Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995 TAG: 9510110035
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADOLPHE V. BERNOTAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT, N. H. LENGTH: Medium
``But a computer is still not a refrigerator that you plug in and it works,'' says Stewart Cheifet, president of PC-TV.
To help the technically challenged, Cheifet's company produces television shows ranging from ``Computers 101'' to ``Computer Chronicles,'' seen on 300 public television stations nationwide.
Blue Ridge Public Television (WBRA, Channel 15) carries "Computer Chronicles" on Sundays at 12:30 p.m.
``If you don't know what's going on with computers, at work or at home, you're in trouble,'' says Cheifet, 53, a Harvard Law School graduate known as the dean of computer television journalists.
Thirteen years ago, Cheifet started a local program in the San Francisco area ``with a bunch of hackers and weird guys who brought in their toys to the studio.'' His audience kept multiplying and, by 1994, Cheifet was heading PC-TV.
``We're kind of a television Consumer Reports for people to make decisions as to what to buy - and once they've bought it, to help them get the thing to work,'' Cheifet says.
Greg Stowell, 31, of Concord, is host of ``Home,'' aimed at the home user. ``I'm just a guy who just loves computers and television,'' says Stowell, who makes his living in his family's kitchen cabinet business.
Stowell's show teaches PC users how to operate the new Windows 95 software, how to install CD-ROMs and speakers and how to play NASCAR racing games.
The studio was set up in a fruit and vegetable warehouse in 1986 by PCTV Productions, a division of PC Connection, a mail-order firm in Marlow. That operation and several other enterprises have since become PC-TV, a separate company with an additional studio in San Mateo, Calif.
``Computers are still difficult stuff for most people, especially since everything is changing every six months,'' says Cheifet, who commutes between San Mateo and Newport.
And television, he says, is the perfect medium to offer help.
``As computers have moved from text-based things to multimedia boxes with sound and movies, you can't cover it in a magazine,'' Cheifet says. ``I can't tell you how many times viewers have written or called us or e-mailed us and said, `I read this in a magazine, but when I saw it on your show I understood it.'
``Because we have the same medium as the computer, we can show processes with motion, sound and color over time. And so it's much easier to explain it to people,''
PC-TV next is taking part in a project to marry TV and PC technology.
Starting next year, Cheifet says, WMUR-TV in Manchester and WNNE-TV in White River Junction, Vt., will begin delivering computer data simultaneously with TV pictures. The ``Malachi'' system was developed by En Technology Corp. of Keene, a company owned by investors in PC-TV and PC Connection.
Viewers of ``Jeopardy,'' for instance, might download the computer version of the quiz show game to their PCs as they watch the show. Or they could retrieve discount coupons for goods advertised in commercials they are watching, or download weather maps, magazines and software. The system can be used with broadcast and cable television signals and can be taped on a VCR.
Despite the innovations, Cheifet hopes the pace of change slows down.
``The very thing that's moving the business, which is the brilliance and quick pace of technology, is the very curse of the business,'' he says. ``Can you imagine buying a car and being told six months later it's no good?''
As a result, he says, ``What's happening in homes now is just what happened to TVs and VCRs. We're getting two-computer homes, with the kids using the newer one for games.''
Today's 10-year-olds will make the computer truly a household appliance, Cheifet predicts.
``Our generation will read newspapers for the rest of our lives, but my 10-year-old, when he's 21, he won't be reading newspapers. Their world is the screen.
``Reading to them seems so boring, so slow, so linear, with no personal control, lack of excitement. Ten years from now, the dominant young adult population - people 20 to 35 with the money to spend - will be more comfortable with electronic media.''
by CNB