IP on TV – The Channel Challenge
Broadband
The report says that if TVNZ is to fulfill its role as a public broadcaster, leadership is needed to ensure digital programming is accessible to audiences anywhere, any time, regardless of device or delivery platform.
The report remarks on the striking failure of broadband, the cornerstone of an effective digital communications environment, to proliferate. "The evidence is well documented, as is the pattern of incremental creep only when the government threatens action or regulation. Competition is essential if new services are to emerge and flourish." It suggests the government's ideal of establishing nationwide 50Mbit/sec broadband access by 2010 is a long way from reality and may require further intervention.
Meanwhile New Zealand on Air's CEO Jo Tyndall, on secondment to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage as its digital project manager, has the task of pulling the loose ends together and making digital TV happen. She signed off the Norris-Pauling report, and it is hoped that she is what the industry needs. She admits that some balancing of interests is required between the government's roles, ranging from spectrum manager to shareholder in TVNZ and BCL, and between its digital strategy and broader public policy interests.
Some technical and commercial policy work has been done; Ms Tyndall says now is the right time to engage with the free-to air channels with a view to a solely digital future. A successful transition will need a partnership between industry and government, which she is hoping to facilitate.
Elsewhere around the world, she says, household investment in equipment has been driven primarily by the content on offer and the quality of reception, before an analogue switch-off date has introduced compulsion – something it is "obviously desirable to minimise".
Create your own TV
Meanwhile the video stores are fighting back, offering boxed sets of TV series only a season behind the air date, and sometimes pre-empting the on-air plans of some channels. Sky TV is also hedging its bets with "no late fees" DVD hire.
And technology continues to march. The Internet has opened up an on-demand world for information and entertainment, raising expectations. People's tolerance of free-to-air television timetabling, interrupted by the highest ratio of ad breaks in the world, is being sorely tested.
There's more incentive than ever to pre-record selected TV programmes and skip the ads, which is easier with new DVD recorders and set-top boxes. While there are international sites from which movies can be downloaded there are legal and logistical obstacles to a local offering. Meanwhile piracy, having compelled the audio industry to shift up a gear, has turned its attention to DVD copying and downloading of movies and TV series.
The battle is on for the 99% of homes that now have two or more TV sets. While we wait for digital free-to-air and for Pay TV or IPTV to up their offerings, New Zealanders are increasingly becoming their own programme directors, compiling audio and video content for playback at their leisure. Ask them what channel they prefer, they'll probably tell you Channel Me.
Keith Newman is an Auckland-based freelance journalist.
