Digital UK To Put £3m Into New Switchover Help Scheme
Digital UK, the body in charge of the digital television switchover, is putting almost £3 million into a scheme to support viewers not covered by the existing targeted help scheme.
The group is setting up a new organisation, Digital Outreach, bringing together the charities Age Concern England, Help the Aged and Community Services Volunteers, as well as drawing on help from Collective Enterprises, a company specialising in working with the charity sector.
The initiative is aimed at helping to ensure viewers are prepared when analogue terrestrial TV services are switched off region by region, a process that will continue until 2012.
Digital Outreach will offer help to those who fall outside the reach of the BBC’s £600 million aid scheme, which is designed to help the over-75s, disabled people and blind people.
The organisation aims to assist older people who are under 75, those with sensory, mobility or dexterity impairments, people with learning difficulties and those who are socially isolated.
Digital Outreach will commission support from local and regional voluntary sector organisations and charities, in the six months leading up to each region’s switchover.
The body intends to train volunteers, provide information to potentially vulnerable people and organise public meetings, home visits and switchover help centres.
In December, Ofcom’s Consumer Panel raised “urgent, practical issues” about how digital switchover is being publicised, saying that a better promotional campaign is needed to inform consumers about the help they can get to go digital.
The report said that Britain’s most vulnerable TV viewers are not getting the information they need to make a smooth switch to digital, and that some consumers are confused about what equipment they should buy and are not confident about installing digital TV themselves (see More Publicity Needed Around Switchover To Help Consumers).
In November, Ford Ennals, the chief executive of Digital UK, announced he was stepping down just weeks after the process began, leading some to speculate that there were problems in the organisation (see Digital UK Chief Quits As Switchover Gets Underway).
At the end of September, Digital UK launched a £8 million national information campaign to promote switchover (see Digital UK Launches Switchover Information Campaign).
The town of Whitehaven in Cumbria has already had its analogue TV signal switched off, with the rest of the UK following until the process is complete by 2012 (see Digital Switchover Begins Today).
Digital UK: www.digitaluk.co.uk