2. The Digital Landscape

2.1. Broadcast Television

The long-heralded moment of media convergence is not with us yet. Instead the broadcast media scenario in the UK is characterised by fragmentation: of services, delivery systems, finance and audiences.

In the face of this fragmentation, the dominance of the 3 analogue terrestrial broadcasters, BBC (1 and 2), the Channel Three franchisees and Channel 4 holds up in terms of audience share: BBC 1 and the Channel Three companies combined taking approximately 30 percent each, and BBC2 and channel four taking approximately 10 percent each. Channel 5 achieves a 5 percent audience share. Aside from these, and Sky one channel at 1.5 percentage points of audience share, only Sky Premiere, Sky Sports and UK Gold approach a whole percentage point in audience share. The minority interest channels, such as they feature at all in audience share figures, achieve a percentage point share. (source: Independent Television Commission: Television Audience Share Figures: published Friday 29 October 1999). The audiences for Digital-only channels are too small to feature in the audience share figures.

The figures show that digital television channels are in an immature state in terms of audiences and programming. Meanwhile, confusion still reigns over delivery systems (terrestrial digital, satellite digital, cable digital). Convergence technologies such as interactive television and internet access through digital TV and cable delivery systems are struggling to develop within the regulatory, commercial and technological frameworks of the existing television industry. The BBC is fighting to maintain a foothold in this now fragmented sector with its bid for large additional resources for its digital and on-line services. There is no doubt that digital television will be widespread within 10 years after which analogue service are due to be "switched off" but it is unclear whether the traditional public service broadcasting institutions will continue to dominate in this new era.

However, in the short term, the promise of substantial "niche" market digital services in the future, means that the analogue terrestrial, public service broadcasters are leaving their remit to cater to "minority interests" behind. Even if they are diverting some resources at least to their own digital channels, a "minority" and non-commercial interest such as arts programming is left substantially weakened in the short and medium term. It is an open question whether, in the longer term, the fragmented broadcast market can sustain diverse and high-quality cultural programming.

In this muddled and speculative scenario, one can only identify trends and seek to establish a position accordingly.

There is a new balance of power in broadcasting. In the "old" world of broadcasting, distribution channels were scarce and the few, well financed broadcasters could pick, choose and create content. Broadcasting was highly professionalised, and their partners were often independent production companies, who we could perhaps call specialist content creators, making programmess to order on very substantial budgets and within parameters set down by the broadcasters. We are moving, albeit gradually, into a new scenario in which distribution channels are plentiful, budgets are spread thin, production costs are falling dramatically, and content is the scarce commodity.

All this is bringing new production practices in the television industry. A good example is "The Lounge" - a programme for the sky digital specialist channel .tv covering the "underground and overground" of digital creative work. The programme is produced by an offshoot of Illuminations Television (already a partner organisation with the Tate on the Turner Prize Broadcasts). 1 programme per week is repeated 3 or 4 times is being created by much smaller and less specialised production teams than the terrestrial television projects. The often document events taking place in the cultural arena to generate their content, at times even becoming partners with help-in-kind.

2.2. Networked Media

The fast development of networked media, in the meantime, can be discussed in this context as a further weakening of the broadcasters (and publishers) dominance of distribution channels. In a few short years, the internet has gone from being a text-only communication tool for military and scientific professionals and a geeks playground, to an audio-visual and interactive, trans-national, medium with around 150 million users worldwide, catering to specialist interests and general consumers alike. Recent figures suggest that 1 in 10 households in the UK have internet access, though 1 in 3 have a computer. These figures show that some caution is required in thinking about audiences. Access is patchy, often through the workplace, and dependent on a good level of technical know-how. Phone calls in the UK are still a signifcant cost, unlike the USA where free local call access enables a different pattern of internet use. Internet access via satellite digital television decoder boxes is possible, but is developing slowly and is likely to provide a "cut-down", less interactive version of the medium.

Nevertheless, networked media closes the gap between the content provider and the receiver, while also creating the possibility for open and dynamic interlinking of material. For the Tate, whose interest group comes from relatively wealthy and educated audiences and which is widely known outside Britain, the internet offers a significant opportunity.

Within the fluid environment of the net itself, the challenge has been to create published content that is also dynamic, responsive and up-to-date. This is not simply a design and marketing issue: it is fundamental to the process of developing audiences and patterns of use. For many organisations, commercial or cultural, the first generation of corporate websites have been simply marketing tools; a shop window, corporate brochure or on-line bulletin or catalogue at best.

The next step has been towards creating genuine resources that complement and extend corporate objectives. For commercial entities the "e-commerce" path is obvious and is beginning to take shape. Within education "distance learning" is an important principle and projects abound: their methodologies and tools, however, are still in development.

