UP TO 200 new television channels offering specialist programmes, the so called "near video on demand", interactive games and home shopping will be available next year from BSkyB. The new channels will be satellite digital channels.
BSkyB's head of programming, David Elstein, who was in Dublin for an international public relations conference, told The Irish Times that as a subscription service BSkyB had constantly to upgrade its service.
With that in mind BSkyB would look at the rights to Irish sporting events to attract Irish customers. Capturing Irish sports was not a priority at the moment, but with Irish viewers representing 10 per cent of BSkyB's customers, it was always necessary to enhance the service.
Mr Elstein, who started his television career at the BBC and has worked in current affairs at both Thames and Channel 4, said Sky would probably use about 50 channels to offer films with staggered start, so that a film was always just starting on one of the channels, with the capacity to offer possibly six every night.
Specialist niche channels, games and shopping would take up some of the capacity as well as different start times for particularly popular programmes.
Satellite digital television will be available via a box on the top of a TV set. That box would allow a range of payment options using swipe cards and other technology.
The technology available via the box on top of a television set would make a range of payment options possible, he maintained, with the licence fee, for either RTE or the BBC, the least attractive. He predicted digital television would mean the end of the licence fee and the full introduction of pay television, whether that was subscription or pay as you view, where a customer dials up a particular programme or event.
The benefit of digital television is that it allows an almost unlimited number of channels, with better quality. It also allows the current analogue frequencies to be used for other commercial operations, such as mobile phones.
Mr Elstein spoke of the debate about quotas for European television as being "morally, intellectually, economically and socially indefensible".
He said he was sceptical of some of the "more apocalytical statements" made by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins, about Irish film.
He said that when it has been calculated that less that 40 per cent of Section 35 tax break funds go into film production budgets and that "concessions to Irish trade unions add further dead weight to production costs, we must ask whether the policy is more noticeable for its rhetorical than its long term economic significance