The next time you stop into your local drug store or newsagent to collect your favorite magazine just think of this. The choices available are incredible. The content in some of the specialty titles is duplicated by numerous alternatives in the same market. And mostly they survive.

It’s much the same with digital TV channels – except viewers don’t yet get the sort of targeted choice that print delivers. Some might justifiably argue that online choices extend the sort of variety supplied by the news vendor. Maybe.

Until Web-based suppliers of the cat, canary and caravan channel can get their programming onto my TV set, the chances of their “broadcasting” survival is dubious.

And that programming, whatever form it takes, has to be delivered in pristine digital high-def. Viewers show every indication of accepting nothing less. The US, helped by cable and satellite distribution, already offers ample multichannel choice – even if cable is only just beginning to offer true digital delivery to the consumer.

Europe is catching up

Recent data from Screen Digest indicates that Europe is getting the digital bug. It suggests that by 2012, digital multi-channels (beamed by digital terrestrial TV as well as satellite and cable) will be absorbing 20 percent of the national TV ad-spend in Europe’s top five markets (Germany, UK, Italy, France and Spain). The other markets are by no means far behind. Moreover, Screen Digest says, ad revenues will come second to pay-TV revenues. The tipping point happens next year.

The mass-market distribution of multi-channel TV will be perfectly placed to tap into this audience with true multi-channel niche choices that begin to resemble the newsstand.

This is already happening to a certain extent in markets like the UK, France and Italy where channel choices are already pushing at the 1,000 threshold. In my view this number will keep growing.

But where does this leave HDTV? After all, high-def demands commensurate investment, quality production standards and matching budgets. Usually. However, it seems that we are on the threshold of a production revolution where low-cost “prosumer” cameras (production + consumer), edit systems and post-production tools will permit – and encourage – a new breed of lower-cost program making.

Niche broadcasters and channels

The entry of new players into the market should be perfectly well timed to tap into a growing demand from niche broadcasters. Indeed, viewers to high-quality channels like Discovery or the History Channel are already seeing locally produced HD programming that is budgeted at levels that would have been unthinkable just five years ago – and helped by exactly these new developments in program making. Go to India or most Middle East countries and the cost per hour of quality TV is one-tenth of that in the West.

However, creating these niche channels in HD will not be a pushover. Europe today has 78 HDTV channels spread over the region – including Russia.

In 2007 there was modest growth in terms of HD channels; they doubled from 37 at the end of 2006. Many are duplicates across territories (Discovery being a good example). Sixty-two of these channels are available on satellite, 43 on cable and just 13 on IPTV. Only two are available on DTT. Looking at the cake overall, 30 of the total are on premium pay-TV, while 29 are on “basic” pay-TV. There is a growing number on free-to-air (19 at the moment), but this number is growing fast.

Let’s slice and dice the genres. The usual suspects: sports, movies and documentaries dominate the list, and take up about 65 percent of the total. Last year saw a large number of “non-specialty” channels enter the HD lists (Channel 4, M6, Arte, TV4-Sweden), with the first all-HD kids channel (from Disney) on air in France. Screen Digest says that 2008 will see “a surge” in HD launches, and suggests the year will end with about 75 new HD channels on air – growing nicely to a Europe-wide number of about 260 pay-TV high-def channels by 2012, and another 100 or so in free-to-air.

Huge market for HD channels

That’s a spectacular set of numbers. Incidentally, for the obvious reasons related to bandwidth, the forecasts talk of satellite taking about 75 percent of these options – in pay-TV as well as free-to-air. The market for this explosion will exist, stresses Screen Digest. By 2012 France will have some 45 percent of homeowners also owning HD equipment (in the shape of suitable TV sets). The UK will have 30 percent penetration (although some others suspect this number could be higher), with about 28 percent flat-panel penetration in Italy, and the Nordic region. The Benelux countries will be a little more advanced with 34 percent, while Germany will lag behind at barely 15 percent. However some sources suggest that this is a pessimistic figure. Western Europe overall will hit 25 percent average penetration of HD Ready flat panels by 2012 and Eastern Europe about 8 percent.

Today’s European HDTV choices

 

Genre	No. of Channels
Kids	1
Documentaries	17
Entertainment	8
Specialty	5
Movies	13
Music	2
National	13
Premium	6
Sports	13
TOTAL	78

Note: "National" includes channels like TF1-H, or BBC HD. "Premium" refers to channels like Canal+.

It may be better to look at these market developments the way we may have initially looked at a region’s prospects for pay-TV. It wasn’t that long ago that Europe’s first pay-TV choices were measured on the fingers of one hand – then two hands, and onward to today’s 1,000 or so choices in a mix of pay and free.

Early analog TV started its road to success with the same key programming choices: sports, movies and documentaries. Today’s HDTV pioneers are much more varied in their offerings to viewers who are much more savvy about their programming options.

Screen Digest says we should expect Europe to follow America’s recent developments in HD quickly, and to expect animation, kids, MTV, CNN, Sci-Fi and the other trusted brands to pop up in HD over the next year or two.

These key entrants will kick-start high-def launches in the other important genres, and we should also expect 2008 to be the year when some locally-generated HD channels start appearing. It was just three years ago that Europe’s first brave HD channel started transmission (Euro 1080). From Zero to Hero – and 350-360 high-def channels by 2012 – is a remarkable growth story. And it is just the beginning.

London-based Chris Forrester is a technology journalist who manages the Web-based publication, Rapid TV News.