Internet + Television = Intervision?

How many channels do you have on your television set? I ask because we have recently become the proud owners of a new flat screen, all singing, all dancing, digital model. The technician who installed it mentioned casually that it would provide hundreds of channels so we should never be bored. I checked out the statement after he’d gone. It was true, there are so many channels on it, that it occurred to me, I could spend half the evening deciding which channel to watch…by which time the programme would have gone anyway. But I can’t help wondering why we need so many channels? It’s not as if many of the new channels show new or specialist programmes. For the most part they show repeats of programmes that were highly successful when they were first screened and in most cases have already been shown again, and again, on the original channel. No wonder viewing figures are so much lower than they used to be. Why not use those channels to do something new and creative, that extends the medium, develops it into a new medium?
 
I didn’t have regular access to a television set until the early nineteen fifties. At the time there was only the BBC, of course, and they didn’t transmit all day, opening early and closing the service late in the evening. The country was still recovering from the effects of WWII and there was plenty of material for the new medium to transmit. In addition to programmes that entertained, the news from around the world was brought right into our homes. For the first time the general public was fully and impartially informed on what was happening around them at home and abroad. The opening of the Festival of Britain by H.M King George VI, and The Lord Mayor’s Show were both brought into everyone’s home by the new wonder… Television, rationing was gradually disappearing; Sir Winston Churchill was re-elected Prime Minister. The Coronation of H.M Queen Elizabeth II was seen by audiences around the world showing a minute by minute scene that previously would have been seen only by those privileged to actually be there. It set the pattern for what was to come.
 
Then there came commercial television, “A licence to print money” it was described, I think by Roy, later Lord, Thompson. At the time it looked as though television was about to sound the death knell for newspapers. The millions of advertising revenue that previously would have gone into the newspapers now rushed into television. But the newspapers recovered themselves and began to sell copies in vast numbers that in turn attracted huge revenues into their columns again. Media planners in the advertising agencies had clear choices, TV or press? Or a mixture of both? All media was well researched and the choices were clear enough. How on earth those planners can decide how and where to place their ads on television now I can’t imagine. The proliferation of channels must reduce the number of viewers of each channel and the advertisers’ budgets are finite. In this equation it will be fascinating to see if the commercial channels, constantly regurgitating old films and TV shows, will survive against the BBC’s output of new and lively programmes interspersed with selectively chosen repeats of their best shows. If  I were a betting man I’d back the BBC.
 
So what happens next? Where will the next “Big Thing” come from. I think it likely that some sort of merger will gradually take place between the internet and television. In other words a television set will be able to be used as a computer and vice versa, linking naturally to the internet, printers and scanners and all the other new instruments that will undoubtedly be created to extend and develop the medium of communication, education and entertainment. So, instead of having two, or more, sources of reception screens in a home there will be one with slaves connected in other rooms providing the opportunity to view the output from a variety of sources simultaneously. In the same way that programmes are currently commissioned, the news could be provided to the commercial channels by the news rooms of newspapers, so delivering the revenue stream demanded by those presently providing a free news service on line. The range of available channels will extend to enable reception of transmissions based overseas allowing global brands to reach more extended audiences. The home based channels will become ever more specialised. The BBC will continue to go it’s own way. Let’s hope the quality of all this new output will be of sufficiently high standard to attract the audiences needed to make the commercial stations viable.
 
There is a danger in all these developments……if all communications become interconnected and operate on a global basis, imagine the power at the fingertips of the next maniac that wants to rule the world!!!