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Has Tim Davies asked the telco industry if they can cope with 68 million individual subscribers all either listening to the radio at the same time? Each requires a two way path from the radio station to the listener. Many of the listeners are mobile and move from mobile phone base station to base station requiring a transmitter and receiver for each listener and they are constantly switching from tower to tower. Think about the electromagnetic spectrum they would have to buy from Ofcom (UK version of ACMA). Even if they were to equip the internet to take such a number of simultaneous users it is for only a few hours a day. For TV it is even worse, because most viewers with TV sets will want 25 Mbit/s each.
Also for the internet to function they need a non stop supply of electricity over the whole country. With radio you only have to backup power the transmitters and provide a sound input which could be supplied via satellite. They haven't had the cyclones, bushfires and floods we have to prove the internet and phones are useless under these conditions.
The BBC is yet to give up DAB and go to DAB+ like us, so that they can broadcast at least 18 programs per transmitter. Even their own Research and Development lab has found that DAB+ uses the least energy between the studio and the listener. Lower than the internet, FM and AM radio. Their Government is promising to lower greenhouse gas emissions!
When media is transmitted via 'wireless' beit tv or radio, by the nature of 'wireless' and the scarce resource of radio frequency spectrum, there are few players.
Today, anyone with a camera, microphone and mixer can do a podcast and disseminate content via IP.
The limitations of IP dissemination are the lack number of available addresses under the IPV4 system and the bandwidth capabilities of the content provider's system, the IP network's infrastrucure and the consumer's computer/phone. For the former, IPV6 allows for significantly more IP addresses.
Assuming a major broadcaster was to abandon 'wireless' broadcasting for IP casting, the major broadcaster will be on a level playing field with any podcasting participant.
It leads to thinking strategically on how a broadcaster can maintain and build an audience on an IP-only platform. It also makes one think the kind of content that the broadcaster will supply to draw attention to the ears and eyeballs of the media consumer.
It may be a liberating experience for the consumer who may like alternatives to the narratives transmitted by the established broadcasters.
Such narratives may be conservative views for example Glenn Beck or not-so-conservative values who are nit heard on the mainstream media.
Content can be as entertaining as cat videos, singing dogs and parrots on youtube. It's no point of the main FTA broadcaster showing "Animals do the Darndest Things."
Consequently the choices of content on IP networks versus FTA are greater.
As a result of wider choices, there is no more restrictions as to the number of content providers have increased compared to the restrictions on the radio spectrum.
Production and content values aside, the answer is what will the established broadcasters do to maintain and build an audience when there are other content providers should terrestrial broadcasting cease?
Thank you,
Anthony, of another new shift in programming paradigms, Belfield, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation