In the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of reports talking about television and radio digital adoption. Let’s go through a summary of the various points made recently.
Television
Digital Consensus Report
video Networks Ltd (the company behind DSL-delivered Home Choice) commissioned a report from the London Business School into what the TV industry itself feels about digital switch-over. It seems that most (95%) senior people interviewed believe that they’ll be ready for switchover by 2012, and 90% believe that the timeframe is realistic.
They see cost (55%) and understanding (35%) as the biggest issues for consumer adoption. Of course TV industry professionals already have digital (93%) with 62% having PVRs – way above the average.
The report suggests that the government needs to do more to communicate the issue forwards.
SwitchCo
SwitchCo is the the industry-funded body charged with the coordination of digital switchover – and hence keeps clear of being directly responsible to the government. In the past few weeks it has Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO as its advertising agency, announced its major advertising campaign (although dismissing reports of £300m as being too great a spend). Seemingly full details of the timetable are likely to appear at the RTS Cambridge Conference in around 10 days or so. In the meantime, SwitchCo has also appointed Freuds as their PR agency.
GMB
The GMB union has called for a halting of the analogue switchoff with problems of strength, quality and reliability of reception sometimes being insurmountable, despite spending hundreds of pounds on upgrading kit.
“Unless and until there is a drastic improvement in the signal’s quality and reliability there can be no question of turning off the analogue signal. We want the Government to downgrade the 2008 ‘plan’ for a switch over to an aspiration until such time that the technical problems encountered by our members across the country have be solved. There should be a lot more pilots projects before any concrete plans are made.”
Other News
* In places as far apart as Bath and the county of Norfolk, residents have complained about the lack of reception of Freeview services.
* There’s BSkyB claiming that the Government’s plans to “build a digital Britain” on the back of Freeview fall foul of EC rules (of course this might seem strange since BSkyB are one of the three stakeholders of Freeview).
* And there’s the recent David Elstein interview in Broadcast. Now running the international Hallmark TV business, he fervantly hates Freeview, believing it to be an expensive means to prop up the BBC’s digital future. “Digital terrestrial television is a completely unnecessary broadcast system. Some 99% of people can receive more channels more conveniently through a dish. Why didn’t we do that? That’s not what the terrestrial channels wanted. They wanted a limited capacity system which they could dominate and which is given away free. In a 40-channel world, if you as a terrestrial station can have 20 or 30 of them, you have replicated spectrum scarcity in digital. And if you can make that the dominant delivery system, better still. If you can get it paid for out of the licence fee, that’s fantastic! The fact that all the terrestrial channels were gifted capacity on Freeview tells you all you need to know.”
* And Ofcom announced that Freeview now reaches more than 5 million homes in their quarterly communications update.
So that’s broadly where we are in TV.
Radio
DAB Five Year Forecast
The DRDB released a report announcing that by 2009, there’d be 40% household penetration of DAB, and a cumulative total of 20m sets would have been sold. They’re looking at 1.5m sets being sold this year, rising to 2.3m next year and 6.5m in 2009.
Digital Radio Switchover
The DRDB also released the findings of a report they commissioned from Chris Smith, formerly the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. This report examined the fact that not every station is yet carried on DAB, and the fact that running FM in perpetuity alongside DAB might be possible, but not necessarily preferable.
The report notably stayed clear of addressing the issue of whether or not another national multiplex should be made available to commercial radio – something Ralph Bernard, Chairman of both the DRDB and GCap is fervently against. He feels that when GWR, as was, invested in digital, they were promised an exclusive national window for Digital One.
The report does talk about using L-Band frequencies for smaller stations. And DRM is also considered – although I think that the market will bring that format on regardless.
Finally Steve Ackerman of Somethin’ Else summarises the digital radio state of play in Mediaguardian today, and examines the factors that might hasten analogue switch off in radio.
Summary
So where are we left with digital switchover? Well the biggest problem with both technologies is that they’re simply not as robust as analogue. You can listen to a moderately weak analogue signal on your radio and not really notice. Similarly, many homes are happy to put up with slight ghosting on their analogue TV screens. In the digital realm, this minimal interference still causes problems with cutting out of the signal completely; it’s all or nothing.
I still think that it’s too early to be rolling out digital TV until the sets are in place. This should not be an opportunity for manufacturers to think we can all be forced to upgrade our TV sets in three years time, perhaps buying an expensive LCD screen in the meantime (I’m not even going to get into the fact that many expensively purchased LCD and plasma screens aren’t HD ready. And if you really, really think that the picture quality on a plasma or LCD screen is better than a CRT display, I suggest you look at the two side by side. The sets are far smarter, certainly, but try watching programming with lots of movement).
I acknowledge that there’s a Catch-22 of signals having to stay weak before analogue switch-off, but the fact is that many urban areas, let alone more remote ones are unlikely ever to get a decent DTT signal.
But that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the system as, perhaps, David Elstein would have us do. Satellite is not the only route to go. Aside from the political implications of handing the broadcasting of our a TV system to a company based in Luxembourg (Astra), it’s a dangerous route to take with the power of multi-nationals such as Sky.
It’ll be interesting to hear what Tessa Jowell says at the RTS conference in a few days time. Does Dixons in the Borders TV region only stock “integrated digtial TVs” – ie TVs that receive Freeview by default? 2008 is only a couple of years away after all.
In terms of radio, there’s no question. DAB is too weak, indoors even, to be switched over permamently. The fact that quite so many radios need replacing (something like another 98.5m) means we’re a long way off. The day that Esquire magazine can covermount a free pocket DAB radio on its cover, as it did an FM receiver a couple of months back, then we might be able to talk about it.
The audio fidelity of many of the stations are too low – with mono stations at low bit-rates being squeezed on as new “brands” are launched. FM radio is far superior to these low-fi stations that sometimes rival only AM radio in audio terms.
There are also far too many stations not given space at all on DAB. And I don’t just mean your local university radio station or community radio station. DAB is an expensive business and digital broadcast transmission areas are sometimes too widespread to be of use to smaller FM stations. A lot more space has to be allocated to these stations before we can consider switching over.
Going digital is not going to be a cheap or easy business. And any government who thinks it is, is going to be surprised in the extreme. If you think Channel 5 retuners had a big task on, you wait for digital!