I'm voting yes 

Firstly because the internet requires a very long and thin thread of equipment all to be working properly, and it will be one of the first things to fail in any kind of disaster where you might really want to know what is going on. (imagine a recurrence of this now,  report into the Lancaster floods, and what broke when power went off)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Within an hour of the blackout, virtually all mobile phone coverage was lost. Landline services remained available, but most people had replaced the traditional handset with a modern, cordless model. Without electricity, these phones were useless, unable to connect to the network.

Internet connection quickly dropped too. And even in parts of the city were there was still a signal, there wasn’t any electricity to power routers or Wi-Fi hubs.

Without their go-to sources for news and information – TV, text, social media, internet and DAB radio – people didn’t know where to turn for updates. Old-style FM radio remained available, but few residents had a battery-powered radio that they could tune in with.

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It is also for the same reasons that the internet is very easy to monitor and track, or to block or intercept, either by the state or by more malicious actors. Folk wishing to hear news from abroad without  filtration perhaps in their own language, may enjoy shortwave radio.

It may be declining from its heydays, but it is far from dead !!

Mike

G7VZY

Your article does not state if "Over the air" TV  is (by definition) free to the person receiving the transmission!

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL 

I voted yes but maybe that's wishful thinking and rose-tinted nostalgia on my part (e.g. I'm an ex-BBC engineer and still have a level of fondness for the BBC in principle). Realistically I'm increasingly watching / listening to on-demand content these days - I know the programmes I want to watch and if they happen to be broadcast at a time that's convenient to me then fine, but if there's any conflict in times (however trivial) I'll watch them on demand instead.

I suspect neither of my (late 20s) children, both of whom are very media-savvy, ever watch / listen to broadcast media.

I recall someone predicting two or three decades ago that the then current round of TV transmitter upgrades would probably be the last - the theory being that as phone lines were replaced with optical fibre, there would be plenty of bandwidth available for TV broadcasts and BT (as it was then) would be able to offer broadcasters a distribution medium far cheaper than maintaining a lot of steel towers and high power transmitters (as I recall my local one, Emley Moor, was approaching 1GW).

It's probably not panned out quite as expected (fibre to individual premises has taken longer, and there's probably a lot more going down it than expected) but I can still see it going in that direction. I fully agree that we'll loose a lot of resilience, which isn't a good thing, but as with VHS vs betamax - the system/market doesn't always seem to pick the best technical solution.

   - Andy.

as I recall my local one, Emley Moor, was approaching 1GW).
In terms of overall power cost, the internet usually works out more expensive, its just that it is on the users electricity bills, and probably would be switched on even while they also watch TV or listen to the radio as well.
This is because the megawatt transmitter serves a lot of users!
  Emley Moor is designed to cover roughly 1,5 million households many of which have more than one person, but in reality has a wider peripheral coverage, perhaps up to 2 or 3 million - but for the internet each house  has a steady load of perhaps a ten watts or so for a Wifi router, and the telco has something similar at their end of the fibre or copper line, hence the monthly bills from them.(and lets not talk about the power supplies to mobile phone masts)

It is very much not free or low energy, just how it is paid for is quite different, and that makes it look low energy.
Mike.

It is very much not free or low energy, just how it is paid for is quite different

Very true. Although you might consider that if the consumer's internet devices are there anyway (for surfing, Alexa etc) then there's only a very modest increase in power for using it for TV as well.

    - Andy.

indeed - but ideally the network would go off when not in use, I know right now it doesn't but I can imagine as we become more aware of the fraction of our dwindling resources  devoted to moving binary representations of cute cats and so on that will be needed.

Mike

For the record here in the US we have an Emergency Alert System (EAS). It is a national warning system designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast warning emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via cable, satellite and broadcast television and AM, FM and satellite radio.

Also most US households own a battery powered weather band radio, which receives local storm, hurricane, lightening and tornado alerts/information.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Proof is in the facts. Only 37% of viewing of video content is now consumed in the UK from linear services and that is actually a combination of IP streaming and Broadcast, so the usage of Broadcast services is certainly more than a few percentage lower than that.

The trendline on the consumption data of linear goes to zero within 12 years (yes it is declining THAT quickly), although that would be factually incorrect to assume that as it will always be expected for linear consumption to exist for live events and for content discovery, however a bet is running amongst many in the industry as to where that asymptote for linear will actually lie. In reality that will depend very much on the popularity of Sports consumption, as the big stand out live event, in the country concerned. So in the US it may be close to 10% but in less sports centric countries it may be down to 2 to 3% of viewing hours. There is also the view that the decline will be quicker as the rate of change in viewing is accelerating down.

Earlier this year, OFCOM published its report about IP transition admitting very clearly that the big challenge for the industry regarding Broadcast is that it is approaching not being financially viable now and that will define the rapidity of the tipping point in the same way that the financial viability of transport fuel distribution will define the tipping point for electric vehicles. We await with interest the result of the work being done now on how TV Broadcasting will be sunset in the UK.

The power consumption of broadcast is a tricky subject - mainly because most determinations of energy usage ignores major components of the power consumption in receiving signals - like masthead amplifers (almost mandatory across many parts of the UK), the tuner power consumption (which is actually very significant) and the power consumption of STBs and hard disks for undertaking recording functionality. And this ignores the capital cost of maintaining a unique dedicated infrastructure for one service when the Internet can and does provide an infrastructure for ALL services.

Regardless however the driving factor is utility - and consumers have voted with their eyeballs.