Media Report

The ABC has just launched a new internet television service called iView. The service takes the availability of video on the net to new levels in Australia and judged on overseas experience, iView is likely to have mass appeal. We speak with the head of ABC Television Kim Dalton.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Antony Funnell: The Washington Post is one of the world's most recognisable news brands, and Leonard Downie Junior has been its Executive Editor for almost two decades. We'll hear from him shortly about the rapidly changing nature of the US newspaper industry and about criticisms that the paper failed to live up to its reputation for excellence when it came to the war in Iraq.

First off though, let's talk television.

And amid much hype, the ABC last night launched a new online television platform called iView.

iView is basically an on-demand media player which operates from the ABC website, and by accessing it, you can stream full-length episodes of television programs that have appeared on the ABC. So in summary, it's proper internet television.

Now we can take or leave the hype, but based on the record of similar initiatives overseas, iView is likely to have mass appeal in Australia.

In Britain, for instance, the BBC's iPlayer, a very similar application, has been a resounding success and in the States, the online video site HULU, a joint venture between NBC and FOX has proved just as popular.

In fact according to a recent Nielsen survey, in the month of June alone, Americans accessed video from the HULU site more than 83-million times.

So it's hardly surprising then that ABC management is so optimistic about their new online baby. The Corporation's Head of Television, Kim Dalton.

Kim Dalton: Probably most importantly, and the big difference in all this is that what the audience will receive is a full-screen, quite high-quality picture on their computer screens, and that's quite a major difference to what they've been used to seeing when they've been accessing our streaming offering at the moment, or our vodcasting.

Antony Funnell: And you can go online to this iView site and watch a full program and line them up, as I understand, so that you're doing your own scheduling, your own programming in a way.

Kim Dalton: Yes, if you want to, you'll be able to in the same way that you do with a web, where you have favourites and make your own choices and your own selections, you'll be able to do that. You'll go straight onto our ABC website, whether it be the TV part of it or the home page, and go straight into iView, and there will be a range of programs. We're starting off with about 70-odd programs, we have about 40 hours of programming; they're grouped into, at the moment, five channels and we hope that there'll be more channels and there certainly more and more programs made available in this way.

Antony Funnell: Now ABC programs, including The Gruen Factor, and The Hollowmen, are currently available for free in an unauthorised way on various Bit Torrent file-sharing sites. So is this development of iView in some ways an acknowledgement that if you can't beat them, you might as well join them?

Kim Dalton: Well look, at ABC-TV for the last couple of years, we've taken the approach that increasingly audiences want to access their programs when and where and how they want to. What actually suits them as a member of the audience, not what suits the broadcaster and the scheduler. So we've actually gone out of our way to look at ways of providing our programs, basically still as a free-to-air broadcaster, as a national public broadcaster, but providing our programs in ways that our audiences are able to come to them when they want to and access them, and then view them on the device that suits them at that point in time.

Antony Funnell: Now it won't initially have an EPG, an Electric Program Guide, which would allow you to program ahead. Now I know all of these sorts of developments cost money, and the ABC is run on the smell of an oily rag in a sense. Is an EPG though, something that you would like to, or you anticipate incorporating into the site in the future?

Kim Dalton: Well look, there's a range of functionality that we're aware of that can be built into iView, and we will certainly be looking at that, and anything which helps audiences navigate around the increasingly complicated program offering, and channel offering that's out there, anything which will assist audiences to do that and select the programs that they want to watch, and then watch them, that's what we want to do.

Antony Funnell: iView will operate on a peer-to-peer system of file-sharing, where the total cost of bandwidth etc. is shared out among many internet users. But if you're a person who streams a lot of programs from the site, there still will be that issue of inadvertently going over your own personal download quota. How have you factored in that issue?

Kim Dalton: Well the first thing we're doing is providing a warning to that effect when you enter the iView space. So we do warn people that there is potentially, that they could incur additional cost subject to how much they use them and subject to the plan that they're on with their ISP. However the other thing we're doing is having conversations with a number of ISPs to look at possible arrangements with them where the provision of this material and the extra data that's associated with downloading it, does not form part of the cap. I think in the long term, that's the way to go, that is quite attractive for ISPs that they can actually offer, this can be part of their offering to their consumer base, so there are a number of conversations going on at the moment around that.

