Opportunites & Threats of Digitial Television

The the planned migration from analog to digital terrestrial television will free up considerable spectrum to be used to deliver telecommunications services and digital television will allow for significantly more TV channels to be broadcast – potentially a massive advance in media diversity. However initial ICASA proposals regarding the allocation of these new channels are skewed to the private sector and represented a privatization of the airwaves – a national resource.

The R2K have made a submission to ICASA calling for 50% of all channels to be allocated public and community broadcasting and to disallow broadcasting in high definition TV (HDTV) unless good cause is shown to increase the number of standard definition channels available.

Noting that local content and original content will be key to driving the take up of digital television we welcome ICASA’s vision for local and original content. While current stipulations are very low, they don’t allow broadcasters complete discretion to decide what to put on their channels.

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