The world's biggest TV channels are now stream live on the net and the online audience is growing fast. But the global champion for international broadcasters tells Mediawatch old-fashioned broadcasting is not dead yet, and competing countries are keener than ever to get in on the act.
Members of the Association of International Broadcasters. Photo: supplied
Last week TVNZ began live streaming its three main channels - TVNZ 1, 2 and Duke - on the internet.
The TVNZ website and OnDemand App now has a section called 'Live TV' which lets you watch those channels live.
It was already doing that with its Duke channel, but what seems like a small technological tweak is in fact quite a big leap.
It means you no longer need to tune in to a broadcast signal at all to see New Zealand’s most-watched channels from our biggest - and state-owned - TV broadcaster.
On Newstalk ZB last weekend tech expert Peter Griffin said TVNZ is basically taking its cue from many of its viewers who are increasingly doing their viewing online these days.
And there Peter Griffin highlighted both the big benefit to TVNZ - and one of the big differences between TV over the internet and TV over the air:
When they play their channels out on the air - they really don’t know who’s tuned in. But because you have to register and set up an account to use TVNZ On Demand, they now know not just whether you’re watching online, but what you watch and how often - and - crucially for a commercial broadcaster - which of their clients’ ads you’re watching - ads which can be tailored to meet your particular preferences in future.
In the modern media, people are the product.
And on Newstalk ZB’s Sunday cafe last weekend, Peter Griffin went on to tell the host Andrew Dickens all this calls into question the very future of free-to-air TV broadcasting in New Zealand
It;’s not only within developed countries like New Zealand that the power of the internet to distribute programmes online is nibbling away at the audience for traditional broadcasting on the air.
Those who broadcast across national borders are also feeling the pinch.
Someone who was see all this unfold up close is Simon Spanswick; chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting.
Photo: PHOTO / RNZ Mediawatch
Association for International Broadcasting Simon Spanswick leads was established a quarted of a century ago - But Simon Spanswick has been tracking those changes in broadcasting technology for a lot longer than that.
In the early days of digital technology he had a ringside from the mid 1980s onwards on a BBC World Service show all about the changes in broadcasting.
And waveguide didn’t have to look to far to report on the cutting edge of technology for broadcast transmission . . . the BBC itself was at the forefront of it.
But (on a recent visit to NZ ) Simon Spanswick told me Waveguide - and digital technology in the early 90’s - didn’t stop at replacing crackly old AM.
Now that so much is available online already - and technology means anyone can broadcast what they like on the net without expensive transmission equipment - does all this mean the end is nigh for some of the biggest names in broadcasting currently beaming news across borders: the likes of BBC World TV and The BBC world Service radio? Or CNN, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe Or Al Jazeera. And in this part of the world the ABC’s Australia Plus service and RNZ International?
Simon Spanswick - is broadcasting dead? Now that technology means we’re all broadcasters now?
But not everyone has the same idea of a trusted brand.
In recent years, while the internet’s been on the rise - so has the number of international TV broadcasters -- most of them backed by states with competing interests.
Indeed so much so that the cold-war tactic of jamming foreign broadcasts has made a comeback.
Broadcasters such as the BBC, Voice of America, France 24, Deutsche Welle and Al-Jazeera have all seen transmissions of their international programmes jammed in recent years.
Kremlin backed RT, France 24 and TV5, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, TRT in recent years international viewers. -
All member of the SS’s IAB.
But is this news broadcasting or propaganda?
AUDIO: 16 Jul 2017 SPANSWICK 10 propaganda
But also getting through now these days -fake news.
The feud Qatar and neighbours in the Arabian Gulf erupted last month when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and travel ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and being an ally of regional foe Iran, charges that Doha denies.
Qatar and neighbours in the Arabian Gulf and Middle east at loggerheads in a diplomatic row spraked by a false news story.
The supposedly fake report, published last month, quoted Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, on a number of sensitive regional issues and Doha’s relationship with Donald Trump. Its publication is thought to have contributed to tensions between neighbouring countries.
Mr Thani was quoted as saying “there is no wisdom in harbouring hostility towards Iran” and that his relationship with the Trump administration was “tense” despite a positive meeting between the two leaders in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital.
Qatar’s ties to Israel were “good”, the story quoted the sovereign as saying, and that he hoped to help broker a peace deal in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It attributed to the ruler positive statements about Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Gaza-based extremist organisation Hamas.
AUDIO: 16 Jul 2017 SIMON SPANSWICK 4 fake
