IP on TV – The Channel Challenge
Coverage
Currently only one satellite covers New Zealand effectively – the one Sky uses. Unless broadcasters want additional dishes pointing in other directions they'll each have to strike a deal with satellite owner Optus. If they want terrestrial, they'll all have to be in
agreement when they work out the details with BCL.
Bruce Wallace, executive director of the NZTBC, says the government's own report shows there's a large amount of unused UHF spectrum. "Proper" digital terrestrial TV needs to offer new content and technical features. "It is illogical and confusing if we have to buy that extra frequency. As well as investing in internal equipment to broadcast to transmitters there's the cost of distributing analogue and digital signals concurrently with the same advertising revenue stream."
So where will the cash come from? The only option seems to be from budgets set aside for the development of local content and interactive services. Mr Wallace insists that the transition to a sophisticated digital platform is in the public interest, and argues the government need only allocate free spectrum, as governments elsewhere have done, providing an incentive for broadcasters to invest.
TVNZ has been running technical and operational digital TV trials for a year, using BCL's Waiatarua site in the Waitakere Ranges to broadcast to 150 staff members in different parts of Auckland. The outcomes of the trial are shared with Prime and CanWest.
There's talk of a deadline for digital but no specifics. Mr Earl says there's no point if analogue is not going to be switched off, or if there's no clear return to free-to-air broadcasters. Questions still need to be answered: Can the broadcasters give really good reasons for converting to digital? Will they agree to do so? And using what transmission approach? No-one is ready to answer yet.
Aging analogue
John Allen, director of operations for CanWest, has looked at all the options and considered pay TV or webcasting, but remains convinced there's still a place for digital free-to-air broadcast television. But the lack of any concession from the government on frequencies is a concern, and as the months tick by he's worried the old analogue networks and transmitters are nearing their use-by date. "No-one's making that technology any more".
While interactivity may bring in additional revenue it remains a niche product. Mr Allen explains that if people are downloading different things at different times, extra transponder space and massive back office and transmission infrastructure are needed.
Meanwhile the conclusions from the May 2005 report Public Broadcasting in the Digital Age continue to echo around the industry, suggesting the only solution to the "pervasive air of paralysis" is incentives and "the stick of regulation".
Paul Norris and Brian Pauling of the New Zealand Broadcasting School and Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, warn in an update to their 2001 report for New Zealand on Air that without government leadership and public funding free-toair television will decline.
With broadcasters likely to be competing directly with telecommunications companies in the new converged space, they believe it may be time to follow the UK and Australia by creating a regulator responsible for both.
