[LINK] digital TV conversion - psychology of the consumer

[Glen Turner]

Howard Lowndes wrote:

> Now that the Beeb are releasing a ton of their old stuff on the net, why 
> can't this be picked up by ABC or SBS - is there a copyright issue?

The BBC take the view that this content should be available for
a limited time to those that paid their UK television license fee.
Everyone else can continue to pay.

> That would be an excellent idea for another complete channel and
> should be being pushed by AVCC (or whatever they are these days)

This content is being offered via the Internet, not via Pay TV.
Makes sense to use an infrastructure that the universities and
their students have today.

Jan wrote:
> there must be a lot of programming from the hundreds of cable 
> stations in the US that aren't being shown here that could be.

Yes and no. I looked at getting a direct feed from WGBH into
AARNet (WGBH is the US Public Broadcasting System affiliate
in Boston, and maker of some of the finest educational TV
in the world).

The problem is that WGBH make a substantial amount of money
from sales to Australian public and commercial TV. They were
obviously concerned that this might disappear, especially
if we also ran a time-lagged channel.  To their credit they
were willing to forgo this revenue if we were to establish
a PBS affiliate in Australia.

I haven't picked this up again since my last visit to the
US, since it seems a bit of a hopeless case for me to
pursue -- I'm not in a position to raise the necessary
$m funding, nor have enough TV industry experience to
kick off a TV station, commission works, etc.

Cheers, Glen