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BROADCASTING
REVIEW OF 1998
1998 was the year
when digital television made the big breakthrough to
implant itself firmly in the consciousness of consumers,
especially in Europe, with the promise of better sound
and picture quality, interactive services and dozens of
new channels. The trend away from analogue and
towards digital TV production and delivery led to the
appearance of many new European broadcasters and
channels—although this did not necessarily mean
greater diversity, especially when some new channels
filled airtime with repeats.
Digital radio
In contrast, DAB
(digital audio broadcasting), or digital radio, remained
hampered by the continuing delay on the part of
manufacturers in bringing sets into the shops in large
enough quantities and at realistic prices to spark
consumer take-up.
As five
manufacturers of car radios and the press gathered at the
BBC in July for the world’s first consumer launch of
DAB, the BBC’s then Director of Radio, Matthew
Bannister, acknowledged how frustrating it was to have in
place a chain of BBC digital radio transmitters which
already reach a potential 60% of the UK population, but
see no digital radio sets actually on sale.
Shortwave
The Digital Radio
Mondiale consortium, a grouping of international
broadcasters set up to define standards for digital
shortwave broadcasts, was officially launched in March.
New shortwave
broadcasters in 1998 included the US-based WBCQ—The
Planet, offering airtime for only 50 dollars an hour to
broadcast “alternative” programming to the
Americas and Caribbean. Radio Asia Canada, a
Tamil-language station based in Toronto, started SW
broadcasts in March using facilities in Germany, although
it closed later in the year, reportedly after diplomatic
intervention by the Sri Lankan government. In the
UK, Merlin, which took over the BBC World Service’s
transmission operations, as well as hosting other
broadcasters, emerged as an international broadcaster in
its own right with the entertainment-based Merlin Network
One. Portugal and Norway stopped shortwave
broadcasts in English, there were significant cuts at
Radio New Zealand International, ending its
Pacific-language broadcasts on SW, and Radio France
Internationale said it would reduce its SW output in
winter 1998 by 30 per cent, mostly in French.
Estonia closed its SW transmitter, and Russia’s
Mayak radio has reportedly decided to drop SW at the end
of the year.
Digital
TV
Western Europe is
forecast to have 77 million homes watching digital
television (DTV) by 2005. In Britain, digital
satellite TV was launched in October and digital
terrestrial TV in November, with digital cable TV
promised for the first half of next year.
The interactivity
promised by digital TV will in time open up new avenues
for advertising, allowing it to be better aimed at target
groups. Consumers are also being promised many new
services, including video on demand, high-speed Internet
services and online shopping. But content remains
as important as ever in the digital age. A survey
of 1.5m UK homes at the beginning of the year showed that
a vast majority of viewers want better content on their
television screens, not new channels.
Alliances
and mergers
Deregulation, the
growing rate of technological change and the irreversible
momentum of the digital TV trend led to a constantly more
competitive marketplace in 1998. Alliances and
joint ventures in TV increased, especially in Europe,
although the EU blocked a planned German pay-TV merger
between Kirch and Bertelsmann.
More companies
began expanding into other countries, using digital
technology to try to maximize their programming
assets. The BBC and the US company Discovery signed
a partnership deal in March for the production and
distribution of TV programmes.
The US-based
media mogul Rupert Murdoch set up a new Milan-based
subsidiary, News Corp Europe, to spearhead his push into
the continental European market.
Paying
more to watch TV
The benefits of
digital TV carry an extra price tag on top of national
licence fees. Nevertheless, according to the London
Times media editor, pay-TV and pay-per-view’s share
of TV revenues will eclipse licence fee income by 2004.
To add to the
pressure on European public broadcasters in 1998 from
declining audience shares in the face of competition from
private channels, the European Commission (EC) wants
public TV channels to tighten accounting procedures to
differentiate between public service programming and
other programmes, such as sports or entertainment, which
will have to be financed by advertisements and
sponsorship.
The EC said it
would consider the competition problem which the public
funding of state-owned TV stations (often additional to
commercial resources from advertising) creates for
private TV companies which are financed only by
advertising.
