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Television's
Future Vision |
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Tiers Before Bedtime Television will increasingly reach into every corner of our world, not just the living room, but also the computer, library, video store, shopping arcade, university, school and street. But what's missing from most future plans is the idea of public and open communications spaces, with parks, libraries, independent news and information kiosks, playgrounds and quiet places where you can rest and play during a hard day's interacting. With real cities, planning is something that governments, local, state, and federal, and business, all have a hand in. But in the rapidly evolving world of television and communications it's becoming more difficult for governments, representing our interests, to have active involvement, particularly in these modern, deregulatory, times. For thousands of years people have dreamt of building the ideal city. Planned cities like Canberra and the Gillman, Adelaide, Multi Function Polis (MFP), attest to the dream still being alive today. Now Australia has the opportunity to develop a truly livable television city or space on the other side of the television and computer screen. Without a comprehensive plan for cable and for our communications system, underpinned by government leadership and carefully considered intervention, then Australia cannot live up to its promise as a world leader in new television content and services or present its audiences with new kinds of televisions they can relate to and engage with. In the US - leaving aside the complexities of their television regulations - many of the problems of a multichannel environment are addressed by "tiering" of services where several different channels are bundled together to cater for the diverse needs of viewers. Some cable services deliver an economy or "lifeline" tier which carries unencrypted or unscrambled programming such as retransmitted broadcast and other advertiser-supported channels, and community access and government information channels. Rather than charging for programming, the lifeline tier instead charges a small fee for carriage or delivery - similar to a monthly telephone line connection fee. Pay services - not supported by ads - are available on the higher-cost Premium tier supplying specialist programming. You buy a variety of more expensive services depending on your budget - services that will soon include telephony and Internet connections - on top of the cheaply-delivered lifeline tier. Within
the wider information architecture of our communications system this
tiered television services model is also relevant. What's needed is
an "information commons" in all domains of communications
which could be described as "Tier Zero", a lifeline data dialtone
which would carry public data from television and the Web; telephony;
wireless; and computer mediated communications such as the Internet
and Web and any other emergent form of communications. |
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Television's
Future Vision Part 7 > |