Time Warner Inc. announced earlier this week the creation of a new interactive video service combining the news gathering capabilities of Time Inc. with the cable capabilities of Time Warner.
The new service, called news on demand, will first be offered to participants in an experimental interactive system in Orlando, Fla., beginning early next year.Four thousand Time Warner cable subscribers participating in the test will be offered an array of services on their television sets ranging from video games to interactive catalogue shopping to movies on demand.
News on demand will join those services later in the year.
The news on demand service will allow viewers with a special device resembling a remote control to call up a menu of news programs on their television screens. The offerings might include network evening news programs broadcast earlier in the evening or in-depth news programs created specially for the Time Warner service.
"At any time of the night you will be able to watch an evening newscast or other stories or features or background reports," said Walter Isaacson, an assistant managing editor of Time magazine, who will head the project.
"You will be able to get analysis from Time correspondents or Fortune editors," he said. "We will also be using material from other news organizations."
Fortune magazine is published by Time Inc.
A printer will be attached to a subscriber's television set that would be able to print, for instance, an article from a Time publication.
The news on demand project will also be supervised by Paul Sagan, the vice president in charge of news and programming for Time Warner's New York 1 news cable channel.