The massive
worldwide interest in TV coverage of the 1998 football
World Cup sparked a debate on the price that public
broadcasters would have to pay for the next World Cup and
other major sporting events. TV rights have become
the major source of income for most sports. The
European rights for the 2002 World Cup have been sold to
a private group which intends to sell them off piecemeal,
largely to commercial pay-TV stations.
Around
the world
In April, Britain
hosted the European Audiovisual Conference in Birmingham,
where a major theme was the increasingly tough
competition that Europe’s television and film
industries face from the USA. European Commission
President Jacques Santer said that while greater private
sector investment was required in audiovisual production
in Europe, support at national and EU level was vital
too.
Looking beyond
Europe, the economic and political crises in Asia, with
some currencies losing up to 80 per cent of their value
against the US dollar, dampened the forecasts in what had
been seen 12 months ago as the world’s
fastest-growing regional pay-TV market. But at a
conference in Singapore in December, experts predicted
that quick growth could return to the cable and satellite
industry as early as mid-1999. Rupert
Murdoch’s continuing efforts to expand in
China’s television market paid off towards the end
of the year when he met President Jiang Zemin, who
praised his coverage of China. India said it would
allow the country’s 10 private satellite TV channels
to raise their level of foreign equity from the current
20 per cent.
In Russia, 1998
saw further political battles for control over
broadcasting as politicians prepared for the 1999/2000
elections. Poland shone as Eastern Europe’s
most attractive market for pay-TV growth. In the
Balkans, the international community overseeing
Bosnia’s peace process tried to regulate the
hundreds of radio and TV stations in the country and set
up a free media system. The Independent Media
Commission ordered Bosnian broadcasters to apply by
February 1999 for an operating licence or face
closure. Serbia faced widespread criticism for
passing a media law which, among other things, banned
relays of broadcasts from foreign radio and TV stations
and closed several independent newspapers.
In the Middle
East, the Arab Broadcasting Union decided to allow
private radio and TV stations—still a rarity in the
Arab world—to join state-run broadcasters as
members. But it kept out the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera
satellite TV station, which Jordan and some Gulf states
have criticized for its coverage of inter-Arab political
differences.
Libya renamed its
external radio service the Voice of Africa, reflecting
its changed political orientation away from the Arab
world. More private broadcasters made their debut
in Africa. particularly in Kenya, Uganda and
Mozambique. The South African broadcasting scene
was transformed with the launch of a private free-to-air
TV channel in October, while the SABC entered
Africa’s pay-TV market with two new satellite TV
subscription channels.
In Latin America,
the number of pay-TV subscribers rose in every
established market except Brazil. The first private
TV stations went on the air in Colombia in June; smaller
countries like Paraguay and Surinam began deregulating
and granted licences to new private terrestrial TV
operators.
The USA launched
two new international radio services broadcasting to Iran
and Iraq, and announced plans for a new Radio Democracy
for Africa service.
In the USA
itself, the launch of High-Definition TV (HDTV) was less
than successful. An industry survey by the US firm
Forrester Research in November predicted that HDTV will
fail because although the US consumer electronics
industry has invested nearly 1bn dollars in the
technology, this investment, added to the cost of
producing the components to receive and display HDTV
broadcasts, will keep the price of HDTV sets at 2,000
dollars or more for another 10 years. As a result,
only one million US households will own HDTV sets in
2003, the survey predicted.
Global
Internet
The Internet,
however, was undoubtedly a worldwide success story in
1998. Within 48 hours of its release, the Starr
report on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair had been read
online by dozens of millions of people around the
globe. At the end of the year there were about
2,000 radio and TV stations broadcasting on the Net.
From political
dissidents in China (one of whom was charged with
“Net subversion” in November) to ethnic
Albanian journalists in Kosovo—who started Radio 21
on the Net in May 1998, via a US-based web site, after
they were refused a broadcasting
frequency—broadcasters as well as political groups
around the world used the Internet to deliver their
messages in increasingly sophisticated ways. And
the year also saw a growing number of instances of
hacking into web sites as a new form of propaganda
activity.
The
future
During the next
12 months, the market will be watching to see how much
consumers are prepared to pay for new digital
services. But already there have been several
warnings during 1998 that the interests of those who
cannot afford to subscribe to the new digital offerings
will also have to be protected.
BBC Monitoring Research, December 1998
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