Television's Future Vision

(Part 4)

Signs of Life?

So is there any life at all left in the system? Perhaps these are only the first stumbling steps in a relatively young - albeit forty year old - industry on its way to a kind of maturity - although some have instead interpreted these early days as advanced infantile senility.

We do still have - at least for the time being - a strong commitment from federal and state film and television development bodies, federal commitment to public broadcasters - and to a lesser extent to community broadcasters, anti-siphoning rules for sport, sport, sport - and some "culture" as well - and local content rules for broadcast television (but almost none for pay). Importantly, there is a strong local film and television culture and infrastructure involving both audiences and producers. And our films maintain a tenuous foothold on the slippery slopes of international cinema - and its hard to go anywhere in the world today and completely escape the ubiquitous Australian soap.

There are also small, independent media groups and producers, plugging away at a mountain of good and bad scripts, refining their skills, developing new ideas and forms, presenting new and diverse viewpoints.

The technophiliacs would have us believe that another televisual communications paradigm is upon us; at last "this will be the one" that fosters democracy, equality and a whole new information order. If weve heard it all before with the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, and the television, it will come as no surprise to hear it again (in fact for the second time in 15 years) from the computer industry. Your ticket to freedom is "this product" - just fill in the name of the product at your discretion and buy the latest toy.

Nicholas Negroponte describes this future world for media as an "audience of one" - that would be Nicholas of course - where personal tastes in programs, news, ads and daily routines can be "taught" to your expanded television. An artificially intelligent "agent" can tailor your ads and programs to a profile built up over many months as you use your interactive television as personal organiser, ATM, shopping mall, classified advertiser, direct mail catalogue, movie theatre or travel agent.

But what will be left of our television after the hype and smoke dies down? Is the imminent death of television an exaggeration?

Or Signs of the Times?

In these changing and exciting - read difficult - times we need clear signposts as to the next few years. There are none. There are only glimpses of possible futures - and genuinely new ideas will live and die determined by the directions creative production teams take in making the next forty years of television or whatever it will be called in 2035.

Young people have learned to use television as a background - something incidentally Marshall McCluhan thought would never happen - to homework, parties, phone conversations and other activities. Is this behaviour an indication of the future?

Now the Wireheads, Netheads and Webheads "boot up, log on and jack in" to a computer-based communications system that is symmetrical, two-way or dialogic allowing anyone to operate simple or complex publishing and exhibition systems that give limited interaction by the "viewer" or "user". Is this the future of television or just the present of computer mediated communications that will peak soon and be replaced by a new fashion? Some, like Michael Baches of the now-defunct US-based Rocket Science new media production house say, "interactive television is already here - it's the internet".

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