The Broadcasting Media in the Age of Risk: The Advent of Digital Television

This essay argues that the process of digitization has farreaching implications for the broadcasting field and claims that the most suitable theoretical framework to comprehend the full scope of these changes is provided by Ulrich Beck’s theories on risk society. Despite predictable developments, digitization increases the sources of uncertainties and the level of risks for the expanding number of players involved in broadcasting. Several sources of uncertainties are identified: market demand for digital services, intensified competition, regulations, the pace of technological progress and the phenomenon of convergence. The second section argues that the process of digitization is challenging public service broadcasters and may contribute to weaken their presence in the public sphere. Technological mastery increasingly tends to rest in the hands of commercial firms and digital broadcasting furthers the commercialism of television. In addition, fuelling the growth of conditional access, digitization threatens universal access, one of the key principles of public broadcasting. The last section argues that when digital broadcasting will be fully operational, watching television will cease to be a common experience, to become a shared activity that individuals experience separately.