From: jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella)
Subject: MEDIA: New promotional commercial featuring VR
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 23:25:42 EST


The Australian popular science and technology show _Beyond_2000_
seems to have a new promotional commercial (if that what it is [?])
with a strong VR flavour.

There is a kid (10 y.o.?) wearing a big HMD, standing in a circular 
pen ...  I haven't quite followed the gist of the dialogue yet 
(only noticed the ad out of the corner of my eye). The gear seems 
to have been borrowed from the _Virtuality_ demo roaming the country, 
by the look of it (OK, short-sighted eyes at 10 feet :), and the 
voice-over says something to the effect of ``Welcome to Virtual 
Reality'' in a sort of Steven King-ish tone of voice. Then a 
_Beyond_2000_ logo appears at the bottom of the screen.

The ad is obviously meant to intrigue rather than inform, since
_Beyond_2000_ is, like just about everything else, running reruns
throughout this summer silly season when the ratings agency agrees
to ignore their little people-meters. It's not clear whether they
are advertising a re-run of an earlier programme, have some new
VR-oriented programmes in the making, or are simply jumping on the
bandwagon for the sake of advertising.

I *don't* think the ads are worth a great deal of discussion in
this group, but I know that there are many people out there
doing research (of one form or another) into how VR affects
society's values, how it is perceived, how it is portrayed in the
media, etc., and perhaps this example may be of interest to them.
If there is a sequel commercial (or if the meaning of the first 
becomes clearer) I will post the info.

The television network that produces _Beyond_2000_ is channel 7.
I'm not sure which city it is made in, but judging by the
personalities of the presenters, it is probably Sydney. For
those interested, I only have the Melbourne address, but they 
should be able to put you in touch with the relevant dept:

   HSV Channel 7 Pty Ltd,
   119 Wells Street,
   South Melbourne, Victoria 3205,
   Australia. 

        +61 3
   Tel: ----- 697-7777
         (03)

John Costella

Disc: I don't have anything to do with channel 7 

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John P. Costella              School of Physics, The University of Melbourne
jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au         Tel: +61 3 543-7795, Fax: +61 3 347-4783
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