Pay TV (also referred to as Cable Television or ‘cable’) delivers its signals through either cable, satellite or microwave to a subscriber-based (pay-for-service) audience. Pay TV started transmitting via cable, but as it is dependent on the physical laying, and therefore very uneconomical for populations outside the cities, satellites and also microwaves was later used to first transmit the signals to a hub in rural areas for so be delivered its signals by cable to the subscribers. Later on however, Direct Broadcasting by Satellite (DBS) transmitted signals direct to the subscribers by satellite with the use of receiving dishes purchased by individual households (Gorman and McLean, 2003: 192)
The emerge of pay TV is known from the 1970s, however, the history of pay TV via cable can be tracked as early as the 1930s. The British Rediffusion Company developed in the 1930s “twisted pair cable to carry television signals to describers’ homes beyond the London area and continued to use simular technology in the 1950s� (Gorman and McLean, 2003:189). Pay TV, unlike traditional free-to-air broadcasting has been used to deliver television services to home viewers on a payment-for-service basis. Pay TV’s advantages includes more channels and therefore greater consumer choice and in many cases pay TV cater for consumers with special interests by broadcasting so called niche channels and programs which is to uncommercial for the free-to-air networks. As a result, pay TV provides a greater choice of both programs and channels than network programming.
“With the introduction of pay television in Australia, new kind of companies emerged: Foxtel was created as a merger between Telstra, which had the telecommunications network, and News Corporation, which had the media programs� (Barr, 2000:22). The history of pay television in Australia is a “sorry political and corporate saga of huge losses� (Barr, 2000:58) and although pay television had been established in North America and the Western Europe for decades, pay television in Australia has met significant difficulties, delays, political resistance and opposition by established commercial television networks. Up to this date, no one has been making money out of pay television in Australia: Australis Media was the first to launch pay television in Australia in 1995 by using microwave multi-point delivery systems. By 1997 they had already a loss on 549.2 million dollars (Anderson, 1997) and Australis later collapsed. Telstra and Optus entered the subscription market in Australia with what has been seen as a ‘loss leader’ telecommunication strategy in which they both lost enormous amount of money on: it seems that the fear for the other one growing bigger drove both telecommunications companies into huge losses.
Although pay television has, to some degree, challenged traditional broadcasters, it been a costly affaire and the degree of its achievement continues to ‘depend on provision of physical infrastructure. Its spread has been uneven, with lower penetration outside densely populated and predominantly metropolitan areas’ (Gorman and McLean, 2003:191)
It also tends to be a higher level of interactivity on pay television with services such as video on demand (VOD), and sporting events where the viewer can select different camera angles and choose to view instant replays.
Simen Sjoelli 17:16, 27 Oct 2004 (EST)
