Thomas Beutelschmidt;
Wolf Siegert:
Digital Communication or Tele-Vision?
tv strategies for the future
transmediale
'99, catalogue, Katalog, Berlin 1999, 31/32.
Television is undergoing fundamental structural changes as a result of the digitisation of production and distribution. The impact is being felt by both state-run and commercially financed, full-service channels as well as by special interest channels irrespective of whether their programmes are broadcast on free TV or Pay TV. All the stations affected are trying harder than ever before to keep their share of the market by setting up vertical and horizontal alliances and extending their traditional range of programmes. This is the old goal to which the new technologies are being harnessed. Various multimedia solutions and online services are being integrated in a combination of video, audio and text data in order to build up additional areas of business and / or lucrative value-added chains. The buzz word here is cross media promotion, i.e. an increasing amount of material is being given a multimedia dimension with a view to its multiple exploitation on television and/or in the cinema, on video, on the Internet, in the print media, the games sector and merchandising.
Are we looking here at a backward- leaning as opposed to a forward-leaning medium? Does digitisation mean that in future audio-vision will be determined by a convergence and gradual fusion of television with the world of the PC? Or will we continue to have two distinct media spheres with parallel information and communication systems, each of which has specific functions to fulfil in the overall media landscape, on the one hand, while being equipped with a series of interfaces, on the other? Rather than continuing with such academic debates practical consideration should be given instead to the use of the technology and the technology of the users. A close examination needs to be made of current strategies for the present and future content of everything from enhanced television to interactive TV, including the economic and institutional hidden agendas. While the stations broadcasting programmes in the German-speaking countries occasionally adopt different approaches, they all ultimately run up against the same problem, i.e. to what extent communication channels such as the Internet constitute a meaningful TV add-on ("TV+" with Intercast or WebTV) and how network TV defines its new "transmission" slots ("PC+" with Online TV).