NetworkPlus

Walter Bender, Pascal Chesnais, “Network Plus,” Imaging Applications in the Work World, Ron Clouthier, Gary Starkweather, Andrew G. Tescher, Thomas Vogelsong, Editors, Proc. SPIE 900, 81–86 (1988)

Abstract:

A possible consequence of the synthesis of media through active processing is the merger of newspapers and television. The result is either a newspaper with illustrations which move or, conversely, print as television output. The latter is the theme of Network Plus.

Network Plus is an experiment in combining news wire services with network television news. The goal is to provide both an annotated, real-time newscast composed at the time of viewing, and to provide the data base for composing an illustrated personal newspaper printed immediately after the telecast. Wire service stories are used to annotate the network news by examining the closed captioning accompanying the broadcast. Ancillary contextual information is gleaned from processing the broadcast. A rough determination of emphasis can be correlating pitch and intonation of the audio signal with the transcripts. Scene analysis is used to find relevant still images. The editorial direction is dictated by the broadcaster, while the content is enriched from a variety of sources.