[opendtv] Re: Australia DTV

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

[Aussie subscription to multichannel services]

From a household perspective this equates to 23.6% penetration



By mid 2006, penetration of digital TVs (digital receivers or digital
integrated TVs) stood at only 20% of Australian households



When DTV was authorized, Foxtel et al lobbied successfully to prohibit
multicasting. In this respect Australia is not much different than the
U.S. - i.e. techno-politics has the upper hand over market-based
competition. One can only imagine what the DTV penetration would
be in Australia now, had multicasting been permitted.
Seems to me that subscription TV services in Australia have something to learn about lobbying/marketing/promotion from their US counterparts.
The way I would have said it, Craig, is, "One can only imagine what the DTT penetration would be in the US now, if OTA usership were at greater than 75 percent, given that multicasting has always been allowed here." (Although with the mandate, I don't think a 30 percent penetration will be too hard to come by in short order. I know, "not fair.")
I don't know for sure, but my guess is that we haven't seen 75 percent household usage of OTA TV since the early to mid 1980s. That's when TVs started being sold set to cable channels by default, over here. 


Hope this is what you were looking for Bert.
Not really. What I was interested in learning from Dale is what the popular thinking on subscription TV is in Oz. Over here, it seems to be the way you describe it for yourself. "No other choice." Evidently, without a greater choice of OTA channels there than OTA TV in the US, the popular perceptions are completely different down under. Why ithat is would be an interesting topic. And since this has nothing to do with digital TV per se, perhaps we could dispense with the simplistic "explanations." 

Bert

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