Surprise, surprise. Australians have not taken up digital television. It was inevitable from the late 1990s when the Government set up its digital-television policy. The policy was a dud from the beginning, and I and others pointed out its obvious defects. The policy pandered to the big end of town – the three commercial networks at the expense of the viewing public.
Where are we more than four years after the beginning of digital transmission? A mere 500,000 out of 7.8 million households have digital television – a little over 6 per cent. In Britain the figure is 70 per cent.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan acknowledged the low take up this week and said something should be done. The House of Representatives Committee of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts might well be miffed that Coonan’s statement came as it is conducting hearings into the question. Coonan said that the analog system could not be turned off in 2008 as the original policy envisaged. She said also that no one had made a case for a fourth commercial network.
Those statements might well have pre-empted what the committee might find. For a start, turning off the analog system sooner rather than later might get more people to go digital – but voter outrage would prevent it. But adding a purely digital fourth network might encourage digital uptake because viewers would at last get some value out of digital.
Of course, if the Government had adopted the obvious model in the first place we would not be in this mess. More than 90 per cent of Australian households are unnecessarily watching second-rate television – both in content and quality of signal.
The trouble with the original model was that it mandated that the five networks (three commercial, the ABC and SBS) each broadcast only a single high-definition digital signal. There were minor exceptions. The result has been that the public is condemned to the choice of only five programs.
The spectrum available can do much better. Each network could have put out three or four separate programs at once in standard definition digital. Standard definition is very good. The Government should have given each network the choice – one high-definition program or several standard-definition programs. If it had done that probably all networks would have added more program streams and the public would have flocked to digital. We would have had a choice of 15 programs instead of five. A new TV set would have been worth getting.
But no, the Government pandered to the commercial networks who wanted to confine programming and advertisements into one program stream each – much cheaper. And the Government precluded a fourth commercial network in the interests of the existing players.
No other industry but that of the powerful media barons has ever got such generous government protection from new technology.
The ABC submission to the committee got it spot on: the thing slowing digital take-up is the fact there is virtually no additional content.
As a result Australia will not be able to switch off the inefficient analog system for a long time to come. We should be turning it off in 2008 and selling the spectrum to at least one other commercial player. We should allow all of the licencees and the public broadcasters to multi-channel if they want. The result for revenue and the viewing public would be excellent.
Of course, if any of the commercial players thought a single high-definition program was such a fabulous idea, they could do that – but you could bet they would not.
In any event, there is now compression technology that would enable two high-definition programs to be broadcast in the existing spectrum – if the government would allow it.
Viewers are not fools. If they thought the transfer from analog to digital without extra programs was not worth it, they would certainly think that any difference between standard definition and high definition not worth having if it meant fewer programs.
The Government has made a complete hash of this, as the take-up figures reveal. It should tear its policy up and start again – in the interests of viewers, not the existing commercial networks.
Similarly, the Government has also made a complete hash of Telstra. It should have separated the ownership of the infrastructure from the service provision. One (presumably government-owned) company would have owned all the copper wire, fibre optic-broadband, wireless and mobile infrastructure. It would be a natural government monopoly like the roads and defence.
That company would then treat all service providers, including the remaining service arm of Telstra, equally. That would be the road to good mobile and broadband coverage throughout Australia.
The Mickey Mouse separation-under-one-roof proposed this week will still give the Telstra services section an unfair advantage over Optus, Vodafone and other carriers, and do little to ensure good coverage with state-of-the-art infrastructure across Australia. In any event it is too late to include a national mobile network owned and we will always be stuck with duplicated towers in some places and gaps in others.
With both Telstra and digital TV we are seeing a failure to discern what in the national interest is best left to market forces and what is best done by government. Instead we have had powerful voices and ideology drive policy and legislation to the detriment of the users of phones, TVs and the internet.
One feels sorry for Coonan who is new to the portfolio. She is a bit like the traveller asking the way to Dublin and being told, “If I was going to Dublin, I would not start from here.”