Our 1965 tv predictions
This Page was originally included here as a part of my contribution to a thread on one of the Acorn Computer newsgroups.
In 1965 the British Computer Society set up a study group to consider the effect that computers were likely to have on the future of television. I was a member of the Study Group.
Try to imagine 1965. No PCs, no colour tv, no video recorders, no remote controls, no active communications satellites, stereo sound on radio just beginning; tv broadcasting about 15 hours a day, most people had 1 BBC and 1 ITV channel.
So this is what we came up with:
By 1995
1 Everyone would have a colour tv with stereo sound
2 Broadcasting would be 24/7
3 Everyone would have access to 50+ channels
4 You could receive tv from all over the world
5 There would be separate channels for news, sport, children, films, documentaries etc
6 Except for news and sport all programs would be recorded
7 Everyone could record their own programmes off the air
8 Broadcasting schedules would be based upon the assumption that, except for news and sport, you would record the programme to watch it when you wanted to do so not at the time it was broadcast
By 1995 I think 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 had been achieved. Many people think Sky are planning to try to stop 7 - the technology is already built in.
In our prediction we were thinking of receiving, say, Australian tv programmes directly, not watching a Australian test match being broadcast on British tv. 4 is now becoming possible by video streaming on the Internet but not through your tv, but was not in 1995.
The latest Satellite and Cable tv boxes with integrated HD recorders come somewhere close to allowing individuals to write their own tv viewing schedules, but were not available in 1995. But the film channels, where a film is broadcast several times a day, and “1 hour + ” channels running the same programmes an hour later are exactly the opposite of what we had predicted.
Most people do not use video or DVD recorders for time-shifting programmes to watch later on a regular basis: in the late 1980s a survey showed that (if I recall correctly) more than 80% of adults who owned a video recorder had never used the timer function. I asked a class of nine year olds and they were certain this was true: if their Dads wanted the timer set they asked them to do it!
We had not predicted Pay to View or Subscription Channels. I think this is why we were wrong about 8. As long as broadcasting is paid for by licence fees or by advertising 8 makes a lot of sense because the broadcaster does not lose revenue if you record the programme in order to watch it later. But this may not always be the case with Subscription or Pay to View tv. (The latest set-top boxes allow you to freeze-frame and fast-forward live tv, so allowing you to skip the advertisements, and this may affect advertising revenue in the long term. But this is a different matter.)
On the whole, not bad.
On another Page you can find out we gave up owning a car.... thirty five years ago!
26th August 2009
