Michael Starks 
Switching to Digital Television 
UK Public Policy and the Market

Between 2008 and 2012 the UK plans to turn off its conventional analogue terrestrial television and switch fully to digital TV. This is part of a trend across all the technologically advanced nations of the world. The city of Berlin led the way in 2003. The Netherlands became the first country to switch fully in 2006. Digital television was launched in the UK in 1998. Its growth has been dramatic and by no means smooth. The decision to switch fully is, at its heart, a political one: governments and regulators manage terrestrial spectrum and are ultimately responsible for switchover policy. Switching off the conventional analogue television signals to which consumers (and voters) have been accustomed for most of their lives poses a tricky political challenge. It cannot be accomplished by government diktat. Switching to Digital Television shows how, for success, public policy needs to work in conjunction with both competitive market forces and with organised broadcasting industry collaboration. Switching to Digital Television is an authoritative study of the policy of digital switchover. It is based primarily on UK experience but includes comparative studies spanning the United States, Japan and the leading countries of western Europe.

Über den Autor

Michael Starks has now retired. Before the switchover of analogue to digital television, he led the BBC’s feasibility study for digital television development and managed the UK Digital TV Project for the government in close collaboration with the industry and consumer stakeholders. He is the author of Switching to Digital Television (Intellect, 2007) and The Digital Television Revolution (Macmillan, 2013). He was the founding chairman of the Digital TV Group. He is currently a member of Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University. He has previously been an associate of Oxford University’s programme in comparative media law and policy, a research visitor at the University of Melbourne in Australia and a visiting fellow at the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster. He founded the International Journal of Digital Television in 2009 and edited its issues from 2010 to 2013.