"They took paradigms from a bunch of other media and tried to fit a round peg in a square hole," says Joshua Harris, president of Jupiter Communications in New York.įounded as Trintex in 1984 by IBM, Sears, and CBS (which dropped out of all non-broadcast ventures upon the arrival of Larry Tisch in 1986), Prodigy was never meant to follow in the footsteps of industry founders such as H&R Block's CompuServe. The venture has been fraught with the perils of trying to shape consumer behavior to a particular application of technology. Prodigy's trials and tribulations offer a poignant lesson for Digital Age capitalists. And by adding graphics where others had offered only text, visionaries at IBM and Sears figured they could sell advertising on every screen and tap a potential revenue stream far larger than the sum of the hourly fees charged by existing online services. The market for interactive services was small, but the two corporate giants believed their pockets were deep enough to make it grow by sheer force of promotional spending. And why not? In 1987 a handful of pioneer online services had already demonstrated there was money to be made providing news, database access, and a forum for electronic bull sessions to a burgeoning population of PC users.
It was with great hope that the brass at IBM and Sears gave to their joint venture, in its infancy, the name Prodigy. One that excites admiration or wonder: as a) an extraordinary, marvelous or unusual accomplishment b) a highly gifted or academically talented child - Webster's Dictionary But will it fall into a new trap called Prodigy TV? After losing a billion dollars, alienating sophisticated users, and failing to reach its ad sales targets, the sleeping giant of online services may finally be waking up.
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