Meanwhile for cultural institutions, especially those involved with visual culture, such as the Tate, these steps are more complex. The opportunities involve the whole of the institutions' functions, a wide context, and have to involve every level of the organisation. At times the corporate culture has to be challenged on a fundamental level; striking at the heart of questions of authoritative voices, the accumulation of knowledge and the allocation of value, while a design and functionality is expected at the highest level. Arguably, building a constituency is not the same as targeting a market. The options for developing a significant on-line resource are varied and constantly evolving in terms of content, tools, and building communities of users.

Two recent developments in network technologies are worth particular mention in this context:

  • streaming media
  • database-driven web publishing (XML and various "content management" tools)
Streaming media is the transmission of audio or video content through the web. Its also sometimes known as webcasting. Unlike the moving image elements that are part of web-page design, which are usually fully downloaded to the users computer before they run, streaming media files are transferred between the server and the user's computer at the same time as being listened to or watched. Sound and video is played in near "real-time" in a way that is analogous to broadcasting. This allows for much longer sequences of video to be seen, and also allows for the possibility of the Internet equivalent of a live broadcast. Any audio or video material can be "encoded" into the appropriate digital format for streaming while being recorded onto tape. Any material that is live-streamed, however, is automatically stored as an "archived" encoded file which can be accessed later.
The implications and opportunities here are significant. Streaming media allows for the live and wide distribution of audio-visual material - which as hitherto only been the province of broadcasters. Hand in hand comes the accumulation of an archive which can be widely accessible at any time. And being part of the multi-media, interactive system that is the World Wide Web, that archive can potentially be linked from and to any resource in any other media.

How can these linkages be made to create a coherent and meaningful resource? In an ideal world, by an automated system of categorisation and tagging, so that new content becomes indicated in and accessible via other relevant web pages. Such automated systems of hyperlinked publishing (in any media) are being developed under a number of different banners: software developers making proprietary "content management tools" such as "Media Surface" or "Nexus", or by those making custom tools using open standards, heading towards a new generation of database-driven web publishing methods under the banner of "XML". A modest, pragmatic but successful example of this comes from inside the Tate with the publishing, using a simple custom-written program, of the current catalogue of the Tate collection on the Tate website. Were this to have an automated system of updating and links, a very powerful system indeed would be in the making.

For any organisation such as the Tate which has a core resource (its collection and archive) which is constantly added to and around (in the form of its activities), and which has a commitment to making that resource accessible, developing these processes represent very significant opportunities.


2.3. Published Platforms

Distributable media platforms, most notably CD-ROM, DVD (Digital Video Disk - a CD platform that can store many hours of video material), and to a lesser extent floppy disks, are objects that carry fixed digital information that can be printed, circulated, exchanged and sold. This can be contrasted to a distributed platform such as the web which is dynamic and instantly accessible. At the moment, more complex, fast and high-resolution multimedia material can be distributed more easily on these platforms than on the Web with its current restrictions on bandwidth.

Interactive media of the "point and click" variety, designed specifically for CD-ROM - the National Gallery/Microsoft Micro-Gallery is a good example - does not have the cumulative, linked and dynamic characteristics publishing on the web. It defines interactivity as simply a series of choices or possible pathways of enquiry through finite content. Its fixed nature makes it more akin to the closed authorship models of old media than then open and distributed models of networks. Production specifically for this medium is labour intensive, distribution networks weak, and sales usually low, especially as consumers have become accustomed to digital information being available for free on the web or on magazine cover-disks or other giveaways. The last three years have seen the demise of a number of companies set up to make bespoke multimedia content for CD-ROM.

Increasingly, instead, there is a convergence of methods used to create interactive media for CD-ROM and for the web. CD's are often used as simply an archiving or secondary transfer/distribution medium for other digital media. This trend will take further steps as DVD authoring becomes more widespread, meaning that the CD can become an effective distribution media for video too, and as bandwidth economies change, albeit slowly in Great Britain, with the development of technologies such as ADSL and DSL allowing faster connections through existing telephone and cable TV connections.

CD-ROM and DVD are excellent vehicles for distributing content made for the web or for video in forms that are relatively cheap and accessible. Thes can be useful for contexts that can benefit from an off-line, re-usable resource: schools, libraries, or other museums for instance. One can envisage catering for such needs with a mixture of small-scale publishing complementing paper publications, and custom pressings-on-demand.


