Advertising on Videotex

An article in today's Slate examines the relationship between newspapers and electronic content delivery that goes back further than many imagine: from the experiments with faxes in the 1940s to the emerging media of 1970s -- videotex services (?).  Slate writes: "So intense was the industry's devotion to videotex and so rampant its paranoia that some other medium would usurp its place in the media constellation that the American Newspaper Publishers Association lobbied Congress in 1980 to prevent AT&T from launching its own "electronic yellow pages."


New formats:  In April 1984, publishing industry's trade mag Folio ran an interview with a videotex content publisher: "It is possible for an advertiser to "sponsor" information segments, which are then distributed at no cost to system operators in much the same way that broadcast radio features and television shows are syndicated to broadcast outlets. But as far as I know, no such arrangement currently exists. In addition, print-publishers shouldn't overlook using videotex to promote sales of subscriptions, books, merchandise, reprints, back-issues or special services to the videotex user.

Familiar concerns: "Quite simply, advertisers aren't interested. They would have their name and logo displayed on the bottom of pages on 'which the news might be bad, thereby associating them with something  unfavorable." (Ryerson Review of Journalism, 1984)

A couple of other resources:

• Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (a 2005 book from MIT Press referenced in the Slate's article)
  
• David Carlson has compiled a timeline of online news and information systems.