Starting with the basics, the five terrestrial channels accessible to anyone via antenna are BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. The BBCs are funded by a license fee (£145.50 annually, about $239) paid by all TV households. The other channels are supported by advertising, though each also has certain public service mandates to follow. The expansion afforded by the digital switchover (which will be finalized next year, before the Olympic Games air) has allowed the terrestrial channels to add additional outlets: BBC3 (targeting 16-34s), BBC4 (high arts and culture), BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC Alba (for Gaelic speakers), CBBC (targeting 6-10s), CBeebies (under 6), ITV2 (16-34s), ITV3 (upscale 35+), ITV4 (25-44 males), CITV (children), E4 (15-35s), More4 (arts and culture), Film4, 5* (newly re-branded as “fun-loving”), and 5USA (American imports). Some of these have +1 counterparts (flasgship schedule delayed by an hour), and there are also a handful of HD channels. All of these digital channels are available for no subscription fee to viewers via Freeview (requiring either a set-top box or an integrated TV tuner) and Freesat (a satellite service). The BBC has also developed a digital interactive service called Red Button, and there are a few other channels available on Freeview, such as Dave (male-targeted comedy), Yesterday (history programming), and Quest (a Discovery outlet).

Moving on to pay TV services, Sky is the primary satellite provider (in the news a lot lately for the News Corp. full takeover bid). Sky offers everything already listed plus an array of Sky specialty channels (such as Sky Atlantic, Sky Living, Sky Sports); a collection of UK versions of US cable channels (Nickelodeon, Animal Planet, MTV, etc.); and various other channels (G.O.L.D., Home, Living). Virgin Media is the dominant cable service, with similar offerings, and much of the content available on pay TV seems to consist of reruns of terrestrial programming, US imports, movies, and sports, with relatively few original productions compared to the terrestrial channels.

Out of approximately 25 million TV households in the UK, 15 million subscribe to a pay service, (with satellite having a nearly 3:1 edge over cable). This means that a substantial number of homes, about 40%, don’t rely on pay TV, compared to only about 15% in the US. (One wonders how the US TV landscape would be different if a Freeview-type service had been developed. I recall a Broadcasting & Cable editorial from Harry Jessell over a decade ago calling for multicasting as a way for broadcasters to survive pay TV competition.)

Finally, internet users can click to live streaming of BBC and ITV channels plus free online catch-up services, including the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4 on Demand, and Demand Five, as well as the subscription Sky Player. Until recently, a UK Hulu of sorts existed called SeeSaw, but it just shut down after a difficult few years of operation, while the planned internet TV video-on-demand service YouView has run into problems as well.

The burgeoning pay TV landscape has certainly hurt the terrestrial channels, both in terms of simple viewing share but also in regard to their ability to fulfill public service mandates under an onslaught of largely unregulated commercial competition. Announcing a reduction of ITV’s news and current affairs coverage demands in 2008, the chief of Ofcom (Britain’s FCC) said, “Audiences value public service programming highly, but strong digital TV take-up means it is becoming harder for our leading commercial broadcasters to provide this.” Similarly, Channel 4’s chairman said in 2007, “We may be faced with a stark choice. Either we will have to reduce our output of public service programming and focus more of our schedule on commercial programmes, or see Channel 4’s finances continue to deteriorate.” And the BBC has seen its very lifeblood, the license fee, threatened due to digital’s elimination of the scarcity principle that helped to justify it in the first place. However, I’m also impressed by the extent to which the terrestrial outlets are forging new digital options themselves to stay alive, many of which have populist imperatives but which also stand to carry public service principles into a new era.

For the first ten years or so of television in Australia, from the first broadcast on September 16, 1956, most major cities in Australia had two commercial television stations Channels 7 and 10 as well Channel 2, the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s (now Corporation), somewhat akin to a local version of the BBC, operating on the VHF band. In the mid 1960s an additional VHF station bearing the call sign of 10 or 0 opened in most of the major cities. In 1979 the government added a new television station SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) operating on the UHF and VHF bands. SBS catered to the 20% or so of Australians who spoke a language other than English at home. With the addition of Imparja Television, a remote area service controlled and owned by Aboriginal Australians, and some other stations in smaller cities, these city based stations, now consolidated as networks, are the main players in free to air television in Australia. Cable television did not commence in Australia until the mid 1990s.

In 2001, digital television was launched in Australia. The digital spectrum carries a High Definition format service (1080i) and as well as another formats such as 576i and 720p. After initially limiting new digital channels to the ABC and SBS the three commercial networks were allowed extra channels. Uptake was slow, but between 2007 and 2010 the number of households making the switch to digital rose from 28% to 77% of the population and networks are scheduled to abandon analogue transmissions on the VHF and UHF spectrums by 2013. Each of the commercial networks and SBS has two additional digital channels and the ABC has three more channels.

Online these free to air services are promoted on the http://www.freeview.com.au website. In addition to the commercial channels, both the ABC and SBS participate in this campaign. The ABC has no advertising unless one counts the shrilling of their in house products. SBS has some advertising but only in the breaks between shows. In the space of two years, Australians in the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth have gone from five to sixteen free-to-air channels.

With all these channels and with the competition of cable television, in a national market of 22 million people, advertising dollars might be a bit thin on the ground, which helps explain the need to sell free tv to viewers. But just what are the advantages of all these new channels?

Around the time I was in Australia, the Seven Network was launching its new digital channel 7mate. According to my brother-in-law the Seven Network has carved out a niche with a female audience and 7mate attempts to cater to a more male audience. If you happen to be in Melbourne on December 18, 2010, you can watch Christmas Carols on Channel 7 from 8.30pm to 11pm or on 7mate Mega Disasters, which is preceded by Air Crash Investigation and followed by Stewardess School lending some symmetry to the evening. Other fare on 7mate includes Magnum, PI, The Rockford Files, and Knight Rider. Re-runs of old shows does not differ too much from some cable channels and in many ways these digital channels replicate cable’s offerings. For instance, over at the Ten Network one of their additional digital channels, One HD, is an all sports channel.

The threat these digital channels pose to the profitability of cable television is demonstrated by fourth generation media magnate James Packer’s purchase of a hefty chunk of shares in the Ten Network. His apparent intention is to switch the One HD channel from sport to carrying Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News channel, which would halt the competition that One HD poses to Packer and Murdoch’s sports channels on cable operator Foxtel.

Advertising dollars go where the viewers are and “free” tv needs those viewers for their business. New technology and the associated lower costs for delivering channels has allowed free-to-air to compete with cable for these dollars.