Well may technology race ahead, but the questions for government have remained virtually the same since television first came more than 40 years ago.
Communications Minister Richard Alston is wondering how to deal with the onset of digital television. At present each analogue transmission takes a certain amount of bandwidth, a channel if you like. Using the same amount of bandwidth, digital transmission can send about six times the amount of information. That enables either transmission of six different similar-quality signals, or the transmission of one signal with six times the quality because it enables six times the amount of information to be sent. This can eliminate ghosting and enable the reception of high-definition television.
I saw high-definition television in Japan. It comes in a rectangular 3 x 5 format, unlike the present square format. It retains quality even on cinema-sized screens. I could see the sweat beads on the sumo wrestlers.
Or you can have a mix. Some of the time you could deliver one high-quality channel and the rest of the time you could deliver six different lower-quality signals, some picture, some telephony, some data.
The interested players are hovering around Senator Alston like vultures (ornithological metaphors seem more tasteful than feline ones these days).
The existing networks (including the ABC and SBS) who have licences over the existing spectrum, want to keep what they have and be given (for nothing) the right to use all of it even if it carries six times the previous strength and a lot great economic value. The commercials want to use all the new strength to deliver the existing diet of tripe in a more enhanced way — high-definition mud on football guernseys and CD quality canned laughter. The ABC and SBS, on the other hand, which have an abundance of program but is restricted now by having only one channel to feed it down, wants to split its signal to deliver up to six times the number of programs on its present band width. It will do this most of the time, moving to a single high-quality signal at peak viewing times for its “”compelling dramas” and Attenborough-narrated croc docs.
The commercial networks do not have an abundance of content to broadcast. This is because, though they have warehouses full of aging American sit-coms, content is only viable to them if it attracts sufficient audience to make advertising worthwhile. The revenue has to meet the costs of putting it to air, including the cost of rights to show the program.
It may be that improving the one signal with great mass appeal might be more cost effective than splitting the signal into six different programs, even if it means less choice for consumers. The improved single high-definition signal might generate greater audience and advertising revenue with fewer costs than splitting the signal into six different programs.
The non-networks are incensed at the idea of existing TV channels getting the extra bandwidth for nothing. Pay-TV fears that more free-to-air programs will make pay TV less attractive. Newspapers and other content suppliers would like to use the new digital spectrum to deliver on-line services, much as they now do through the internet only much faster and with more sound, video and graphics.
What does the government do?
It does what it has done on every major communications issue since 1956 –whether to have TV, whether to go colour, whether to let the networks expand beyond the five big capitals, the form of pay TV, and now digital.
It has to balance about seven conflicting interests, a lot of them related.
1. The city vs the bush. Usually, the bush cops it, unless technology (like colour TV) does not differentiate. When TV first came, much of the bush had to wait 10 years to get it. On pay TV, Sydney and Melbourne got two lots of cables before any regional town got a look in. Now digital TV makes the government’s pay-TV decisions look as foolish as most commentators said they were at the time.
2. Big players vs public interest. In communications, governments have to be wary of the power of big media interests. That’s why they handed the first TV licences to the big newspaper interests in 1956. Fortunately, this time to two biggest players are in opposite camps. Packer (Channel Nine) wants existing licensees to get the extra spectrum for nothing. Murdoch (News Ltd) would like a slice of the action to put his newspapers on line. Exactly, the opposite of his position in the US, incidentally, where he wants his Foxtel network to get the extra spectrum for nothing. If governments can placate the big players without infuriating the masses to vote against them, that’s the way they go. The Packer-Murdoch diversity of interest is probably the only factor that will help propel the government to a sensible middle ground.
3. Public vs private. How much should public broadcasting get? In the past public broadcasting was treated well. Now we may well see the tragedy of much high-quality, diverse and experimental ABC and SBS content get unnecessarily bottle-necked because the government will not release spectrum to them.
4. Quality vs quantity. Do we get a lot more of the same tripe or do we get some diversity? Off-beat, minority interesting broadcasting still has a commercial effect even if it attracts no advertising because it takes away market share. In the past, governments have been ambivalent, on one hand, balancing things like ethnic broadcasting in radio (read, ethnic vote) against the wishes of large commercial broadcasters, and on the other, allowing a scandalous amount of amalgamation in the AM and FM bands.
5. Paying for infrastructure vs paying for licences. Governments have to recognise that new technology (colour, pay and digital) costs. Sometimes licences have to be discounted as seeding money to get it off the ground. The question is by how much. Usually the discount is too big and public assets in the form of airwaves are flogged too cheaply.
6. Fitting new technology in with old. Will new technology wipe out older ones? TV destroyed cinema news, but not radio or newspapers. Will digital TV with data delivery strengthen newspaper companies through electronic delivery or dissipate their advertising revenues to the new form?
7. The social harm vs social good of the new technology. Invariably this is much debated, but it never determines the introduction of new technology in the way that economic forces do.
Having weighed these things up governments then generally do what is in the broad national interest for the general betterment of the whole community. What! Sorry let me rewrite that. Government then generally do what they think will give them the best chance for re-election.
If the mass of voters were thoughtful and diligent they should amount to the same thing, but since the advent of television the two methods of policy making have been ever diverging as the mass of voters rely to a ever greater extent on glib, short TV grabs for their news.