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Digital TV: Broadcast Heaven or Dumbed-Down Hell?

What does the future hold for TV broadcasting?

For some time, people have been predicting the integration of communication devices. Telephones, personal/laptop/handheld computers and TVs will become inter-changeable and compatible with each other. Most commentators believe there's a long way to go before this is achieved. But some think that the broadcasters have been slow to recognise the massive change that digitisation will bring.

Some think we're living through the end of broadcast television. As soon as the industry went digital, what is called the 'push paradigm' where viewers accept what is broadcast to them, no longer worked. There will still be larger broadcasters such as BSkyB, ITV or the BBC, but their position in broadcasting will change. They will still be important when major news events occur, and when there's a global sport event like the Olympics or the football World Cup. But they will no longer have the degree of control over viewers that they once had. TV will become, they believe, an industry like so many others in the service sector, where power rests with the consumer who demands TV programmes and other services when they want them - a change to a 'pull paradigm' in broadcasting.

These predictions are based on the experience in other areas of entertainment, such as the record and film industries, which have had to come to terms with new ways of people demanding their products. They can try to resist, but eventually will have to accept that their marketplace has changed forever.

Britain is poised to become the first mass market for digital TV. It faces many challenges as it prepares for this revolution:

• The prospect of deterring consumers from buying new analogue TV sets, as these will be obsolete (even if they can be adapted for digital use).
• Ensuring that when it turns off the analogue signal, it doesn't take entertainment and information sources away from thousands, if not millions of people.
• Encouraging many less affluent people to invest in new digital TV sets, as well as STBs to receive the free-to-view DTT services.

But many believe that without overcoming these challenges, we will fail to keep British broadcasting at the top.

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