David Peters, broadcast director at TMD Carat, began by pointing out a few important considerations in the context of the wider picture of digital television. Firstly, the number of people watching TV is not growing. In fact, on the contrary, audience sizes have been decreasing throughout the nineties, and on the whole, the total amount of TV viewing has actually fallen in its competition with other media. A persistent and continuing growth in cinema admissions stands in opposition to this, as well as a strengthening video rental market. The modern distractions of the home PC, Internet, and home entertainment systems, may well have also dented the overall growth of TV.
Peters feels that this context is important when considering what digital TV can offer, what it should offer, and what the effect this will be, both on the audience as well as the advertising world. The standard blurb tells us that Digital TV will bring better picture quality, CD sound, Wide Screen Programmes, as well as a greater variety in choice of channel and programme. The reality, (and this applies to the general downward trend in TV) is that what attracts folk to engage in more viewing comes down to quality of programming, not necessarily functionality: in the words of Peters “The long term future of Digital will be determined by content”.
Focusing on exactly what digital terrestrial and satellite television will offer in terms of content, the immediate future doesn’t look particularly glamorous. Judging from the ‘exciting’ plans outlined for digital terrestrial TV, there doesn’t really appear to be a great deal of programming that isn’t currently available. The same appears to be the case for satellite, a lot more repeats, and the introduction of staggered viewing. For instance Sky may show a film six times in one night, over six different channels each showing of the film having a different start time. This is all very well, but how much true demand is there for something like staggered viewing in an age when virtually everyone has a video. Again this comes back to the point of distinguishing between what digital TV should be doing, and perhaps the danger that it may end up being used as a vehicle for doing things just for the sake of it. As Peters says the focus of digital TV should be quality of programming, and not filling in with flimsy gimics like staggered viewing.
Ultimately the creation of over 200 digital channels will significantly fragment the audience – the question here is how does the media planner need to adapt to this new scenario? As Peters points out what is crucial is that digital achieves an industry standard audience measurement. The vastly increased amount of available airtime also means that the selling of this needs to be closely administered – ultimately buyers may have the luxury of electronic buying. Peters believes that agencies should not feel intimidated by this necessary change of approach. Digital TV, used correctly, should rejuvenate television as a medium and may even help to reverse the current trends and place TV viewing on an upward slope again.
