Unless television content makes a vast change to the programming,I am sure there will a large mass desertion of television watching.
Most of it is mindless mass for the mindless mass. It could have been a wonderful thing . Instead it has been hijacked by awful crime shows,medical soaps, teenage angst soaps, inane quizzes and not much of uplifting experiences.
Who would pay more for such idiocy? Unless you like ads, there isn't a lot to recommend it.

Firstly - digital TV has huge potential - I'm not talking about multiple angles of the footy or that kind of stuff, what interests me is the potential for genuinely local news.

Not just a regional broadcaster that can cover a few towns, I'm talking about a local television station for a small town - school recitals can be played, news that excites small towns but not anyone else, like business relocations, or arguments in shire councils, or how the local sporting team's doing on the ladder (actually, that is the one local thing that does make the regional news).

It has the potential to be as local as small town papers - needing only a few employees to keep a town informed. The technology is incredibly cheap and easily installed - provided there aren't excessive regulations for small players.
This is crucial for a television industry that only makes respectable content because the content quotas are in place - At present, without them, Australians aspiring to work in television will have to go overseas.

So in my view as someone who's worked as a journo on small papers, it's much more than merely a gadget as some see it, it can represent profitable TV for a small audience. Ads that granted, aren't seen by many, but are incredibly cheap.

That being said, regulations on ownership are crucial. New players need to be encouraged, but the one thing we do not need is more concentration. The proposed media laws do very little good and a great deal of harm. Our media situation may be bad, but this will only make it worse. Throw them out I say, and start from scratch.

TRTL,

How is digital TV the enabler for a local content business model? Surely the same could work with an analog transmitter.

I think it'll be hard to pull off as current laws are geared toward large stations with big budget ads. Small production value ads can have a huge cringe factor. A more effective way would be to display continuous banners or logos. Much cheaper to produce but it would fall foul of Australian rules for the number of minutes you are allowed to advertise. Shame because I am all for local content and issues on TV you can relate to.

The other issue that is being ignored in the digital TV debate is the internet. A multimedia blog with local content could fill a similar role as a local TV station. I guess the drawback is that you need to be IT savvy to access it.

What TRTL is saying is that each broadcaster can transmit multiple, separate channels as well as their main service. That puts them in a position of being more like a service carrier, like Telstra.

It costs no more than a simple hookup to insert one's local amateur TV production into the stream, to be broadcast at no extra cost in transmission power - with no extra demand on spectrum space - all receivable as separate channels on a digital box. Local radio stations can join in too. The puniest effort is broadcast with as much fidelity and power as the most costly TV production.

Naturally the incumbents don't want to be carriers of info or entertainment that will detract from their viewer base.

If my "leftie" understanding is correct, the incumbents dreamed up the idea of High Definition TV in order to mop up as much of this spare capacity as possible, so that it wouldn't be available for anything that didn't deliver them $$$.

It would be so much easier if "we the people" owned and operated the transmitters and repeaters. We are literally like our forebears who had to purchase and join the first separate little local electricity suppliers into the national electric grid we have today.

Nice summation Chris - the last bit I'd add would be the versatility and accessability of the technology (provided the full potential is realised), as well as its price.

The ability is there already, to broadcast this technology cheaply. With mass communication, sending the content back and forth is not the least bit difficult.

Then there are the basics.

Where once you had to drag a hefty videocamera, a tiny digital one will now do the job, and better. What's more, editing is now an easy practice with the proper software. No messing about with old style tapes, just cut and paste bits, add or remove audio here and there.

Don't forget that you only get 6 digital channels on a digital stream and the amount of info is limited. eg an image of one explosion can take a lot of bandwidth, ok if the other channels are lawnbowls and snooker.

I fully agree that production costs have plummetted with the price of current gear. However I don't see why we should send our own clips to a local broadcaster when we can post them on youtube.

If we want to get a STB in every household we have to deliver content that is worthwhile. Foreign language news and the odd FD program are just not cutting it.

The killer content for TV is sport. By allowing events that fall in the anti siphoning category on the B channels, there would be an STB in every second house within a year (imho).