Good Laugh: "Interactive television's ship is still leaving"

My research and writing has pointed out that market research firms probably will sell fewer reports if they conclude "Status quo, nothing will change in the next five years." But how about this?

NEW YORK -- Interactive television's ship is leaving, and the time to get aboard is now, Jupiter Media Metrix analysts said yesterday during pre-conference sessions of the Jupiter Online Advertising Forum.

Interactive television has been a buzzword since the 1990s. It has yet to live up to its potential, but is poised to earn its place among direct-sales media, said David Card, vice president and senior analyst at Jupiter.

"We believe this time it's really happening," Card said. "Some of the technology the cable companies and satellite companies are rolling out is taking hold."

Source: http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/shows-assns/16555.html

I always view these reports with a very skeptical eye. Oh, the quote above looks reasonable to me, except that it was published 8 August 2001! Jupiter mined the dot.com revolution for all it was worth before being discredited shortly after a report published at about this time. How do you decide if such a report is right on? Well, LOOK FOR THE ASSUMPTIONS. Any market research report that does not clearly state its assumptions is open to question.

I literally stumbled across this citation today and had to laugh when I saw it was published exactly 5 yeaqrs ago. Jupiter should have predicted the status quo. Actually, because everyone was so bullish at that time, a report that investigated why iTV was not ready for the marketplace might have sold as many copies.

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