Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

Sixty years ago, Samuel Goldwyn, the movie mogul predicted that TV wouldn't last more than six months.

Despite dire predictions like this, a new survey suggests that TV is doing very well in Britain, even in the age of Web 3.0 and ubiquitous mobile digital gadgetry.

The survey reveals that 70 percent of Brits admit to feeling seriously upset when their favourite TV series come to an end. One in four Britons say they've started to think of their favourite characters as people they know.

The study also shows something of a British obsession with DVD box sets, with forty-nine percent of families apparently indulging in marathon, back-to-back viewing sessions.

Yet TV viewership, at least on commercial platforms, may well drop off when new proposals announced by the media regulator Ofcom are enforced by UK networks.

The proposed new rules, which come into force this week, will allow broadcasters to increase the maximum number of minutes of advertising per hour from the current seven minutes to twelve minutes. The rules will allow two six-minute ad breaks per hour.

The rules will be in place for a one year trial period, to gauge audience response. Ofcom insists that whether stations take up the proposals is a matter for their discretion.

However, given the current slump in TV advertising revenues, and growing competition from games manufacturers, it's highly unlikely that this offer won't be eagerly and hungrily snapped up. Unless there's a sustained outcry from disgruntled viewers, the measures will almost certainly become institutionalised.

Advertising, like work, always seems to expand to fill the space available.

There may indeed be a public outcry of sorts, but a more likely scenario is that these measures will simply drive TV viewers further into the world of the DVD box set.

Or, they will help to erode broadcast television viewership in the face of growing competition from webcast and mobile platforms and games such as Wii and Xbox.

On one level, the timing of these new rules - or the financial necessity for them - seems a shame for television as a broadcast medium.

Only certain genres of programming lend themselves to the type of long-run, episodic series that will fill a box set. One-off documentaries, for example, which already struggle to achieve a decent audience share, will find it hard to warrant anything but the smallest of production budgets.

On another level, it may simply force more producers to look at DVD as an end in itself. In the end, television programming may be seen merely as a way to promote DVDs, instead of the other way around. (In some cases, that may already be happening.)