Bazalgette Calls For End To Switch-Off Target

Peter “Baz” Bazalgette has called for the Government’s analogue switch-off target of 2006-2010 to be abandoned, claiming that it is “unrealistic and distorts policy making”. The chairman of Endemol UK and non-executive director of Channel 4, writing in today’s Guardian, added that “an early switch-off as a government objective encourages digital platform-owners to hope for interventions of subsidies.”

Bazalgette says that there are three “public interest” arguments for forcing the pace of the digital revolution. First, the ideal of creating a “digital utopia” of wired-up citizens, second the liberation of more of the analogue spectrum for commercial use and third, to ensure that there would be at least three digital platform providers to prevent a Murdoch monopoly.

The first argument is dismissed as unrealistic- those impervious to all other media are not going to be re-energised by the provision of interactive TV. The “hyper-inflated 3G auction” is suggested as a warning against the second argument, and although the desirability of competition between platforms is accepted by Bazalgette, he points out “There are no votes in forcing contented analogue viewers to shell out £100 on set-top boxes they neither want nor understand.”

Instead, Bazalgette argues that, having abandoned the switch-off date target, allowing organic growth, “Targets should still be set and pursued: for improving the digital terrestrial signal, for the provision of cheap set-top boxes…and for the establishment of compelling telephone broadband services.”

Guardian Media Group: 020 7278 2332 www.gmgplc.co.uk

Recent Digital TV Stories from NewsLine: UK Free To Air Digital Television May Have Limited Future Granada And Littlewoods Shut Up Shop! BSkyB On Track To Hit Subscriber Target

Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive