Getting digital television into our homes is a troublesome mess and it is down to the inertia of the Government in failing to come to grips with it, writes Wolfgang Truetzschler
Digital television in Ireland is in a mess due to inactivity by the previous and current governments.
To experience at first hand what I know in theory, I decided to get digital television at home. NTL is my local provider of cable television but they cannot provide me with digital television for whatever reason. So I acquired a set-top box and a satellite dish, and the next question was for which satellite to configure the equipment.
The choices I have is to configure the equipment for the satellite which has most of the German digital channels - but then I don't live in Germany so that the daily political shenanigans in Germany are of little interest to me. Living and working in Ireland I am more interested in our political shenanigans. So, to get Irish digital television, my choice would have been to go for Sky television as it carries the Irish channels. However, I would have had to bind myself into a contract with Sky and pay a monthly subscription fee to a company whose programmes I don't really like, apart from the fact that I am not inclined to support one of the nine global media giants which own most of the world's media and which operates on most continents.
So the only choice left was to go for BBC Digital, which is what I did.
The advantage of going for the BBC platform is that it doesn't increase my monthly outgoings and that after a once-off payment of a little over €400 I do not face any additional charges as I would with Sky. I can now also watch more good quality television in the form of BBC3 and BBC4.
The disadvantage is that I still have to pay my local cable television provider to be able to watch Irish television.
Apart from all the BBC channels, several news channels, music channels, shopping channels enticing you to buy stuff you don't really need, film channels, Indian and other Asian programmes, my set-top box includes in all 300 channels, most of which are scrambled as they're on other platforms.
But the reception and the technical quality of the programmes I can watch is extraordinarily good and far superior to analogue television.
What I find really annoying, however, is that I can receive all the Irish channels but they are all scrambled. Why? Take, for example, our public service broadcaster RTÉ, which would be better placed on the free platform of its fellow public service broadcaster, the BBC.
As far as I can tell, the main reasons RTÉ is not on the BBC platform is that RTÉ would have to get copyright clearance to show its programmes on a free platform which can be seen in large parts of Europe.
To be able to show, for example, its acquired US programmes to a large section of Europe would probably bankrupt our public service broadcaster due to the copyright fees it would have to pay to the rights holders. This does not apply to Sky as RTÉ digital is encrypted and can only be received by Irish subscribers to Sky.
Why are we in the position that we have to go to Sky and pay more in order to be able to view the channel which we are financing ourselves by means of the licence fee? My explanation for that is the near complete inactivity by the current and the previous Government in failing to frame and implement a broadcasting policy appropriate for digital television.
At the time of the passing of the Broadcasting Act 2001 by the Dáil, there was talk about introducing DTH (direct-to- home) digital television. We could have all enjoyed the benefits of digital television by acquiring an appropriate aerial and a possibly subsidised set-top box as has happened in other parts of Europe.
It seems that there is a lack of political will by all political parties in Ireland to come forward with a policy that would entail us not having to spend a fortune for one of our main leisure activities. Political inactivity has meant that increasingly, viewers have chosen Sky subscriptions to receive the best quality television from a technical point of view.
As far as I know, attempts were made by broadcasters to put all Irish television channels on one platform, but these have failed to date. Moreover, that political inertia may now give rise to an even more worrying scenario as a result of the digital television shambles. Irish television may become increasingly dominated by Sky, while at the same time we could see the demise of indigenous television services.
Ireland could go the New Zealand way with the abolition of public service broadcasting, a dominance by Sky in television and by Independent Newspapers in the print media, also the case in New Zealand.
If that happens, it is anybody's guess as to whether Irish television can remain a reflection of Irish society rather than of US or British or global society. But then as Ireland is the most globalised country in the world for the second year running, according to Foreign Policy magazine, it might make sense that our broadcasting services reflect this reality rather than any Irish peculiari- ties. That would be a sad day indeed.
Wolfgang Truetzschler is a senior lecturer in communications at the Dublin Institute of Technology