After Bush Speech, CBS Asks 'America' to Call In : Television: With 10,000 phone lines in place, the network plans the most extensive and immediate interactive phone poll to date.

By DENNIS McDOUGAL

Jan. 28, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In a scene reminiscent of the fictional instant ratings of “Max Headroom,” CBS News will link up with a national polling company tonight to deliver, within about an hour, an assessment of President Bush’s State of the Union address by as many as 300,000 viewers.

It won’t be the first time that networks have conducted call-in surveys, but it will be the most extensive and immediate interactive phone poll in history, according to Brian Rivette, vice president of marketing for Call Interactive, the Omaha-based company that will handle the survey for CBS.

“We have 10,000 lines in place and that means we can handle 10,000 calls every 90 seconds,” Rivette said.

In the TV movie and subsequent series “Max Headroom,” programs and personalities could be canceled by the network within minutes, depending upon viewer votes in an instant ratings system that polled audience preference from second to second.

But tonight’s poll on “America on the Line,” which will be co-anchored by Connie Chung, Dan Rather and Charles Kuralt, will not be simply a popularity vote to see how many people liked or disliked the President’s address, according to Lane Venardos, an executive producer of the program.

Callers to a toll-free number instead will be asked a series of recorded questions about specific economic issues detailed in the President’s speech and in Speaker of the House Thomas S. Foley’s (D-Wash.) Democratic response, including unemployment, the high cost of medical care and taxes. They will be able to answer yes or no by pushing designated buttons on their telephone.

“America on the Line” will air live in the East, immediately following the President’s speech and the Democratic response, which are scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m. PST. (The CBS program will be seen on tape delay at 9 p.m. on the West Coast.)

“This is not a horse-race broadcast. We’re not asking, ‘Do you think George Bush is doing a good job?’ or ‘Which Democrat will win the nomination?’ ” Venardos said.

Instead, he explained, the questions will be more along the lines of: What are you willing to do to get this country out of the mess that it’s in? Pay more taxes? Depend on less government services?

“If there’s one thing that this process does, it is that it takes the spin doctors out of the loop,” he said. “Instead of someone interpreting for the audience what they have just heard, we’re sort of eliminating the middleman and letting people interpret what they’ve just heard themselves.”

Each caller will be asked one of at least four recorded questions, posed in a random rotation to insure against mass call-ins from special-interest groups that might skew the survey’s findings, according to Venardos. CBS declined to disclose exactly what the questions would be, but Venardos was sure what one of them would be about.

“At least one of our questions will deal with the public’s perception of how the media, particularly network TV, has accurately covered or distorted the condition of the economy,” he said.

Rather and Chung will follow the caller response throughout the evening from their anchor positions in New York while Kuralt will report from Call Interactive headquarters in Nebraska.

The sheer volume of expected calls should not pose a problem because the Call Interactive computer system is designed to handle twice the 300,000 calls CBS anticipates.

“We didn’t want to blow ourselves up in the process,” Venardos said, explaining why CBS brass chose not to push the system to its limits. “I’m as sure as I can be that we can handle it.”

Although the program will not be seen live on the West Coast, people here will be able to vote. Immediately following the President’s address, CBS viewers on the West Coast will be invited to call in at the same time that viewers on the East Coast are asked to call; they just won’t be able to see the results as quickly as the people watching the live broadcast.

Though the poll is random and on a large scale, it is not scientific, Venardos said. For that reason, CBS has already selected 1,200 viewers from all 50 states who meet the recognized criteria for scientific surveys used by such professional pollsters as Lou Harris or the Roper Organization. These viewers will answer the same questions and will be used as a control group against which CBS will measure responses from the potential 300,000 callers.

Venardos and Rivette both acknowledged that there is potential for misuse of the interactive polling technology. Eventually, Americans could be polled and cast their votes on everything from national political candidates to local bond initiatives, based solely on impulse and advertising. The result could be emotional mobocracy.

The act of voting or filling out a survey now requires at least minimal deliberation beforehand.

Asked about how Call Interactive plans to use the technology in the future, Rivette said: “We have plans for a lot of network-based programs (but) we will have to wait and see what the clients want us to do.”

In the past, the technology has been used successfully in television advertising campaigns, he said, chiefly involving phone-in contests.

Using interactive phoning for surveys and polls, however, puts the technology one step closer to far more serious applications, Venardos said. He, for one, believes that video voting may not be far off and, with safeguards, could result in the most successful form of participatory democracy to date.

“One question I’ve been asked is whether or not this technology is the forerunner for people voting from their home,” Venardos said. “I can’t answer that, but it did get me to thinking. You would have to come up with the necessary technological security, like showing your fingerprint on a TV screen, but it could be done.”