Last week I sat before the most humungous television set I have seen in my life. It dominated a lounge room wall – like a cinema in the home.
As an experiment we flicked backwards and forwards between the standard-definition digital and the high-definition digital transmission.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan and Prime Minister John Howard might be able to discern a difference, but I couldn’t.
My guess is that the vast majority of Australians couldn’t either, or even if they could, they would always prefer four separate SDTV programs to one HDTV one.
Sacrificing that amount of choice is simply not worth whatever tiny difference in quality you get with high-definition.
Yet the Government’s new media policy put out this week by Coonan persists with its failed policy of demanding that the three commercial and two public broadcasters put out 1040 hours of HDTV a year and restricting the number of standard-definition channels they can put out.
It contradicts four tenets of Government economic policy which it has so successfully applied in most other areas: maximise choice; maximise competition; deregulation; and efficient use of resources through the use of the market.
Let’s leave aside the new media ownership rules for now. Most people hardly care who owns the media that is brought to them. They just want as much as possible at the cheapest price. The critical issue is the efficient use of the television broadcast spectrum.
With the advent of digital technology a decade ago the number of channel available went from five to 30 in standard definition. Did the Government embrace this wonderful resource? No. It bowed to pressure from the Packer-owned Nine Network to maximise the number of eyeballs watching its single set of advertisements — thereby keeping costs down and profits up.
The Government naively hoped enough people would buy digital TV sets on the mere promise of a better-quality signal without any appreciable extra content so that the analog service could be turned off by December 2008, saving costly duplication and allowing better use of the spectrum.
The policy was an unmitigated failure – as every commentator with an ounce of brain said at the time. Australians simply refused to take up digital television. There was nothing in it for them. Only 17 per cent of households have digital in Australia, compared to more than 70 per cent in Britain. That is because Britain allows multi-channelling so consumers have more than a dozen free-to-air programs to choose from as the technology allows. With that digital take-up the analog service can be turned off, allowing for even more channels.
Australia stayed in the digital dark age. All Coonan did this week is go from unmitigated failure to mitigated failure. She allowed a very limited amount of multi-channelling in the hope that this would entice people to digital. It was a sop to consumers.
All we got is the removal off the content restrictions on the present second digital ABC and SBS channels and removal of the requirement for all five networks to simulcast their HDTV output in analog and SDTV – so we might get an extra channel from each network for 1040 a year.
And a fourth commercial network, which might have resulted in the creation of more new programs, was ruled out
At least we had an acknowledgement of past failure, even if there was no apology for the wasted resources.
Coonan said, “Overseas developments, increasing digital uptake and the costs and inefficiencies of broadcasters running dual analogue and digital broadcasting services (simulcasting) mean that there is a strong imperative for Australia to move to a wholly digital television broadcasting environment in line with the timeframes being adopted by other like countries. There is insufficient digital take-up to meet the current switchover date of 31 December 2008 in metropolitan areas.”
In short, past government policies put in place because of fear of media moguls have put Australian television behind the whole of the developed world and much of the developing world.
The sop given this week might increase the speed of the digital uptake a bit to enable the analog to be turned off in 2012. But there was a much better way of doing it.
The Government should have allowed all five networks to use their spectrum how they want: HDTV, SDTV and/or analog. They would each move to four or five SDTV programs and stop broadcasting the analog service in a couple of years. They would bring old programs from the vaults and there would be room for any amount of sport without hogging so much of the present evening schedules.
The policy announced this week is the equivalent of requiring music and film companies to persist with the production of vinyl records and VCR tapes when CDs and DVDs arrived. Did anyone care then what would happen to old turntables and VCR players?
Labor and others concerned that the new ownership rules will reduce diversity are barking up the wrong tree. Multi-channelling will give greater diversity.
At least we had some progress on ownership. We will get more foreign investment in the Australian media. Great. More money and competition means better service.
Owners will be allowed to have a newspaper and a television and radio licence in one market. Great. The pitiful fodder which passes as broadcast news in some regional markets could be improved with the support of newspaper newsrooms, as they did before the present rules came in 20 years ago.
Indeed, a newsroom providing vision, sound and the written word makes a lot of sense in a world of converging digital technology and an increasingly powerful internet.