The videocassette industry is not going to get off the ground on a large scale unless it is successful in creating its own highly specialized markets. Obviously TV cassette manufacturers will be able to sell their wares to cable TV stations for programming, but corporations that are interested in developing a mass market on the order of the recording industry or the printing industry have begun to create their own marketing schemes. Some talk in terms of creating special entertainment programming for airport or hotel lobbies. But most distributors have economic interests in other parts of the communications industry and are not about to forget it. The question then becomes: Will the Britannica Corporation market a $10 videotape of their product when they can charge hundreds of dollars for the same thing in a different form? Will Twentieth Century Fox release their films without considering how it will affect theatre box offices? Probably not.

Equally disturbing is the fact that the industry is determined to market its product in as closed a form as possible. Only four of the thirteen major videocassette/cartridge units are being marketed with record capability, thus wasting what is probably the single most attractive and versatile feature of the unit. From a piece in Radical Software by Frank Gillette: "Ostensibly, CBS has fused a film cartridge and television monitor for purposes best rationalized by image resolution and the range of information already committed to available film. This is a flimsy excuse. The research time and money represented by EVR would have equally sufficed to develop and perfect a tape system subsuming EVR's picture resolution and information access while also having a record mode compatible with most TV cameras. Excepting time-choice, EVR does not alter the general complexion of television viewing....EVR is an extension of the CBS network, a tautological tool-not a tool for creating a new variety of network. It fails to put the 'consumer' in direct contact with the processes directing the in-formation he receives-his information continues to be directed exclusively by external sources."

If the videocassette industry continues to develop along the lines the industry is directing it, viewers will simply have a wider choice of programming and the advantage of being able to see it at their own convenience. The videocassette industry is, for purely commercial reasons, ignoring the special property of videotape-information storage-and instead is using the cassette as a means of distributing that information. Cable television-not cassettes-is the most efficient means of transmitting the information that videotape can store, and, together with videotape, is capable of restructuring television in such a way as to eliminate the need for mass marketing and allow the transmission of anything, regardless of how limited its marketing appeal may be.

IN Expanded Cinema, Gene Young blood tells us that "man is conditioned by his environment and that 'environment' for contemporary man is the intermedia network. We are conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature. Once we've agreed upon this, it becomes immediately obvious that the structure and content" of television is of cardinal importance.

In this context, it becomes obvious how the profit motive and resulting structure of the television industry are solely responsible for its paltry content. The very fact that television programming is bought by commercial sponsorship means that the primary function of any program is to sell the product that sponsors it.

Moreover, commercial television, unlike what is envisioned by the alternate television movement, operates on a closed system of aesthetics as well as a closed communications system. From Expanded Cinema again: "To satisfy the profit motive, the commercial entertainer must give the audience what it expects, which is conditional on what it has been receiving, which is conditional on what it previously received, ad infinitum. Situation comedies, suspense, westerns, are all redundant in that they operate on the basis of what is probable. This noninformative quality of television is particularly true in terms of the highly centralized structure of television. Because it is broadcast from such centralized sources, the programming must appeal to millions of millions of viewers and be able to manipulate them along the same lines of conditioned response. By these means, not only are the more discrete social enclaves in our culture entirely ignored, but also the destructive habit of unthinking response to formulas is perpetuated. And not only are shows broadcast because of their lowest-common-denominator appeal, but also they insure their own popularity by destroying the audience's ability to appreciate and participate in the creative process.

The only way to break out of this vicious circle-and it is vicious when you realize that television is the most frequently used means of communication in this country-is through a real structural change in the television and this is something that the videocassette/cartridge industry is not about to provide. Cable television can, however, provide that needed change.