amNewYork’s Urbanite blog recently mentioned an interactive Space Invaders-type video game called TV-PIXX that aired on New York’s WPIX in the early 1980s. Each day, one kid got to play the game by calling in from home. The controls were simple: Instead of pushing a joystick button, kids would yell “PIX!” to fire a shot at enemy spaceships as they appeared on the screen.

TV-PIXX was WPIX’s canny self-promotional retitling of TV POWWW!, a system that apparently saw use on many American and Canadian local TV affiliates for a stretch in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I’d never seen or heard of TV POWWW! before the Urbanite article piqued my interest, and video is hard to come by. There’s this clip from Sacramento, Calif., affiliate KTXL, which offers no gameplay but features the world’s least gruff sea captain plugging TV POWWW! with the underwhelming pitch that, like it or not, it’s “the only game in town”:

The only clip I could find with footage of the game comes from a site dedicated to Barney’s Army, a kids’ show that aired in the afternoons in North Carolina. (Afternoon kiddie shows were the main venue for TV POWWW!) Maddeningly enough, there are only three seconds of clear gameplay before the picture devolves into low-budget video-effect chaos—apparently, the show was cutting “the pow game” from its lineup and wanted to give the segment an exciting sendoff:

(A quick side note—the character in that clip, animated in real time, is done by a process called “Aniforms,” which made its national TV debut on Steve Allen’s I’ve Got a Secret. On-the-fly animation, like interactive programming, has long been a holy grail of TV, and the technique so enamored Mark Goodson Productions that they produced a notorious game show pilot, Malcolm, built around a wisecracking Aniform. It was a moment of television history that Alex Trebek would probably prefer to forget.)

The original Urbanite post that prompted me to look into TV POWWW! notes in an aside that present-day TV exists in “the age of interactivity.” That’s true in a sense, but then again, it has always been true in a sense. What amuses me about interactive TV is that it has been attempted with little success since the dawn of the medium, yet it’s in a state of perpetual comeback. Whether it’s call-in quiz shows or hybrid video games, most formats have been tried and have fizzled. Before DirecTV’s “Game Lounge” there was 1977’s How Do You Like Your Eggs?, hosted by Bill Cullen for Warner’s ill-fated QUBE system:

And before GSN’s new Bingo America (née ABC’s National Bingo Night) there were countless variations of “bingo at home,” including this one featuring a young Monty Hall:

Interactive TV is always making a comeback because it has never truly arrived.¹ It’s a romantic thought, programming created by you, the audience, as it happens! I imagine TV producers keep trying it because it seems like such an obvious idea.

It’s hard, though, to escape the fundamental conundrum of interactive TV: The more control you ostensibly hand over to the audience, the more the program stinks. TV POWWW! is a great example of this. It’s sounds like a good time, but in practice, 99.9% of people end up sitting there watching someone yell at an arcade game, which is pretty piss-poor TV. Only the kid yelling “Pow!” gets to have the real fun. Once the illusion of control wears off for the other 99%, once enough people realize they won’t get to say “Pow,” game over.

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1. On the other hand, I might contradict myself and argue that interactive TV has arrived, in the form of American Idol and its assorted knockoffs. Idol is brilliant in that it allows viewers to influence a decision that is hugely important to them—i.e., which singers stay on the show—but is of little concern from a production standpoint. The producers will stage the show pretty much the same no matter who gets kicked off on any given week, so they don't face the costly prospect of adjusting their plans according to viewers’ whims—another Achilles heel of most interactive programs.

   More importantly, Idol is a very entertaining show even if you aren’t participating in the interactive portion.

   But Idol’s interactivity only takes place once the show is off the air—Ryan Seacrest always implores viewers to wait until the end of the show to cast their votes—so while the program is innovative, it doesn’t fit the mold of real-time “interactive TV” I’m discussing here. (Indeed, that’s why it is such a success.) ↑