Antony Funnell: And are those ISPs, those Internet Service Providers, are they concerned or cautious in a way, about how much bandwidth will be chewed up by this? And particularly if the commercial stations in Australia, they look at this and they think this is the way they'd have to go, and they start building their own players, I mean that could potentially mean a lot of consumption of bandwidth, couldn't it?

Kim Dalton: Well it could and of course the business that Internet Service Providers are in, is in fact providing bandwidth. So it works both ways. They want to have an expanding customer base, and in part it's about those customers then using that bandwidth and actually downloading and streaming material. But part of the competition I guess is about providing access to particular areas of content, and we think we have a very attractive content offering, and so that's something that we believe that some ISPs will be very interested in having access to and being able to offer to their consumers.

Antony Funnell: And there are going to be issues for some people I guess initially, in the sense that this service is - you're only going to get the most out of it if you've got a high speed connection, and as we know, the state of our broadband in Australia isn't that crash hot at the moment, is it? So how many people are we talking about who have the broadband connection to utilise this?

Kim Dalton: The percentage of people who now have broadband connectivity is increasing. You know, it's quite high, I can't give you the exact figure off the top of my head at the moment, but it is quite high, the number of households who now have broadband connectivity. It's another issue, is the actual speed that that broadband is delivered, but one of the features that we're very pleased about, that we've built in to this application and into iView, is its ability to recognise the speed that the connection is taking place, and to then adjust that connection and personalise that connection if you like. The actual quality of the image when it fills your computer screen, I think is very impressive, and I think people will be very surprised when they see it.

Antony Funnell: All right, well look just briefly, while we've got you, on a related matter, you've just recently been announced as the Chair of a new consortium of free-to-air broadcasters in Australia, called Freeview; what's the aim of that coalition, and what will it offer Australian TV viewers?

Kim Dalton: Well, within the next 12 months, certainly going into next year, then what Australian audiences are going to be provided with, is an expansion of digital channels, free-to-air digital channels, and there will be at least by this time next year, around about 15 digital channels.

Antony Funnell: This is that they can watch on their conventional TV if they've got a digital set-top box.

Kim Dalton: That's right, a digital set-top box, or a television with a built-in digital tuner, that's right. And what's happened is that all of the metropolitan networks and the regional networks, have got together and will be working together to actually make sure that our audiences understand the offering that's available, the expanded offering that's available, to make people understand that within this free-to-air space, there is an increasing amount of choice, and it's a choice of quality programming which they're used to at the moment perhaps only receiving on their analogue service, which is only the five channels. But all of this is changing, and what Freeview will do is make sure that they're available of the much more expanded choice of this material on digital television.

Antony Funnell: So it's mainly a branding exercise, an awareness campaign? Is that correct?

Kim Dalton: Well yes, it's an awareness campaign, and it's a brand. It's actually saying there is a platform and that platform is free-to-air digital television, there are a number of providers of content within that space of television programs, within that space, and each of those providers will be broadcasting across a number of channels. And it aligns with the government's intention that by 2013 the analogue signal will be turned off, so clearly, if we're going to transition into this digital age, then we have to make sure that we achieve as close as possible, to 100% take-up of digital television.

Antony Funnell: But just to be clear, and just finally, in terms of your audiences, or the audience's ability to pick up these new channels, if you already have a set-top box that allows you to pick up digital TV, will you need to get anything else to access these new extra channels that will come on line?

Kim Dalton: Not for the standard definition channels, no. You can either have a set-top box which will allow you to receive the standard definition digital channels, or a set-top box which will allow you to also receive the high definition digital channels as well. And Freeview is about both, it's both about the standard definition channels and the high definition channels, and what we'll also be developing and offering of course, is an Electronic Program Guide, and EPG, which will have a whole range of functionality, and which will connect into personal video recorders. So it's a time of expansion and development and it's an exciting time for both the providers of these new digital services, as well as for Australian audiences.

Antony Funnell: Well Kim Dalton, Head of ABC-TV and Chair of the Freeview Consortium, thank you very much for joining us on The Media Report.

Kim Dalton: Thank you very much, Antony.

Guests

Kim Dalton
Director of Television, ABC

Further Information

To access iView

Presenter

Antony Funnell

Producer

Andrew Davies

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