2005

Ray Snoddy has penned a very good piece about what 2005 might bring in the UK’s media world. Unfortunately, the online version is subscription only at Brand Republic, so I’ll paraphrase some of his points here.
Given the state of the dollar against the pound at the moment, he doesn’t see ITV as being sold any time soon.
He then talks sarcastically about Ofcom’s decision to award the new Edinburgh FM radio licence to that bastion of public service broadcasting, Kelvin Mackenzie, just before Christmas. (Maggie Brown in The Guardian suggests that this comes as a direct result of local radio’s failure to be able to provide a local news service to listeners who were caught up in the snow drifts on the M11 this time last year). The award came the say day that the High Court threw out his case against RAJAR. From my employer’s point of view, we were of course disappointed by this decision, feeling that speech services could be better accommodated on AM, where there is still plenty of room if Ofcom ever get around to putting licences up for grabs. A music service would surely be a far better use of valuable FM spectrum – if they were producing drama or something then I could understand it, but this will be a phone-in station. Snoddy says, “More such follies cannot be ruled out this year.”
Snoddy then moves on to the BBC where he talks of the corporation’s 1100-strong HR department which obviously needs thinning down. However he feels that BBC Resources should not be sold off, and I think he probably has an excellent point. I think that if you asked them, many would feel that our traditionally high quality craft services are slowly being destroyed as more and more cheap productions attempt to use runners with DV cams and the like to shoot their projects. Snoddy asks, “Where exactly is the next generation of craft skills in broadcasting going to come from?”
Finally he speaks of 2005 being the year of Freeview, with another 3 million machines being sold this year as the price falls further and further. Once it reaches 8 million, it’ll be bigger than Sky, hence the reason that Channel 4 is supposedly considering putting E4 on Freeview, and launching it’s More 4 – the channel for older viewers which I fear will be largely repeats of “A Place in the Sun” and 1001 property shows. ITV were smart to make ITV3 free to view, and I think it could prove a reasonably successful channel given time (it’s already better than ITV2).
What still has to be addressed is a continued rollout of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) transmitters. Reading this page on the BBC’s site, it suggests that there isn’t any more rollout planned at present without first turning off some of the current analogue transmitters first.
This is a major problem. Despite it being announced some time ago, I’ve yet to see any sign of BSkyB’s free to view satellite proposition. Is it available anywhere yet for £150? Sky are never going to plug it to that great an extent, as they’re likely to see significant churn of current paying customers over to this free service.
Then there’s the BBC’s alternative to Sky’s offering – “Freesat”. How it’ll work, and when it’ll launch are still unclear. The big problem is that at the moment, the other terrestrial channels are encrypted with Sky’s system, and someone has to pay to replace these cards at intervals as Sky keep the system tight and prevent pirates from breaking it. Going free-to-air is the other option, but that can lead to issues with rights providers who point out that even the most tightly targeted satellite at the UK (Astra 2D as used by the BBC), also covers large parts of continental Europe. No problem watching the Beeb in your French holiday home then. At the time that the BBC lost the rights to 24, it was put forward as one of the issues that Fox had with the Beeb (I’m sure that it was not to do with selling a successful series to a sister News International station instead).
Anyway, lets see how much truth about Digital Switchover really gets put about. Will anyone let on that the nation’s video recorders will become redundant? And that your sole Freeview box won’t be enough – every TV and video in the house is going to need one.


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