You know the feeling: it’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday night, you’ve seen every movie at the local multiplex, so you decide to watch one at home. But when you hustle down to the video outlet-wipeout!-the shelves have been stripped bare, except for tapes of that Dom De Luise retrospective and the X-rated “Debby Does Dubuque. " What do you do? If you’re one of 450 families in suburban Denver, you may never again face such a hassle. In the latest permutation of the “pay per view” TV business, cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. last week announced a market test of an ambitious new service, a cross between a cineplex and video store in your living room. Colorado couch potatoes can soon order first-run movies at specified times from 50 channels at $2.50 to $3.95 a popor select from 1,000 titles and watch them whenever they want. Says John Malone, president of TCI, which serves 14 million subscribers: “[The potential of] pay-perview is impossible to ignore.”
In theory, at least, the innovation promises to be a couch spud’s dream. Movie-loving homebodies could get what they want-and when they want it. After a decade of fitful growth, pay-per-view TV, which allows viewers to purchase films and “special events” on a per-program basis, is gaining widespread acceptance, It’s now available in 17.5 million U.S. homes, one third of all cable-equipped households, and could reach 25 million by 1995. The pay-per-view business is sparking controversy, however. Consumer groups fear that sports spectacles like the Super Bowl could one day be yanked from free TV. Pay-per-view also raises long-term fears within the TV networks and the home-video industry although, insists Ron Castell, a senior vice president of Blockbuster Entertainment Corp., “it’s hardly on the Richter scale yet. "
What’s fueling the pay-per-view boom? New technology is partly responsible. Since the dawn of the business in the 1970s, the delivery system hasn’t changed much: operators install “addressable” descrambler boxes in the home which can be turned on and off by the cable company like a light switch. Yet by the late 1980s user-friendly “impulse” hardware permitted viewers to purchase pay-per-view programs with a button flick or a push-button phone code (chart). That’s led to an increase in “buy rates”-the percentage of homes that order an event-and encouraged operators to upgrade their systems. Also speeding acceptance are “compression” technology and fiber optics, which make it possible to squeeze 150 channels or more onto one cable. Some operators say they’ll use the expanded capacity to build pay-per-view " multiplexes” like TCI’s experiment. Time Warner is planning such a test in 10,000 homes in Brooklyn and Queens.
Boxing is pay-per-view’s real knockout. TVKO, a new pay-per-view division of Time Warner Sports, marketed the Evander Holyfield-George Foreman fight to 1,200 cable systems nationwide last month. A record 1.4 million households, or 8.5 percent of pay-per-view equipped homes, bought it at between $30 and $40, generating more than $55 million for Time Warner and the cable operators. TVKO plans a monthly series of Friday-evening bouts priced at $19.95. Showtime has created its own pay-per-view events built around Mike Tyson, whom it snatched from rival HBO; Tyson’s pay-per-view bout against Razor Ruddock last March grossed $33.4 million. “Everyone senses the $100 million pay day is within reach,” says Jeffrey Reiss, chairman of Reiss Media Enterprises, a pay-per-view program distributor.
Culture, too? As pay-per-view grows, some worry it may siphon events off free TV, creating a class of video poor. The Big Three networks overspent for NFL and major-league baseball games and may be forced to scale back when contracts expire; franchise owners may strike deals with pay-per-view distributors, who can put more cash on the table. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has announced the league may testmarket pay-per-view in several cities in 1993, though he insists that will mean extra games, not less free-TV coverage. Major league baseball officials say nothing will be decided until the current deal with CBS and ESPN runs out in 1993. In the meantime Rep. Edward J. Markey, who heads a telecommunications subcommittee, has asked for a debate on the siphoning issue.
For now, pay-per-view seems likely to augment, not threaten, free television. NBC, which paid $401 million for TV rights to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, plans to air 1,080 hours of the games over three pay-per-view channels at a price tag of $95 to $175, depending on the package. Choice coverage will still be aired by the free NBC network. Others see the future of pay-per-view in culture as well as sports. Capital Cities/ABC nearly brought the musical “Miss Saigon” to pay-per-view until an Actors’ Equity dispute intervened. And TCI’s John Malone envisions presenting opening nights of movies, a la Mann’s Chinese Theatre premieres in Hollywood. The question remains whether pay-perview can evolve from a sporadic, “big event” business into a part of the media mainstream. But pay-per-view’s hardliners say that it’s only a matter of time before Saturday night at the home multiplex replaces a trip to the local video store.
