It will be interesting to see exactly which customs the Vatican is going to allow from the past rich five centuries of Anglican worship, life and thought.
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politics of digital tvGovernments everywhere are slowly unveiling digital terrestrial television. David Elstein argues that both the technology and the politics are ill-informed. Strong voices in the US and Australia agree: plans are chaotic. Public policy expert Damien Tambini and Peter Marshall from the Digital Television Group offer booming optimism. Barry Flynn reminds the UK they were promised interactive television. Who is being held accountable? Also: In an age of two-way television and direct marketing: Is your TV watching you?
David Burke is wrong to associate interactive TV with more power for corporations, politicians and advertisers. Legal and practical safeguards protect viewers’ rights, and people will continue to select and filter the material they encounter. The heart of the new technology is communication, diversity and choice – and, if anything, the empowerment of the viewer rather than the ‘monitors’.
Interactive television will bring the internet to the poor. At least that is one of the ways the British government accounts for massive spending on digital terrestrial television. But the silence is deafening as technological decisions are taken which will make delivery of this vision impossible, says the editor of Inside Digital TV.
The interactive television revolution will mean more choice, more control and more freedom for the viewer, right? Wrong says the man behind White Dot – the campaign to switch off television – all it means is more ways for media corporations to keep tabs on your viewing habits and tailor their products to your tastes. Don’t believe him? Listen to what the corporations say…
The merits of digital terrestrial television (DTT) cannot be calculated in the here-and-now. More efficient use of the spectrum will inevitably increase its worth for everyone. As for David Elstein’s obsession with the possibly questionable political genesis of DTT – frankly, who cares?
In a rollicking rebuttal of his critics, Peter Marshall and Damian Tambini, David Elstein draws on his deep inside knowledge of the UK media to restate his case against the British government’s digital television policy. He argues that they are wasting an unwarranted amount of public money on a doomed venture.
Digital terrestrial television is still in its infancy; the argument from technology rather than politics proves its vast potential.
The problems of launching a viable digital television service in the UK do not justify pessimism about its prospects. The British case is not a fiasco bred of incompetence and political conspiracy; rather, it is a reasoned if ambitious attempt to bring British broadcasting into the digital age.
Ali Hossaini makes a constructive proposal for a new standard for American television that embraces interactivity and streaming media.
Political advertising is entering British homes despite legal restrictions. Parties and pressure groups can’t buy a cable TV channel, but they can set up a website on interactive television. Citizens can now engage with politics interactively, onscreen and inbox. Is this the arrival of real democracy?
UK digital terrestrial television (DTT) is in a shambles, David Elstein has argued. The US has taken a different path, argues Hernan Galperin, if anything it’s even worse. Perhaps we can find seeds of hope in DTT policy on the other side of the globe? Fat chance. Media analyst Julian Thomas outlines the way Australian DTT policy has drawn on both US and UK models, but created a mess uniquely its own.
‘Don’t expect the grass to be greener across the Atlantic,’ says Hernan Galperin in response to David Elstein’s article on digital TV in the UK. In the US, he says, a plan devised to keep the digital terrestrial market safe for the existing players in return for direct electoral support for legislators, is even harder to justify.
Digital has become a ‘halo’ word employed by successive UK governments to mobilise the broadcasting industry behind their modernising agenda. John Howkins explains that the problem is that their political impulse to control the technology is matched by a lack of both strategic vision and practical understanding.
DTT is not a new disease spread by government diktat, maladroit forward planning, institutional self-interest, financial overreach, and indifference to consumers. But the story of Digital Terrestrial Television in the UK might as well be. If the people responsible for the unfolding disaster have an answer to David Elsteins’s excoriating argument, we want to hear it. In the meantime, read this and weep for England.
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