A video-on-demand 'magazine rack'
By Frazier Moore
Associated Press
You've put in a hard day. Now you're ready to chill in front of the TV and watch some basket-weaving. Or maybe you've got a taste for motorcycles. Or outer space. Or Shakespeare.
What are the odds you could click to a show devoted to those interests whenever you get the urge?
It's a slam-dunk, thanks to a new cable TV service called Mag Rack, which, although available so far to just a tiny audience, is a reminder to the rest of us that video on demand is a reality after years of delays and disappointments.
The concept for Mag Rack is simple. Navigate to the Mag Rack channel. Choose from more than two dozen narrowly defined topics, including bird-watching, wedding tips, "Wine World" and "The Bible and You."
Then, within each of these "magazines," the viewer can select any of several stories, all available as video on demand — which means you can select the program, then pause, rewind and fast-forward it at will, all through your set-top cable box.
Ready? "Welcome to 'Maximum Science,"' an announcer intones — "bringing you the latest in science when YOU want to see it." And on your TV screen you see a menu of stories (or would that be a table of contents?) with a scientific bent.
Each subject area is replenished by a new "issue" of Mag Rack-produced programming (an hour or more, "chapterized" into blocks) each month, while past "issues" are archived along with the current fare on the cable operator's computer server.
In short, Mag Rack seems to be a pretty faithful video equivalent of the newsstand browsing experience, combined with the sporadic way most people like to read their magazines — with the added advantage that Mag Rack is typically packaged with the subscriber's premium service at no extra charge.
"We thought there were large constituencies of viewers who were very passionate about certain subjects, but were being underserved by television, even in the 500-channel universe," says Matthew Strauss, Mag Rack's general manager.
The nine-month-old Mag Rack is seen only by Long Island, N.Y., subscribers of Cablevision (parent of Mag Rack, as well as the Bravo and American Movie Classics networks), which has announced that in the next few months Mag Rack will also come to areas served by Insight Communications, focused in the Midwest.
Video on demand-enabled digital subscribers are a tiny fragment of the nation's 100 million-plus TV households.
But it's growing: An estimated total of 6 million by the end of this year is expected to double a year later.
