Digi domain

THE site of a broadcast transmitter serving 12 million homes across greater London is not the most photogenic of places. But a procession of cabinet ministers, led by Gordon Brown, was to be found looking interestedly at television and radio transmitters early yesterday morning.

The Prime Minister later posed beside the 750ft tall broadcast mast, perhaps seen as a symbol of his high hopes of turning Britain into the “digital capital of the world”.

The early morning visit to the Arquiva site in Crystal Palace – home to one of the country’s 50 high power transmitters – was a photo opportunity designed as a commercial for publication of the Government’s wide-ranging Digital Britain report.

Proposals include using part of the BBC’s licence fee to pay for public service programmes, like regional news, on non-BBC channels, and bringing broadband to rural areas. Plus, there will be new legislation to curb unlawful “peerto- peer file-sharing”.

The Digital Britain report is an attempt to chart the future course of the UK’s communications and media industries. These are some of the key issues it aims to tackle.

WHY is this report important?

POLICY-MAKERS agree that Britain and the world are going to become ever more dependent on technologies like the internet and mobile phones. Gordon Brown has said the digital network will be as important in the 21st Century as roads and railways were in the 20th. But there are concerns that a “digital divide”, where some households are left without fast internet access, could cut off part of the population.

Meanwhile, the explosion of digital TV channels, coupled with falling advertising revenues, has put several of the major broadcasters under severe strain. This places the future of important but less profitable programmes such as documentaries and regional news in doubt.

I’VE already got a broadband connection.

How does this affect me?

OFFICIAL statistics show that, last year, only 56 per cent of all UK households had broadband internet access, a significant increase on previous years, but still a long way from universal take-up. In about one per cent of the country – mostly remote rural areas – broadband is not even an option because the infrastructure is not there.

An estimated 17 million people over the age of 15 in the UK are not using computers and the internet, according to the interim Digital Britain report, published in January.

But quite apart from these pockets of “digital poverty”, some experts are worried that broadband in Britain is just not quick enough for the modern, video-heavy internet.

They fear we could be left behind by countries like France and Australia, which have both recently announced plans to build super-fast next generation broadband networks.

At present 3.8 million homes in the UK cannot even get broadband at download speeds of two megabits per second, the Government’s relatively modest target for the whole of Britain to reach by 2012.

And what’s this about a crackdown on downloading music from the internet?

THE entertainment industries have long complained that they’re losing billions of pounds a year because of online piracy.

Widespread broadband access has made it much easier to share music and films illegally with people around the world.

Internet service providers (ISPs) do not want to encourage piracy, but equally many of them do not feel it should be their job to police the web. The Government is trying to walk a delicate line – it wants to protect Britain’s creative industries without criminalising millions of otherwise law-abiding young people.

Former culture secretary Andy Burnham said earlier this month that the preferred option would be to “incentivise” good behaviour. The interim Digital Britain report proposed a rights agency to crack down on illegal file-sharing by working with both ISPs and film and music companies.

One solution to the problem was unveiled yesterday when Virgin Media and Universal Music announced a service offering unlimited and unrestricted legal downloads for a monthly subscription fee.

BUT why are the broadcasters losing money – didn’t 19 million people watch the Britain’s Got Talent final?

ONE programme, however popular it may be, is not enough to turn the tide. The UK’s commercial public service TV broadcasters – ITV, Channel 4 and Five – are all being stretched as advertising revenues fall and new digital channels provide more competition.

Channel 4 has estimated that it will be left with a funding gap of about £150m by 2012.

ITV, meanwhile, has announced major job cuts and huge cost savings this year in response to falling revenues, and the future of its regional news programmes is hanging in the balance.

The exception to this bleak financial picture is the BBC, which has a guaranteed £3.6bn a year in the form of the licence fee.

Some of the commercial broadcasters, and certain politicians, have eyed this pot of money with a view to redistributing some of it to the corporation’s rivals to support worthy programmes.

The BBC’s governing body has made it clear that it is strongly opposed to any attempts to siphon licence fee money away.

WHY not leave the serious stuff, like news and documentaries, to the BBC, and let ITV and the others concentrate on popular dramas and entertainment shows?

THE Government believes it’s important that there’s a strong competitor to the BBC.

Channel 4 is at the heart of this aspiration – the interim Digital Britain report said it should be “re-invented and broadened to provide a strong source of plurality and competition” to the corporation.

The big question is how this can be paid for.