The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 122

58 1 New Media The Guardian Monday November 20 2000 The future of TV? Ask Kofi Annan First, it was spotty teenage music lovers who threatened the entertainment industry by downloading free music. Now the stars themselves are realising the power their own websites can give them. Imogen O'Rorke reports Star-e, star-e sites punk rockers The Offspring declared they would release their new album Conspiracy of One over the web as MP3 a month before the official release, their label, Columbia, ordered their manager to withdraw immediately or face the consequences. Meanwhile Courtney Love (a longtime member of the netterati) and her band Hole are still in dispute with their label, Geffen records, over Love's threats to distribute their music on the web. Solo artist Mann, however, had no choice but to release her third album online after she was dropped by her label, Interscope.

On her website usual talk, but I don't know what the future of TV will be either. If I did, I would keep it to myself. The people that matter are those with the balls to come up with formats such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and, dare I say it, Big Brother. Big ideas will always break down technology barriers and allow viewers to focus on the content. Forget about Enhanced TV, it's all about enhancing the viewer's experience.

The best technology is invisible whatever the device. I have never been one to allow a 10-minute speech at the UN to stand in the way of a four-day trip. I've been spending time in local bars, health food shops and Manhattan coffee houses talking over the finer points of the US internet experience. Free local calls and a superior technology backbone means fast and cheap access. Broadband penetration now reaches 5m US homes.

The ABC network has been running an interactive version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? over the web. Viewers can watch the show and play along via their PCs. Interactive Millionaire has proved to be a staggering success for those with PCs in the same room as their TVs. There's the rub. This would not yet fly in the UK, where we have much lower home internet penetration, bandwidth restrictions and predominantly use home PCs for information and services rather than entertainment.

As a result, not many of us have plonked our PCs in the comfortable surroundings of our living room. TV still dominates that space. However, in many areas, Europe has a distinct advantage over the US. We are way ahead in digital TV and wireless penetration. If we can learn from the US broadband experience and add our own creative vision, Europe will become the hothouse for interactive television and "lush programming" concepts.

In the UK, 99 of homes have a TV, and the mobile market is still booming. Crucially, there need not be any seismic shift in culture. If we already have these devices, broadband will merely mean better content on these platforms. Fantastic. Who cares about the technology? So, the future of TV? Big question.

I didn't run into Kofi Annan because he was musing on the Middle East and other worldly matters. If I had spoken to him, I would have certainly asked his opinion. One thing I did hear was that, whatever the device and wherever he is, he likes his internet That'll do nicely for me too. Jason George ew York is big. Not only is it big, it also wired.

So the city that never sleeps is always on. New jargon, old truths. That's what I told everyone here, in my role as a so-called "digital invited by the UN to a conference on the future of television. It's a closely guarded secret of the digerati that old media truths will still have major clout in the new world. If advertisers want to sell their products, why not wrap them around a highly compelling piece of content? We all know the tune, but it's not quite the same old song What is changing is the context in which we view television.

It's no longer merely via that box in the corner of our living rooms. This change will be accentuated by bigger bandwidth networks in other words broadband technology. In the future, televisual content will be accessed by TVs, PCs, wireless devices and who knows what else. When media-rich content is combined with high-speed interactivity on any device, Forget enhanced TV, it's all about enhancing the viewer's experience. The best technology is invisible anywhere at any time, Future TV Inc will be closer to realisation.

We will then see the development of what we term Lush Programming multi-layered content that can be watched, played with, talked to, and personalised. This content will be scaleable to different devices with a variety of screen sizes and resolutions and, like great TV now, will be based on innovative and compelling ideas. This type of proposition is an adman's dream. Filthy lucre is, of course, what provides us with the majority of our funding. The ability to build a direct relationship with viewers, acquire new customers, and sell products will inevitably attract marketing spend.

Broadband trial results in Europe indicate that consumers' willingness to buy online is around eight times higher than existing narrowband technology. This is because of the quality of content, speed and convenience. points out that if he had been able to keep up the output, he would have made $730,000 that year. "For me, it's about taking control of the means of production. Being signed to Creation was exciting, but also frustrating.

