Wanted: editorial entrepreneurs.

Maybe the surging popularity of talk radio can be a model for Web interactivity.

When I joined WCBS-TV in New York as an editorial writer in the late 1960s, television seemed poised to reinvent the editorial form, much as it had reinvented local news coverage.

Opinion writing fared well in broadcasting in the 1970s, spurred by the Federal Communication Commission, which told broadcasters editorializing would be looked upon favorably.

By the mid-'80s, however, the FCC had abandoned activist regulations that encouraged license challenges. Broadcasters came under increasing cost pressures. Networks and stations changed hands.

By the end of the decade, broadcast editorials in markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington largely had vanished, though happily in some markets like Detroit, it still thrives.

So what had promised to be a robust new form of editorializing in the electronic media of the '70s showed sharp decline by the '90s, largely because too many television and radio operators saw editorializing as marginal, not central, to their business.

Yet as I find myself toiling as an editorial writer again, this time in cable television, I wonder whether the digital age promises new opportunities for editorials in electronic media, especially cable. I think it does, based on the nature of changes taking place in the cable industry as it enters this new era, and based on the history of my employer, Cablevision.

Unlike some other cable operators, Cablevision regards itself as a publisher rather than as merely a distributor of programming. The company has demonstrated this through initiating various programming services over the years, and especially by being the first to establish a regional cable news network, News 12 Long Island, on which Cablevision editorials appear.

Several other cable operators subsequently joined in creating cable news networks on a regional basis.

Moreover, cable supports the growth of new national news networks, including start-ups established by a partnership between NBC and Microsoft, a rival news network from Fox, and a new financial news network being established by Turner.

Two factors seem to be driving these news and information initiatives in cable. One is localism. Cablevision and other cable operators see an opportunity to differentiate their service from a growing array of rivals by establishing local franchises in news and information.

The second is even more exciting. The involvement of companies like Microsoft as strategic investors in cable news networks speaks to a new opportunity: providing complementary information over the Internet, accessed through cable. It would stimulate advertising sales and the sale of cable modems, computers, and software.

Many cable operators see tremendous business opportunities in providing cable modems to their subscribers - modems that not only offer remarkably rapid access to the Internet, but also operate with such speed that Web servers act more like television channels than pages, offering video clips and multimedia on demand.

Of course, to sell cable modems, cable operators must provide compelling interactive services.

These factors make me bullish about cable as the news and information medium for the digital age. Undoubtedly, they offer opportunities for new editorial formats and for the exchange of opinion.

What shape might this take? Talk radio suggests one possible model for electronic discourse through cable and online media, already emerging on the Internet.

True, many journalists and editorial writers regard talk radio and talk hosts negatively. But at its best, talk radio resembles a lively editorial page with an agenda set by an editor who has a point of view, providing a lively exchange of opinion - much of it very topical and informed - in which the audience can participate in a live and interactive manner.

Talk radio attracts a huge and growing audience. It has become radio's fastest growing format, up from 82 talk stations 15 years ago to 1,308 today by the most recent count. The talk format also has been adapted in cable programming, notably in the evenings on CNBC and on C-Span. A variation of this can also be found on some newspaper Web pages.

One of my favorites is the Toronto Globe and Mail's "National Issues Forum." It invites readers to join a dialogue on a particular issue and publishes e-mail letters on the subject over an extended period. Imagine such a format offering real-time audio and video interaction over the net - a cross between talk radio and The Globe and Mail's interactive letters forum.

Many of the newspaper editorial pages I browse on the Web do an excellent job of translating the print version into an attractive and accessible form online. But so far, few have attempted to reconceive the opinion function in the new media.

If those of us developing editorials and opinion for broadcast and cable have any contribution to make in bringing opinion to the new media, it will be to help translate the best of what we do in using voice, video, sight, sound, motion, and live interaction into these new media forms.

It might also make a difference if editorial writers acted more like entrepreneurs.

One way or another, I believe, opinion will flourish in the new interactive media of the digital age. Whether it flourishes in formats that encourage public discourse and informed opinion depends on who shapes the new forum and the values they bring to it.

My guess is that those who shape opinion formats in the digital age of interactive television are mostly likely to be information entrepreneurs who regard electronic public discourse as a promising new market, not just a worthy cost center in a traditional media enterprise. I also think that to succeed, they'll approach the new medium as innovators rather than adapters.

How will electronic journalism affect editorial writing in the next 10 years? The next 50 years?

Within 10 years there will be newspapers on the Internet independent of print newspapers. Editorials will be part of them and readers will play a larger role. In 50 years, electronic newspapers will be continuously broadcast on screens on monitors that line streets - like newspaper kiosks now.

- KAY SEMION

The benefits are immediacy and the ability for feedback. The drawback will be an ever-increasing crescendo of voices and opinions with no filter.

- DAN RADMACHER

It will certainly increase the pressure for greater immediacy - and I'm not a bit sure that's good.

- CHARLES REINKEN

If it makes unnecessary the printing and distribution of papers, and yet provides a method of collecting income, it will have an enormous effect.

- WARREN G. BOVEE

It'll make research easier. But it might also mean we have to try harder to get responses. Electronic images are easier to forget once they're gone.

- GAIL LEMLEY

NCEW member Peter Kohler is director of editorial services for Cablevision Systems in Woodbury, N.Y.