Stop watching TV, start playing it!(Static (United Kingdom))

Static argues interactive TV has amazing potential for those bold enough to try

For our parents' generation television was a revelation. It was exciting, stimulating and very real. It brought distant people and lands, new cultures, the living world, straight into the front room. It still does, only it isn't the revelation it used to be.

Analogue TV is going through what you could call 'a bit of a mid-life crisis'. Other than the arrival of colour in 1967 and the addition of a limited number of channels, it hasn't changed, and that's the problem; leisure in the western world has. Terrestrial TV is facing old age.

Commercial satellite networks are seizing the rights to TV's killer content, namely the latest film and the latest sport. Games console manufacturers are drawing both the youth and adult population into a fantasy world of power and glory. The web is luring us to a culture of fast and convenient communication and information retrieval. And what's more, TV's very own baby sibling, digital television is arriving to steal the show.

I struggle to think of a time in modern history when the generation gap has been so great. The youngsters of today are growing up in a world where communication, education and entertainment are at their fingertips, 24 hours a day. A world where they are encouraged to 'go do it themselves', a world where the youth are empowered by new technology. Where the pace of life of the young is that much faster than that of their parents' generation. Where their confidence in technology is that much greater. So how do we market to 'Generation @'?

Well, for a generation brought up on computer games and mobile phones, a generation who have never owned an audio cassette, never known life without an answer machine, a generation who have come to demand …