Eric Tesug <...> said:
Oh please. Sky had a small majority of home at that time and along came
ITV with a kick start called football from Division One – WOW what a
winner, not! ITVD was a disaster from the start, I bet Sky were laughing
like mad. The checks in place were – oh let's give to ITV. To be honest
Sky would have been better at getting DVBT going via the aerial than ITV.

By the time ITV digital started Sky had the premium content rapped up (soccer and Movies), the fact that ITV overpaid a fortune for Division One was a desperate attempt by the regionalised companies to catch up with Sky. ITV was not one company; it was a number of regionalised companies desperate to merge to fight the big media corporations before they got swallowed up. Sky later took the opportunity to buy into ITV to stop other companies competing with its dominate position. This will always happen when there are not enforced proper checks and balances. Today we are left with regulation stopping Sky from showing all the Football, which is how it should be.

Anyway, that is water under the bridge, the fact was that whilst most
were poking fun at the mess a few were pushing for the BBC to get the
platform AND DRIVE it. They did and did a good job.
As far as content is concerned, how come the take up was rubbish with
ITVD and when Freeview kicked off it grew and grew and grew??

No problem with how TV has developed, perhaps we can learn from the mistakes made and implement it for radio by using the BBC, just in a slightly different way so as not to have a dominate commercial broadcaster.

The problem here Steve was one of applicants – if you only get a couple
of applicants with the cash to pay for national transmission networks,
what are you supposed to do? Oh well never mind we won't do that then?

There have been so many debates on here about things and most come back
to money!!! So why don't all the anoraks get together and raise oodles of
money to apply to take over some of the DAB space? If the content works,
it would drive DAB sales like crazy, then "group anorak" would probably
become the Borg :-)

Content will only work if you have the right platform; DAB on its own will not work. Why should group anorak try to make something work in our unfair broadcast set-up when a huge company like GCap cannot even do it? You might as well spend a few hundred thousand and get a boat and have fun for a few months, rather than get on DAB and fail like all other commercial ventures on this platform.

Yes it will comedown to money. What we have to do is correct the mistakes of the past before you can plan for a first class radio system for the future.

To a certain extent in a few decades time all radio will be on an equal footing to a certain extent, they won't have the luxury of cross media advertising that the BBC have, unless they are owned by other media giants or can set-up deals with other media providers, but they will be able to provide content on one or two platforms and if the content is right they may make money as well. The problem is the likes of me and you will either not be around or so old as to not even be able to hear a radio,

Steve