when they begin to understand how it all fits together in the overall grand scheme of things. The .TV domain gives people a starting point and a handle to begin to understand that there is more to watch than just regular old television.

On a cultural-social level, the .TV domain can be seen to be part of the continuing development of a new mindset for the television-net convergence where people become accustomed to the intermingling of TV and interactive activities. More technically-minded folks, including all of us geeks who are into computers and are early adopters of new technology, and the younger-minded folks who are growing with the new technology already have a feel for the new emerging mindset. But everyone else in the world, which includes all of the non-techie computer-phobic everyday folks who have no clue as to what is happening, must be be at least introduced to (and eventually educated on) the new television interactivity. That simple .TV suffix will help introduce the general public to the convergence of television and interactivity.

For info on the .TV domain, and to get your own .TV domain name, click on over to http://ruel.net/gizmos/dot.tv.htm

Happy TV Watching,
Ruel

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