Access to the Living Room: Triple Play and Interactive Television Reshaping the Producer/Consumer Relation

Abstract

Whereas the advent of interactive TV has been discussed as one of the key added values of digitization and convergence of “old” and “new media” for years, current marketing strategies of the big players in the Dutch telecommunications market avoid the term interactivity. Providers promise users “more fun” and increased ease of media consumption when connected digitally to the media world by offering broadband Internet, cable television, and telephone services in one package. They aim at another added quality of interactive media consumption: gaining access to the living room means gaining access to consumption patterns that can be traced back to the individual consumer. This article discusses media convergence and the current development of interactive television in the context of the reconfiguration of the relation between producers and consumers in the new online economy.