They'd do all the things that artists are not supposed to be able to do, but they'd do them badly. There would be horrible artwork bungles (your face would be blurred or smeared), marketing campaigns directed solely at spotty guitar music fans in paisley shirts, press releases and ads marred by poor spelling and terrible syntax." Other artists, such as the Cuban Boys, Ani di Franco, kd lang and DJ Scissor-kicks, who have turned to the net for alternative marketing techniques, would probably agree. Bowienet (www.davidbowie.com), the fansite and "rock's coolest demonstrates just how masterful a marketing medium the net can be. On top of the conventional fan fare -chatrooms, music archive, biography, the avuncular "Ask David" service and so on you can buy original Bowie artwork (at New York gallery prices), artwork of art students vetted by David, as well as CDs and downloads. What Bowie devotee could resist this heartfelt request on the homepage from the reinvented cyber-Star-man: "use the message boards and email more please and well continue to grow by leaps and bounds, I believe, and this gives me a lovely, gooey, sticky kind of fun-filled Other official fansites that have grown enormously and are now threatening to become media channels are www.normancook.net (Fat Boy Slim's award-winning fansite) www.bjork.com (a recent merger between the two biggest bjork sites), www.Cher.com and www.marilyn-manson.com.

Sting also obviously had plans for www.sting.com, the web domain that he tried, but failed, to "claim back" in a recent arbitration case, and we should watch out for further developments at the domain name the star recently won. Is the Fan.com phenomenon something that should be keeping the suits at Warners and EMI awake at night? Chris Cass, MD of a digital network that aggregates artists' sites, thinks they are worried and with good cause. "They spend all their money is either the biggest threat or the biggest opportunity the entertainment industry has encountered in years. That's what they said about Napster, too, but this is not another article about the peer-to-peer file-sharing phenomenon that enables music lovers to download music for free and is the focus of several high-profile court battles. No, the latest potentially revolutionary development is "star-to-peer" networking.

While the industry moguls have been tearing out their greying hair over spotty, scooter-hop-pingteenagers taking over their business, the artists themselves have been busy building up their own mini web empires, or at least laying the foundations for a time when they could conceivably bypass the retailer, the distributor, even the record company, and go directly to their fans. Creative thinkers from David Bowie to Badly Drawn Boy have been using the internet to disseminate their material for almost as long as the internet has been around. In the meantime, fan sites where you can go to chat about Kylie's new hair colour, or discuss the deep political message behind Eminem's latest lyrics have become big business. Nsync.com boasts 800,000 unique users; BritneySpears.com, 500,000 and Eminem.com, 300,000 figures any dotcom would die for. It is only lately, however, that "brand-name" celebrities, such as Cher and novelist Stephen King, have woken up to the fact that the internet could be their future.

And the former Baywatch star Pamela "Don't Call Me Babe" Anderson is about to launch PamTV.com, with assistance from the incubator Digital Media Campus. The trailer says it will offer everything from video clips to personalised photos, greetings cards and other exciting merchandise (what else would you The fact that the founders haven't yet figured out how to make money from it doesn't matter. Despite 350,000 fan sites already dedicated to Pammy, they are halfway to digital domination. Why go anywhere else when you can get the real thing on PamTV, and start a pension plan for her? The recent skirmishes between record companies and artists such as Courtney Love, The Offspring and Aimee Mann is an early indication of what the industry feels about stais "going behind their When Love when she gets on the bulletin board to have a rant, 'It lights up like a Christmas tree' www.aimeemann.com she launches into a polemic against her former employers and warns her fans off Aimee Mann the Ultimate Collection, a "sub-standard and misleading" product, released without her permission. For many artists, divided from their fans by several degrees of management, the net is a chance to wrest back creative control.

Cult solo artist Moinus, who was signed to Alan McGee's Creation Records in the 1980s, took matters into his own hands in 1995. He built a home studio, started designing his own record sleeves on a Mac and got a website www.demon.co.ukmomus where he could centralise his words, images and sounds. His 1999 album Stars Forever offered fans "portrait songs" on commission. He sold two a day and made $30,000 He Jason George is creative director of Victoria Real In New York, I talked the.