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“It is deplorable to say we are getting back News At Ten when it may not be News At Ten at all and when it will only be 20 minutes. I think the ITC has shown itself to be
too weak.” Gerald Kaufman in
The Guardian, following an announcement - as ACADEMY was going to press - that ITV now plan to show its evening news at 10pm at least three times a week.
GERALD KAUFMAN
Continued from page 4
Now, I would be the last to deny that there are important questions involved in both these contro- versies. There are those, including myself, who hold that the Broadcasting Acts, as interpreted in the ITC’s rules, and the terms under which the ITC granted ITV licences, should require ITV to rein- state News at 10, which the ITC should never have been allowed to be abolished.
There are those, including myself, who, while not being over-exercised about the precise time at which the BBC’s main news bulletin should be transmitted, nevertheless are apprehensive that the move from
9pm to 10pm is aimed at clearing the schedules so that BBC1 can be dumbed down to compete with ITV at its most crass.
And it did not take much reading between the lines of Dyke’s lecture to discern an intention to pro- ceed with the dumbing-down.
Yet, important as these issues may be as symbols of the erosion of the public service element in televi- sion, they are trivial within the wider context of developments in audio-visual communications. Every day sees new information being published in the press, though more likely in the business sections or at best the inside pages of the main news sections, about technical progress and business deals which make the activities of ITV and the BBC seem like sideshows to the main action.
The dumbing-down or marginalisation of news on Britain’s mainstream terrestrial channels has its coun- terpart in what is going on in the United States. Not long ago, the New Yorker published an article about what has been happening to ABC News in the US.
This provoked a letter from a reader who said: “When I get to the office in the morning, I turn on my computer, go on-line, and check the headlines peri- odically throughout the day. By the time I go home, I’ve seen all the news I care to.”
Here in Britain, I too can go on-line and read not only several British newspapers but also the main American newspapers, together with the press in Australia and other countries; and, what is more, unlike the printed newspapers I buy every day or the TV bulletins on the five terrestrial channels, the con- tent of many of these papers is constantly updated.
On digital TV in this country, I can and do catch up with the latest developments through BSkyB’s interactive news channel and, if only ITN would pro- vide its whole package on satellite TV, could do the same with ITN’s new round-the-clock service.
Yet even these developments are fairly primitive compared with what is either happening now or will be happening soon. The Sunday Times, which should know since it is owned by the main shareholder of BSkyB, recently published a story about plans for co- operation between BSkyB and British Telecom.
Another report told me that BSkyB “plans to start including personal television recorders inside set-top boxes used by its satellite TV subscribers.” This device, said the report, “can record up to 40 hours of your favourite programmes. You simply select the programme or even a whole series you want record- ed from a list and then PTR does it for you, even if the programme time changes. Programmes can be paused while watching and many boxes come with fast forward buttons to skip the adverts.”
Recently the Financial Times reported the latest developments in a technique of which I was told more than two years ago when I visited California. Instead of films being distributed in clumsy cellu- loid, at vast cost, the technology is now available to achieve what is variously called e-cinema, digital cinema or d-cinema. The 35-millimetre celluloid print is converted to an electronic format and then digitised. It is then encrypted to protect it from piracy and can be transmitted from a central com- puter server to thousands of cinemas simultaneous- ly by satellite or fibre-optic link.
Once arrived at the cinema, the film can be stored on a computer hard disk or optical disc and projected electronically. And, although re-equip- ping cinemas will initially be expensive, it is fore- cast that almost 100 per cent of leading Hollywood studios’ films will be available in both conventional and digital format by 2004.
Nor is this a pipe-dream. Last year, George Lucas screened his latest Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, digitally at four selected cine- mas in the US. The implications for home enter- tainment are obvious.
Nor is it simply entertainment that is being revo- lutionised. So, in Britain, are public services. Tony Blair recently announced that, by the end of 2002, 6,000 computer centres are to be opened in schools, supermarkets, libraries and mobile trailers. People will be able to apply on-line for welfare benefits, passports and driving licences. Doctors will be able to book hospital appointments for patients, unem- ployed people will be able to look for jobs, and com- panies will be able to file their VAT returns.
Set beside these exponential developments - only the beginning of what is to come - the faltering adventures of the BBC and ITV are increasingly becoming less significant. ITV’s ratings have been falling, together with advertising revenue. Viewing of ITV in the four million Sky digital homes is plummet- ing because ITV does not feature on the electronic programme guide.
BBC programmes, even though featured on the EPG, are losing viewers, too. BBC1 now has fewer viewers in digital homes than Sky taken as a whole. In digital homes, the BBC now has only 17 per cent of viewers, compared with 27 per cent in non-digital homes. For the first time, viewing of the five terres- trial channels has fallen below 50 per cent of the total audience.
In this context, Greg Dyke’s “revolutionary” plan to rename the BBC’s two digital channels seems pal- try, and ITV is beginning to look positively antedilu- vian. There are profound implications for the future of terrestrial TV here, with the BBC’s charter with less than six years to run and a new Broadcasting Act which could affect the basis of ITV, due early in the next Parliament.
No wonder that the Financial Times, editorially, has now at last caught up with me and called for the privatisation of the BBC. The irony is that, while the established broadcasters flail away increasingly futilely, the prospects for viewers and participants in interactive services have never been brighter. ■
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