I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm increasingly turning off the television and turning to watching DVD's. Many are spending their leisure time going gambling---pokies and casinos. Those who are looking forward to digital radio--5 years ago it was just around the corner--- are still waiting for something to happen.

Jock Given, the author of Turning off the Television: Broadcasting's Uncertain Future, writing in The Age usefully asks: Is television dead or alive? Are the social and cultural experiences and business models of free-to-air TV becoming historical?

Given says that free-to-air television is clearly:

...very much alive, if you count the roughly three hours a day the average Australian spends watching it. But if you look at the take-up of Alston's new kind of TV, you might think [it was] closer to dead. In March, five years after its introduction, fewer than one in five Australian households had bought a set-top box to receive free-to-air digital TV, although there are many models now available for under $200.

Three-quarters of households have DVD players, also readily available for less than $200, and happily spend more money buying or renting discs. That's the kind of take-up rate needed for digital TV if the Government is to meet its original timetable for shutting down the analogue TV transmissions we've been watching for 50 years.

Market protection of the entrenched free-to-air media companies has ensured that:

Free-to-air digital TV, Australian-style, has been a turkey. A bit of high-definition programming, though rarely in sport; an extra TV channel each from the ABC and SBS, put together on shoestrings; some radio-on-your-TV; limited interactivity.

There is still not enough in this that allows the potential of digital TV to be fully explored. No more broadcast TV to households, just datacast and narrowcast. No major live sport on the new multi-channels...The Government is too radical on ownership but too cautious on digital TV.