T-Commerce Efforts Stall As iTV Enters New Phase

摘要

T-commerce ― the ill-defined interactive shopping category involving the sales of merchandise from a television set, presumably during TV viewing ― is still a tentative work in progress. At this month's National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) convention in New Orleans, La., t-commerce was virtually invisible ― a sharp contrast to recent years when promoters touted its central role in the new "transactional television" realm (REC, May 23, 2000, p. 6; Dec. 5, 2000, p. 6). Now, in the cyclical nature of program fads, t-commerce is part of the temporarily reviled "interactive TV" category.