Well, it appears us Welsh are the most technologically advanced when it comes to Digital TV at least, with 80% of Welsh homes having access to digital TV.
The figure is just short of 70% when taking the whole of the UK into account - and the UK is the only European country to break the 50% barrier.
The USA has the second larges take-up, with 55% of households having access to digital TV.
I’m guessing the Welsh have the biggest take up as they do not get Channel 4 on analogue but they do on Freeview? S4C tend to run the ‘BIG’ C4 shows at least a week behind so they must feel left out sometimes!
Again, it's important to remember that 'access to digital TV' does not mean 'switched to digital TV' and does not in any way provide a true picture of how far advanced Wales is towards removing analogue dependency alltogether.
Indeed, the Llanstephan 'digital only' experiment has shown itself to be nothing more than a political trophy rather than serious progress - the viewers only voted in favour of the permanent switchoff because they were supplied and allowed to retain free DTT equipment given to them during the pilot. And what is often never mentioned is that it's not a genuine swithoff - BBC2 has been retained on analogue because turning it off would take away the only source of evening network programming. I'm hearing nothing from the BBC on how they plan to deal with this problem long term - yet apparently total analogue switchoff in Wales is only two years away.
Before I hear anything more about how Britain is 'leading the way' in analogue switchoff I'd like to see serious analogue switchoff experiments - a straight analogue switchoff, no free equipment, no free subscriptions to pay TV services, and certainly 'switch off' meaning 'no analogue services', not 'well we have switched it off, umm except for BBC2 because we don't know what to do without it available on analogue'.
I'd then like to hear about long term plans to deal with services presently only available on analogue - so far the only one I've seen dealt with is the issue of BBC2 English regions (i.e. that they just won't exist any more - and even now that's not been dealt with; they might have removed regularly scheduled variations, but still shunt the regional news over there every year during Wimbledon). I want to know what the BBC plan to do over BBC2 in Wales and NI - with some network programming only available on analogue, and I believe that ITV is still divided into more macro-regions on analogue than it is on DTT. Serious consideration to how badly S4C will be hit by the loss of their bi-lingual analogue service seems to be made only in circles entirely detached from the issue of switchover.
I'd then like to see serious digital penetration surveys conducted which gauge not just how many people have some form of digital TV access, but how many do not use analogue at all - surely the most basic means by which to gauge an appropriate timescale for withdrawing analogue, yet this doesn't appear to be happening.
I am seriously concerned about the way broadcasters and the government are pushing ahead seemingly unchecked to rush through analogue switchoff (and with a timetable designed which could not look more like a politically designed potential damage limitation excerise if it tried - why else would Westcountry be one of the first to go but London one of the last?), without having an accurate picture (beyond the often quoted but pretty meaningless 'x% of people have digital TV' figure) of where we really are towards *genuine* switchover.
We heard this week about the BBC being charged with making the big push to get the 'remaining 30%' (meaning that they apparently assume the other 70% are done and dusted with regards to digital, even though they may only have one Sky box in their front room in a house full of TVs which use analogue terrestrial) but what are these plans going to involve? Are they going to get a digital replacement for every analogue device they have? Who is going to qualify for help? Will there be means testing to decide who can afford and who can't? Will certain demographic groups automatically qualify and others not regardless of actual ability to switch on their own?
In 2008 I can either see an embarassing U-turn which sees the government dates pushed back, or an embarassing fiasco in Wales, the south west, and the borders as these regions loose analogue TV whilst being totally unprepared for it - either way, the government is ultimately going to pay for the proposterousnous of jumping to the end game (having a region-by-region timetable in place) and seemingly intending to fill in the details of how they intend to achieve this later.
Will Tessa Jowell's grand phrases like 'the promise of digital television' (something I didn't think she could top in terms of meaningless yet impressive sounding phrases, until she spoke of digital offering a 'legacy of choice' in September) help her then when she's dealing with millions of pissed of people who can't watch Corrie or Eastenders on her watch? I think not.