International Journal of Digital Television - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2013

There are many forces for change confronting the well-established institutional arrangements underpinning Australian media industries, with commercial television, in particular, likely to be most challenged during the next five years. New distribution and delivery models connected to the proposed high capacity National Broadband Network (NBN), along with new content providers and changing viewer preferences are likely to drive major changes to existing television arrangements. In a rapidly changing environment, this article seeks to relate established concepts of innovation and creative destruction, disintermediation and disruption to the impact these new NBN mediated opportunities may have on existing TV arrangements, both free-to-air (FTA) and subscription (STV). It seeks to explore the extent to which TV-like services over the NBN might disrupt incumbent TV broadcasters; the extent to which changing consumer preferences and practices might disrupt current business models; and how incumbent TV broadcasters might be responding to these threats with their own innovations.

This article looks at the roll-out of digital terrestrial television in South East Europe. It argues that these states have few industrial interests driving digital switchover because of their size and the state of their media markets. It examines the strategies for and progress towards meeting the June 2015 deadline in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. It finds them characterized by the push nature of the policy as heavy state and even EU intervention is needed to compensate for the lack of market drivers for digitalization.

It is not only political decisions or imperatives of industry that have pushed television into transition. Often, it was and still is technology that unavoidably induces television to change. The last challenge was the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. Regardless of the fact matter that Croatia was not an EU member state, its process of digital television switchover followed the EU deadline. As a result of well-designed and implemented public policy, on 5 October 2010 Croatia was the first country in this part of Europe to successfully switch to digital television broadcasting at the national level. This article provides an overview of the key activities undertaken during the implementation process of DTV in Croatia and underlines the role of the government.

Following the ups-and-downs of the selection of the digital TV standard, in the second half of 2009 Argentina decided to take the same path as Brazil, and adopted the Japanese-Brazilian standard. Since then concrete policies and actions have been introduced to implement Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). Three years into the process, it is possible to put this into perspective and analyse the virtues and deficiencies of DTT deployment in Argentina. This article is intended to focus on the public policies introduced by the Argentine State both in the deployment of the necessary infrastructure and in the stimulus to content production. What is special about the Argentine case is the leading role of the State.

For nearly a decade, the Canadian Government demonstrated a continued faith in industry-led initiatives for the transition to digital television that has produced outcomes that fell well short of desired goals. The results of the Canadian DTV transition challenge beliefs regarding the effectiveness of co-regulation in broadcasting policy, and present a case for recognition of the limitations of this approach.

China is famous for its stringent regulations and everyday monitoring of media content. Empowered by law and regulation, the state authorities govern the content industry through ownership control and the licensing system. So far individuals and entities outside the state’s control are not entitled to access the content production market, and the externally originated content is under strict supervision. The bottom line of media content management is to ensure that the publicized political content advocates the party-government line, which does not necessarily mean that the media cannot criticize the government but that they can never mobilize or organize collective actions without permission. The effectiveness over media content control has crumbled dramatically, and for China in today’s world it is no longer simple to manage a rapidly changing media environment.

The Economics of Television in a Digital World: What Economics Tells Us for Future Policy Debates, Patrick Barwise and Robert G. Picard, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University.

Histories of Public Service Broadcasters on the Web, Maureen Burns and Niels Brügger (eds) (2012) New York: Peter Lang, 232 pp., ISBN 978-1-4331-1175-4, h/bk, £54.

Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media, Pelle Snickars and Patrick Voncderau (eds) (2012) New York: Columbia University Press, 360 pp., ISBN: 978-0-231-15739-1, p/bk, £20.50