Who Knows What's Next For Television?

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday July 28, 2008

David Dale

LAST week marked the end of Australia's second age of television and the start of the third age. On Monday, Channel Ten farewelled Big Brother, and with it the notion that broadcast TV can save its own life by targeting viewers aged 16 to 39. On Wednesday, the ABC welcomed iView, and with it the notion that people who own computers need never use their TV sets again. Both hastened the doom of the networks as we know them.

The first age of television lasted from the mid-'50s to the mid-'80s, a period when the networks made and bought TV shows designed to appeal to everyone. The second age began when Channel Ten limited its audience to viewers aged 16 to 39, recognising that it could not compete with Nine and Seven for the mass market. The launch of Big Brother in 2001 was the pinnacle of this niche marketing.

But as the noughties proceeded, the 16 to 39s came to regard broadcast television as a quaint anachronism. There were too many other things to do. Big Brother didn't fail because Kyle Sandilands is embarrassing and Jackie O is pathetic. It was just a victim of social change.

The 16 to 39s are the lost demographic. They will never again commit to, enthuse about or identify with any program crafted specifically for them. They may switch on the box, but they'll usually be doing something else at the same time - texting, MSNing, surfing the web or making their own programs for Myface, bookYou or spaCetube. And they won't stop doing all those things when they pass 40.

On Wednesday, the ABC demonstrated it has a better understanding of social change than the commercial networks. It launched a website on which anybody with high-speed broadband can watch most of the programs currently associated with the ABC, any time they like, with the capacity to pause, rewind and fast forward. The ABC's boss, Mark Scott, acknowledged that fewer than half of Australian households have the broadband speed that will show iView at its best. But he pointed out that when the ABC launched radio 2BL in the 1930s, less than 10 per cent of Sydney people had suitable wireless receivers, and when ABC television started in 1956, less than 5 per cent had TV sets. The principle is: if you build it, they will come. In its first 24 hours, iView was visited by 58,000 people.

My experience of it has been disappointing: I couldn't find Spicks And Specks on its menu, and when I clicked on the Pompeii episode of Doctor Who I'd missed two weeks ago, the image was blurry and the voices out of sync. But there were worse glitches in the early days of radio and television.

The key question is: will the commercial networks react to this by starting their own iViews, or will they go quietly into that dark night that is less than a decade away? More details at http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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