When television began in 50's, it needed cheap and easy to make programs to get it started. The model used was the same as for radio many years before: just wheel the equipment into a concert hall and put the performance to air. This was relatively inexpensive because the show had already been written and, in most cases, was already a success. And successful live shows, as they had in radio, rated off the dial.

One reason that live and "variety" television filled so many hours of broadcasting was because large Hollywood studios banned the sale of features to the networks amidst widespread predictions television would destroy the movie industry. As Stuart M. Luca relates in his brilliant 1980 book, Television Transformation: The Next Twenty Five Years, the adolescent television industry, which recognised the tremendous drawing power of films, had to overcome this barrier by engaging with the older film industry. "The problem was to find a studio willing to stoop so low."

It was originally the Disney studios that finally put aside Hollywood's fears and began making expensive films for television. This eventually brought in the other studios and worked so well with audiences that, within two years, cheap live television in prime time was dead. Now in the nineties, with the perceived threat to the survival of existing advertiser-supported "free" to-air television from the new pay industry, the original industry is increasingly going the other way - back to programming basics and producing cheaper forms of television.

Pay television's main effects on current programming will be to drive programming prices down by opening up many new channels and to also "siphon off" popular programs, like movies and sport, to pay services to attract subscribers. And this will leave a gaping hole in the non-pay program line-up. In response to this, there's been a gradual move by Australian networks to schedule and develop cheaper new programs - lifestyle, "reality", talk or "confessional" shows, "infotainment" hour-long advertisements, and previously marginal and "imaginary" sports - like that masterpiece of televisual ingenuity, Gladiators.

These developments don't only affect our existing television networks. With the introduction of new "narrowcast" services to smaller audiences, entire "thematic" channels featuring one kind of program style have appeared and are successful overseas. Some, like Galaxy's pay channels, Red - for music, Arena - for general variety and Quest - for documentaries, are already here. Stay tuned for whole channels of Malcolm Elliott's ghastly idea of entertainment, 24 solid golden hours of games shows and recycled programs from the dawn of television.

The next step for television might hold out a glimmer of hope, however. As television reaches a relatively old age in this new age of interactive and new media, its practitioners appear to be reverting to a childhood state, where memories of times past are clearer than the present. It might not be long now when television goes live again and brings us all manner of events - and not just sports - in real time as they happen, out there in the "real world".