My Two Cents.

Could it be that those who advocate digital television are really subscribing to a divide-and-conquer strategy?

Taking a closer look at the television technology, one notices that analog -- with its cozy, limited capacity -- has united viewers and has created nationwide mass media blocks. On the other hand, digital TV technology -- with its vast capacity -- has divided, splintered and fragmented the public. The irony lies in the fact that digital technology made the much sought-after convergence of media (telephone, radio, television, production, cable TV, satellite, print and the Internet) possible.

It seems that, while the various media are converging, the viewers are diverging. We may find ourselves more resigned to the situation if we consider the following facts: 1) Digital television is inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle. I don't believe that the aspiring monopolists at the forefront of digital television actually intend to dominate the world's media (or the media world) by investing in money-losing niche markets. Besides, even if the monopolistic traits were there, the financial markets would not tolerate the pro longed losses that digital television would bring to pioneering conglomerates. 2) Digital is expensive. The consumer market isn't there yet, therefore the unique audiovisual-product to foster growth in the digital market is scarce from the viewer's point of view. There is a way to create a digital market without losing the proverbial shirt, but this can only be accomplished if all of the interested parties (i.e., broadcasters, producers, telcos and other carriers, MSOs and computer companies) manage to decide on some common goals. While the various industry groups competed in the radio and analog television eras, they never diverged as drastically as they have since the advent of digital television.

Today, the broadcasters have managed to step on the toes of everyone else, and the telcos, the MSOs, the print media and the computer industry have behaved similarly. The computer industry has the additional bad habit of changing standards as one would dirty socks. Indeed, their slogan could be: "Obsolescence, coming soon to a computer near you."

Anarchy could be the best form of regulation. After all, it wasn't a well organized committee that approved the obsolete ATSC high-definition digital TV standard? On the other hand, the Internet, with all its anarchy, produced standards like HTML and URL and created an environment compatible with future technological developments.

This is why several international committees and forums in the U.S. and Europe, including ATVEF and EBG (in the US.), B-HTML and DAVIC (in Europe), are now rushing to develop an Internet-based universal television protocol that would be platform-independent (i.e., it could be sent from any type of carrier [telephone, over-the-air terrestrial, satellite or cable TV] to any type of receiver [digital-TV set, computer or analog- TV with adapter]) Seepage 43.

In the final analysis, digital television is going to cause audience fragmentation, but will not aid monopolistic design. The mass market confined to a geographical area will disappear, to be replaced by vast multimarket audiences. As they say, converging multimedia companies will follow the viewers, not the geographical boundaries.

The common belief is that only companies with deep pockets will succeed. This consideration is certainly valid in the short run. In the long haul, the conglomerates will be remembered as the ones who broke the ice for the small carriers.