ASIA-PACIFIC BROADCASTING

Australia loves multi-channels. The first regions have commenced analogue switch-off in Australian free-to-air TV and over the past 18 months 11 digital channels have been introduced. Channel Ten has launched ONEHD and 11, Channel Seven has unveiled 7TWO and 7mate, Channel Nine has released GO! and GEM, while the ABC now has ABC3 and ABCNews 24 and SBS its 1, 2 and 3.

The average viewer in Australia with a digital TV can now receive 15 channels from the terrestrial free-to-air TV service. This is an outstanding achievement and, based on the initial year of operations, there are some outstanding successes which have led to a significant revaluation of the sector.

Imagine, just two years ago a broadcaster only had 168 hours of air-time per week available to sell into; now that has tripled to 504 hours. Advertisers have seen the benefits too. After all, eyeballs are eyeballs and, at current rates, you can hit the same eyeballs that watch the “main” channels reportedly at 20% of the cost. No doubt, this will change as the value of the new air-time increases with audience and penetration.

Digital penetration in Australia is sitting at close to an impressive 90%; with 82% able to receive both SD and HD channels. GEM, News24, ONEHD and 7mate are all HD services. Couple this with the proposed changes to anti-siphoning legislation and, soon, live sports will be able to be carried on the multi channels. This one change will remove the conundrum faced by single channels which held sports rights that clashes or overrun with news and entertainment pro­gramming.

This is giving pay-TV in Australia a bit of a headache. It has been reported that subscriber growth has slowed as more people stick with the multiple channels that are now available for free. Pay-TV has the burden of posi­tioning itself as an exclusive content provider in a world of syndication and repeat programming. As pay-TV providers continue to up the ante and place more and more advertising on their general entertainment channels, the less differential effect this has on the subscription-TV consumer.

This has also been a big year on the technical side as each network geared up to launch those extra channels.

Twelve months ago, in a first for Austra­lian commercial TV, Seven unveiled 7TWO and for six months outsourced the playout of the channel to Southern Cross Media in Canberra, some 600km from Seven’s broadcast centre in Melbourne. The opera­tion was based on full scheduling and material preparation in Melbourne with file delivery of content to Canberra.

Seven built its Melbourne facility and switched 7TWO over when it was ready. Then followed a further few months of 7mate operation from Southern Cross while the 7mate facilities were built.

Nine has followed suit and is now producing its GEM channel from its affiliate, NBN in Newscastle, while it constructs its playout faci­lity in Frenchs Forest in Sydney.

File delivery for programming is the next frontier for broadcasters. Fox distribution has pushed the envelope as far as it can go with its Foxfast service, which will fully launch this July.

It is amazing to think that the IT platforms, which now play out broadcast TV, are so “IT-centric” that almost any broadcast file format can be supported. The delivery of entire seasons of TV series on portable hard drives now removes the space requirements of traditional tapes, reduces transportation costs and maintains the source quality.

Public Internet delivery takes the process to the final step of a seamless delivery chain from distributor to broadcaster.

The recent disaster in Japan has put some pressure on TV producers worldwide because of the possible effect on HDCAMSR tape stock, and has given broadcasters the impetus to push ahead with file delivery as an alternative.

It is doubtless that this next workflow improvement will have significant bene­fits for content distributors and broadcasters.

The dilemma for broadcasters is to unravel the various file-delivery formats so they can deal with the various suppliers in a consistent way. Suppliers will have different approaches and broadcasters need to be as file-agnostic as possible. The ability to pick up files from edge servers and flip them to the “house format”, and then integrate this into a seamless workflow will be a challenge, but one that will pay healthy dividends.

For broadcasters who want to fill up multiple channels with up to 400 hours a week of individual programming, file delivery can’t come soon enough.

 

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Andrew Anderson is general manager, Group Broadcast Services at Seven Network. He is also an APB panellist.