For Digital TV, Feb 2001

At the height of the confusion over exactly what was going on in Florida during the US Presidential election, NBC's most senior presenter, Tom Brokaw, was winding up a live interview with a Florida election official. Brokaw asked him to please stay available on the phone so that NBC could get any updates on the air. With no hint of irony the Florida election official said, "Well, the best place to get the most up to date information is on our website."

So much for the power of TV! Of course, the Net is now the place to get up-to-the-second information, but TV is still the king of the hill in entertainment, right? Well yes, but don't blink: the hold of the box on people's entertainment time is already eroding and better technology is coming fast that will speed up the switchover.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global entertainment industry is growing at an estimated 7 per cent annual rate and will reach $1 trillion in value by 2004 and the Internet is by far the biggest growth catalyst. PCW estimating that in five years the market for entertainment and media over the Internet alone will reach $75 billion.

At the moment, downloading videos on the Net is still frustrating enough that movie studios need not be too concerned. But the technology is moving fast. Streaming media, where video is pumped through the Net from anywhere on the planet, is taking off. The real hurdle is technology. Most of us are still using dial-up modems at 56kbps, which is not conducive to watching real-time video much longer than for a few minutes, after which the video starts to jerk aas the PC waits for the next images to download. Web entertainment companies like icebox.com know this and so they limit the length of their clips.

The remedy is broadband technology, either from a cable modem or an ADSL connection. Most consumers today use the Internet for information and e-mails, but this is set to change as technology ramps up. Roughly one quarter of Internet users in Europe download music, according to PCW. Look at the recent alliance between Bertelsmann's BMG music group and renowned pirate music technology Napster and it becomes obvious that the biggest of the media players has decided it is better to embrace the new Net models than try to beat them off with a legal stick.

The appetite is there. Just look at the on-line success of the TV series Big Brother. During the series, Channel 4's Big Brother website attracted 200 million page impressions with an average of 3 to 3.5 million hits a day. The average time spent per user on the site was about 15 minutes. This pales in comparison to the 3 to 5 hours a day the average European watches TV. It will probably be a long time before people relax in front of their PC to watch a feature-length film. But the difference between lean forward (i.e. to a PC) and lean back (i.e. to a TV) leisure time is narrowing quickly. By the time of the next US election in 2004, an estimated nearly 24 million American homes will have broadband access in their homes. By then, Tom Brokaw may be seen on a single window within a customised video screen on your mobile, handheld device while you check out the latest on the Florida voting drama for yourself in another window. It's not network TV watching as we know it today, but Tom doesn't need to know.