A Look into Digital Broadcasting

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A Look into Digital Broadcasting

Digital Broadcasting will have a fundamental effect on viewing patterns, popular culture and audience identity.

This will be done firstly by looking at the history of the BBC and the original intention of Public Service Broadcasting. It will discuss how by John Reith’s successful approach to broadcasting, the BBC became a National Institution creating popular culture and a National Identity. It will examine how these first steps and ideas have major role in the introduction of Digital Broadcasting today and whether the initial ‘Reithian’ values have any meaning in today’s society. It will finally conclude what effect if any, these changes will have on British life as a whole and whether the fear of change is justified.

In the 2oth century the advance of technology has been fundamental in the way we live our lives today. The recent introduction of Digital Broadcasting to Great Britain has caused many technologists to become swept up in a sense of awed enthusiasm about the infinite possibilities of the new digital age. In its early stages digital broadcasting is only available to a minority and it will take ten years or so to become a new way of life.

Digital Broadcasting has thousands of new services to offer its viewers and listeners. Instead of pictures and sound being transformed into waves, the new technology turns them into a series of digits which are transmitted through the air and received by television or radio aerials. Digital Broadcasting is more efficient than analogue, giving space for six channels where analogue would give you one. Digital brings better picture, better sound quality and more choice and cinematic style. The new era gives the audience greater interaction with its broadcaster and also the opportunity to shop, book holidays, bank and play games all form remote control.

It is not just television that is going digital. Radio too will offer the listener a transformed experience in what we enjoy the most. The sound quality will be crystal clear and free from interruption. New digital radio sets will offer a built in display panel which will show graphics as well as facts and figures relating to the programme you are listening to.

These are the things that we have come to expect from a broadcasting journey lasting 80 years. The new technological change is revolutionar...

... middle of paper ...

... London; Routledge

LEWIS, Lisa. A 1992 ‘The Adoring Audience’

London; Routledge

NEGRINE, Ralph 1992 ‘Politics and the Mass Media’

London; Routledge

O’SULLIVAN, Tim 1994 ‘Key Concepts in Communication

Studies’

London; Routledge

PRICE, Stuart 1993 ‘Media Studies’

Harlow; Longman

STRINATI, Dominic 1992 ‘Popular Media Culture’

London; Routledge

TULLOCH, Sarah 1996 ‘Complete Word Finder’

Oxford; Readers Digest

Websites

‘BBC Digital’

http://www.bbc.co.uk

‘Pay TV Company British Digital Broadcasting...’

http://www.itn.co.uk/business/bus

http://www.sky.co.uk

Periodicals

‘Put Quality 1st, Smith to warn BBC’

Daily Mail - Monday 12 April 1999

‘Sky Facts 1999’

British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC

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