Fergus Cassidy

Currie and chips

THE little gizmo shown above is selling in the United States like fresh-baked bread. Innocently hidden behind the tiny plastic housing is a remote control which turns off televisions. Any time, any place.

When aimed, the TV-B-Gone goes through a string of infrared codes matching over 1000 different television sets until it finds the right one. Then hey presto, silence settles.

Inventor Mitch Altman was gobsmacked himself at the deluge of people looking for his $14.99 key-ring. "I didn't know there were so many people who were into turning TV off", he said last week. On why he invented TV-B-Gone he was unabashed. "I just don't like TV and I'd like people to think more about this powerful medium in their lives".

I agree with him on the last point and judging by the plummeting television viewing figures over the last five years, I'm not the only one. Not for the first time in its troubled history, television needs to readjust the aerial.

Today's television companies face challenges from two distinct sources: satellite and the internet. But so far the snail speed afforded by a dial-up internet connection is useless for moving images. Broadband is changing that. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper. In the US, for example, a 1.5Mb connection can cost about $70 a month. In 1987 it was $10,000 per month.

As connection pipes to the internet get broader, it will become another vehicle capable of delivering moving images and therein lie television's troubles.

The challenge up ahead for television is really the challenge for all broadcasters. The internet is just another delivery mechanism but one with a crucial difference from anything which has come before - regulating programming and content. Where governments had complete control on what was shown (or not), on behalf of the state.

Since its first flicker, television has been subject to a plethora of national and international regulatory regimes. That situation is going to change dramatically.

The internet has proved extremely difficult (if not impossible) to regulate in the same way as television is. The experience of the music industry and the internet shows clearly what can happen. The same applies to trying to control harmful or unwanted content. This is very hard to do now in the same way as before.

Reflecting on this recently, two British lords were a leapin'. Lord Currie, the head of television watchdog Ofcom, spoke of a shifting broadcast horizon as television programming starts to go out over the internet. He went so far as to suggest that regulators might have to stop regulating programmes altogether.

"We don't regulate the internet", he said. "We regulate television, radio and telecoms networks. There will have to be a debate in parliament about whether we regulate the internet. I'm not sure that's feasible or desirable".

Film producer Lord Puttnam agreed. "There's no question he [Currie] is right. It's not even a debate, it has to happen whether it's two years or three... . It's what we used to call convergence. It's a different kind of reality to what we are used to and its crashing in very fast."

Soon it won't matter a jot what device people watch programmes on. Whether the thing sitting in the corner is a television or a computer with a big screen will be irrelevant as the convergence David Puttnam speaks of quickens in pace.

Brian Roberts, the head of America's biggest cable company Comcast, spoke recently about a meeting with one of the big computer manufacturers. "They envision a flat-screen, 60-inch monitor that could be a computer or television for under $1,000 within two years... . When that day happens, many Americans are going to want one."

Convergence with the internet is very good news for viewers everywhere. It opens up all sorts of new possibilities for how and when programmes are viewed. In the US, it has been estimated that people who can store programmes on digital recorders or hard drives watch 71% more programmes.

If 500+ channels of satellite broadcasting is supposed to mean choice, just wait until the internet kicks in. Television will return to its roots and what Bill O'Herlihy calls "liivvvve". But faced with tons and tons of content, viewers will need a 'Google for TV' and a continuation of the new frontier of grappling with issues of harm and/or illegality thrown up by the arrival of the net.

Lord Currie is thinking along similar lines: "Perhaps we have to think about not so much regulating content but helping people navigate. That allows us to get out of content regulation".

The end of content regulation? Really? As the bloke who thrashed his telly in the Guinness ad says: "That'll give us something to talk about".