DIGITIZATION: EXAMINING THE FATE OF TELEVISION IN A DIGITAL ERA: With regard to television, similar to what has happened with the radio, the digital migration has become even more evident as developing economies struggle to beat the European Union DTT mandate come 2015. At the same time, television via Internet (IPTV) is also poised to becoming a technology of the future. Instructively then, aside from audience fragmentation and evasiveness occasioned by digitization, what is on trial now is the lifespan of the regular television as we have known it throughout the last century. Media buyers are becoming increasingly challenged and aghast with the possibility of tracking target audience via popular programs which were hitherto predictable. The television audience of today has grown to appreciate and maximize the enormous benefits accruable from digitization and may never again, suffer the restrictions placed on it by analogue technology. The need to adapt personal schedules to those decided by the programmers of the different channels no longer makes much sense when the user can download a program and watch it whenever he or she pleases. The advantages of consuming television in other new ways are obvious and proofs of the fact that the medium has evolved and continues to evolve. The role of television as a congregating agent in a contemporary society may not be the same again, as the younger generation are already known to consume more audiovisual contents through the monitors of their mobile phones, ipad, pcs etc and are fast abandoning the conventional television, which ties them down to a time and place. While appreciating the transformation arond the television medium, the issues remain to be seen what will happen with the traditional social function of television as a congregator of large audiences. Part of the successes of the many television programs rest in the possibility of talking about them in a group, with family members, friends or with colleagues at work. To a very large extent, a highly individualized form of television will be viewed as the biggest threat to the medium in its entire history. Digital Television Transmission uses the greater compression of the signal to free radioelectric space, which can be devoted to new services of added value. It is for this reason that there is a range of peripherals on the market incorporating a hard disk which allows the remote recording of programs in order to watch them later. Similarly, the evolved models also permit a certain degree of interactivity and even the chance to make purchases with a credit card. This opens up an opportunity for advertisers, who can make specific offers for which an immediate responses may be elicited. Another trump card of DTT is the quality of the image, clearly superior to that of analogue television. Moreover, the liberation of radioelectric space – the signal travels more compressed– allows more channels to broadcast in high definition. While television and the computer lock horns for the supremacy of the screens, the mobile gadgets are fast gaining prominence as distributors of audiovisual contents and live television programs. The limitation of the size of the screen entails a different kind of consumption, but the tendency and evolution of these devices will create a more versatile interface, facilitating a greater consumption of audiovisual contents. Patrick Ezeh.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 08:48:35 +0000
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