OU on the BBC: Digital Planet: Learning Zone - Never Mind the Quality

BBC

As we enter the new millennium the worlds of television, computers and telecommunications are interweaving, and we don't know where it will all end. For some it is exciting, for others scary, for many it is just confusing. There will be new ways of making programmes, new ways of delivering them through digital technology. In fact in a few years, programmes as we know them, television as we know it, may cease to exist and advertising may be the mainstay of television.

We are used to a box in the corner of the room where the whole family can sit and watch their favourite sitcom or soap. But the proliferation of channels being provided by Sky, OnDigital and Cable means that now people can tune in to hundreds of channels including channels aimed at their own particular interests. From broadcasting to narrowcasting.

Maybe in the future there'll be a television in every room, and people will become increasingly fragmented. When football was taken off terrestrial TV, the millions of fans who all watched the match at the same time were divided into those who had a Sky dish and those who didn't. That will increase, as more national assets are swallowed up by the big players, backed by advertising.

In 1998, Manchester United, Sky and Granada TV invested £10 million in a new channel aimed at Manchester United fans - called MUTV, Manchester United TV. This is an example of the special interest potential the hundreds of new channels offer. MUTV fills 42 hours a week, showing fans up to date news items about the players, lessons from players in Kids' Clinic, and old matches. Fans will have to pay extra for the channel.

Others have seen the potential of the multichannel age, by using them for direct selling. Videonet, a video and shopping on demand service is testing householders in Hull to see if they will take up their services, using clever graphics. This service comes down your phone line which means you can buy your goods straight away via the television, something its competitors like Sky cannot yet do. But it's all a question of time.

All this choice will be made by using the remote control which comes with your digital set top box. And with the remote you will be connected to the Electronic Programme Guide. For Videonet this shows you all the goods and services which are on offer, and may remind you what you usually buy. With general programming, it highlights all the channels on offer, and can be tailored to your interests, once the equipment has understood what they are. This control over your viewing habits has caused concern, both amongst those who want to protect peoples' privacy and liberty to chose what they want, and amongst programme makers and providers. At the moment the Electronic Programme Guide is controlled by Sky, and the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have to hope their channels get a strong promotion alongside the Sky channels.

The issues of quality of programmes, whether there will be enough advertising revenue to go round and how programmes can keep their independence from manipulation from their sponsors will be the task of the regulators to control.

With the spread of the Internet and the increasingly high quality of its video and sound, there may be a blurring of uses between the Internet and television, or they may even converge. Internet television and radio are predicted. But there may be less futuristic ways of developing the new technology. A group of protesters in a forest in Kent, hoping to save it from developers, harness the digital age to help save the planet. Using the Internet to publicise their protest, alongside the tree houses and the tunnels, they take control of the media in a democratic way.

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