Digital Television BY ANGIE SAMUEL What is Digital

Digital Television BY: ANGIE SAMUEL

What is Digital Television? This chapter discusses the rapid changes of digital television. Television broadcasting is when the pictures are transmitted as digital signals that are decoded by a device in or attached to the receiving television set.

Technology The most powerful agent of change in contemporary television journalism is technology. Since the late 1990’s television operations have been experimenting with technology to better manage thousands of hours of footage that stream every week. News managers saw affordable server technology (which could store huge amounts of moving pictures electronically) as an opportunity to improve journalism and cut costs.

How was the footage captured? In 1980’s , footage was shot on cameras using the beta tape format (which is the recording and cassette format of magnetic tape used for video) and physically retuned to the newsroom. Then footage is then edited ‘tape to tape’ requiring bulky and expensive editing equipment and the skills of a professional craft tape editor. The only problem was the cost of infrastructure was too much and the potential for tapes to go missing and massive bottlenecks to slow the production process were high. But server-based technology and desktop editing has changed all of this.

Server Based Technology Desktop systems meant that the craft editors could be used just for stories, features, special, and other things where their skills were the most useful. The problem with this was that the broadcasters saw the new technology as an opportunity to cut the headcount and with it the proportion of the budget spent on people rather than machinery. The introduction of server based technology meant that in the pre-digital age, any tape containing an item that had to go on air immediately was simply rushed into the newsroom, inserted into a player, and broadcasted right then and there. But today that tape would have to downloaded into a server before it could be transmitted. Only the latest machinery operated at anything faster than real time, meaning a thirty minute tape takes thirty minutes before it can be edited or broadcasted.

Server Based Technology continued… Server based technology offers the greatest promise. Major television news are able to store huge numbers of tapes which have to be physically tracked down by a librarian every time a particular image or story is required. The problem with this is the archive they manage is stored by a number of differen programs, including beta, u-matic and even film.

Incorporation of pictures The new technology brought back the idea of getting pictures back into the newsroom. From the late 1970 s television news companies relied on satellite transmission from overseas to ensure footage got to where it needed to be as quickly as possible. But now the broadcasters find that pictures can be sent from the field via laptop computer with less work being done.

Are we able to adapt? Peter Barron, editor of BBC’s newsnight said that what’s going on with the digital media industry is not unlike what happened in the music industry in the late 70’s. In those days making a multi-million record meant months in the recording studio. Then in the late 70’s technology came along and made it easier for almost anyone to make a record for half the money. Barron did say that it’s surprising to him how slowly big organizations adapt to change. Why is it that individuals in their private lives embrace change very readily though.

What is different today? What is different today is the pace if technological change.