2.4. Convergence areas

There are many new relationships being formed between new medias and, most interestingly perhaps, between old and new media. For now, all of these are exploratory steps: it is impossible to generalise and yet their implications are highly significant. This section, then, is probably best served by a series of examples drawn from a deliberately eclectic range of cultural sectors:


  • The BBC website houses a huge amount of audio, video and text material, archived from their news broadcasts. The news site is fully searchable. A search for Tate Gallery, for example, links to archived news items on the Turner Prize available as text transcripts, still images and video.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/
  • The Exploratorium in San Francisco has an ongoing programme of live audio and video webcasts from their live events, and a searchable archive of those webcasts.
    http://www.exploratorium.edu/
  • The Museum of Modern Art in New York manages an extensive website. It includes: an interactive version of a children's learning package originally produced in print ("Artsafari"), Audio and text archives of a series of lectures "conversations with contemporary artists", selected highlights from its archives and collections, a full version of the collections and archive databases, and thorough web presence for its current exhibitions including supporting texts and images.
    http://moma.org
  • The Expo-Destructo "on-line documentary" consists of a video archive of interviews web cast live during the "expo-destructo: Post Media Flea Market" event in March 1999. As well as a document of the day, it provides an overview of many of the individuals who make up the DIY media culture scene in Europe and beyond.
    http://bak.spc.org/radio/expo/interviews/
  • Radio 90 is an FM, on-air radio station, run from the Banff centre for the Arts. However, its programme is made up from webcasts from artists and independent groups from around the world. An automated scheduler creates a programme, finds the stream and brings it into the radio studio. The station and the scheduler was built by artist Heath Bunting.
    http://www.irational.org/hotdesk
  • The BBC is developing digital television services, aimed at education and trying to complement these with web-based links and learning materials.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/knowledge/home/index.shtml
  • eBC - everything Broadcasting Corporation - was a series of webcasts from the ICA in Spring 1998 in which artists were invited to make either video recordings or live shows specifically for the webcast. The evening shows made busy live events as well as being accessible on the web. everything is an artist-run magazine and the group also manages a series of web commissions.
    http://bak.spc.org/everything/
  • Oven Digital, a New York based commercial internet design company, who also collaborate with MoMA NY, developed a website for a three day music festival. During the event, the material was streamed live. Now that the event is over, the site houses archived video clips of live performances and interviews.
    http://www.digitalclubfest.com/
  • .tv is a Sky Television channel that is the UK's "only TV channel devoted to new technologies and digital culture". As well as broadcasting 12 hours per day on digital television and three hours per day in analogue, it claims a 24 hour presence on the internet. Much of the television content is repeated throughout the schedule, and in the meantime the website consists of additional news content, on-line chat and email forums.
    http://www.tvchannel.co.uk/
  • ova is an open access video archive made by a group of artists, facilitated by the large media art institution, ZKM in Germany. It is a development of a successful audio project - orang - initiated by an independent artists' group. Video makers are free to contribute their work to the archive (uploaded via the net). Viewers can log in, search by author, subject, place of origination and construct their own "playlist" or schedule. The video version of the archive is in testing stage:
    http://ova.zkm.de/.
    The audio version is up and running at:
    http://orang.orang.org
  • Protein TV is a London-based "channel" for distributing artists video, especially digital video, on the net. With a strong graphic design emphasis, each month it programmes a new "pod": a set of encoded streaming video files which can be accessed over the internet.
    http://www.protein.co.uk/
  • Next Five Minutes is an occasional 3-day gathering of people working on the edges between media, political activism and art. At the most recent event (March 1999), the conference sessions and additional interviews were broadcast live, simultaneously on local radio, local cable TV and the internet. All the video from three events is now archived and available via the internet.
    http://www.n5m.org/
  • Lineone is a typical example of a "portal" site: an internet service that is both a gateway to the whole of the internet, but also a content provider in its own right. It supplies news, technology reviews, links to games, links to MP3 music archives, a search engine. LineOne is an initiative of United News Media (United News Media) which includes the Express Newspaper Group and three ITV Television Franchises. It has recently been announced (26 November 1999) that UNM will merge with Carlton, which also owns three ITV franchises, digital and video production facilities and half of ONdigital, the terrestial digital television service. Commentators have noted that this conglomeration bring unprecedented power in cross-media advertising, promotion and content use.
    http://www.lineone.net
  • It was recently reported in the Financial Times (6 November 1999) that the BBC has signed a deal with an internet music provider, Multimedia Archive and Retrieval Systems. The objective is for producers and researchers to be able to access music on-line rather than utilise the BBC's own huge but un-digitised libraries, bringing a saving estimated at 9 million pounds per year.
    http://www.ft.com

2.5. Conclusion

In the transition from a media landscape of spectrum scarcity to one of content drought, amid the growth of self-distribution through electronic networks, three principles stand out as key areas for a cultural institution with a building-based programme, core collections with significant related resources and a commitment to access:

  • documentation
  • archiving
  • cross-referencing

These are activities with which the Tate is perfectly familiar, though mostly to date in analogue forms. However, with the addition of the two principles that apply specifically to digital media which are powerfully illustrated by the examples in convergence areas:

  • re-use
  • repurposing

A framework for uniting the internal functions of the museum with its outward-focussed activities in access, education and the provision of a major resource, emerges.

How these principles could be activated at the Tate will be explored in the next sections.


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