So what’s all the fuss about? Well, 10 are launching a new HD channel. Big deal! Sure HD TV will give us DVD quality pictures and surround sound but who cares if the content is not up to scratch. I’d rather watch an entertaining clip on YouTube shot on a handycam than watch Lonesome Dove in high definition. As if channel 10 is going to run top quality first-run programming on TEN HD to the detriment of their golden child channel. What we will get on TEN HD is repeats from the analogue channel or new programming from the US that is deemed not good enough to run on analogue. Do you really think they are going to risk advertising revenue by giving consumers a real choice between their own two channels? I doubt it. The networks hate each other. They’re fierce competitors running rival networks. So won’t TEN HD be a competitor to its own analogue sister channel? Of course it is, so which is likely to suffer? Not the analogue channel, that’s for sure!

Look at ABC2 for example. It’s great to be able to watch a Chaser repeat (after it’s already been repeated once on the ABC) but how many times can I watch the same Montreux jazz festival over and over again? ABC2 doesn’t even register on the radar. And the ABC doesn’t care. So why does the 10 network think that TEN HD will work? I’m pretty sure they don’t. It’s just there for the sake of it because 7 launched their new HD channel in October and 9 in the near future. I will only get excited when they decide to do something revolutionary for free-to-air Australian TV like broadcasting the Beijing Olympics across two channels so you can see the swimming heats on 7 and the shooting on 77.

So why has it taken the networks this long to start using their constitutional rights to run a second channel? To tell you the truth I don’t know. Because they didn’t have to? Probably. It’s only commercial rivalry that got them off their bums. So ask yourself why you don’t own a digital set top box to receive digital TV. Probably because you have Foxtel, but more than likely because there hasn’t been a reason to. A standard definition set top box only gives you a minimally better picture and something called Dolby. Ok I concede. You do get a wide-screen picture, but that’s about it.

Why was the take-up of DVD technology the fastest in history (much quicker than TV 56 years ago) yet the take up of digital TV hasn’t. Because there’s nothing different about digital TV. Digital TV was meant to offer us choice and something called interactivity. Heaven help us when they switch off the analogue signal. Where’s the so called digital revolution? It‘s happening to my phone and computer, even my bloody fridge. Where’s the interactivity they promised us? Why do the US and UK have access to interactive TV? Aren’t we meant to be the country that’s having a love affair with TV? I thought by now I would be ordering a pizza through my TV by pressing the red button or visiting a website I saw on an ad by pressing blue. I remember seeing some fantastic examples of interactive ads from the UK at a Cannes Award luncheon five years ago. And these awards were something like the 10th annual interactive TV ad awards! The technology is that old. Nine gave it a go with sports-active a couple of years ago in the Friday night footy but dumped it for no apparent reason. Probably because Kerry thought it was shit or Eddie ‘boned’ the guy that was in charge of putting up the stats. More than likely they gave it a go just to say they had done it and stuff the consumer who liked it. At least Foxtel are getting it right with Sky News interactive, The Weather Channel, voting for the Astra Awards and various high key advertiser’s commercials but isn’t free-to-air TV meant to be better than pay? I mean Foxtel only makes up 10% of the TV audience. The rest are watching free-to-air. The best bit is that we advertisers are paying for this lazy attitude and inability to catch up with the rest of the developed world with our advertising budgets.

So would you consider advertising on TEN HD? The jury’s out but initial information suggests it is going to be the realm of long-form advertising. That means ten-minute long advertorials featuring Moira selling facial cream. Why’s that? Well, because it will be cheap. No one will be watching but it certainly will look great. But do keep watching this watch this space for more information and we’ll keep you informed as the medium develops.

So don’t believe the promos. It’s not a revolution in television. The future isn’t here. It’s just more of the same. If you want entertaining programming and don’t care about sound and quality, watch analogue free to air TV. If you crave interactivity watch an ad, enter the products URL into your web browser then surf their website. If you want to watch repeats or programs deemed not good enough for the networks’ primary channels in HD, go for it. Watch TEN HD. I dare you. Otherwise, forget it until they get their act together and take it seriously. And for now, ditto for your ad budget!

According to industry mag B&T, creative gurus are blaming cost pressures. They claim agencies are being screwed and clients won’t pay the price required for great creative which now manifests itself in shithouse ads.

This argument begs a couple of questions. Like what on earth is the ad industry doing submitting record numbers of entries of below standard work in the first place? Next, for how long can an ad agency get away with justifying its very existence producing mediocre creative in order to meet a client’s bargain basement criteria? Does this mean advertising creative is now just a commodity with bad, poor, average, good, better and best creative executions inexorably linked to the size of the fee?

There is a modicum of truth in the discount price argument. And here’s why.

Carefully sift through this year’s Caxton entries and I bet you’ll find most were from ‘pseudo agencies’. They’re the growing number of client in-house set-ups that have the temerity to call themselves an ‘advertising agency’. These guys are beginning to look like a regular agency simply because the regular agencies are sinking ever lower and producing increasingly inferior work.

But here’s the real rub. These pseudo agencies exist in the first place because of the ad industry’s own stupidity. Why, you ask? Well for starters we failed to properly invest in people to ensure our very creative future, and second, we just might have been a tad too greedy in years gone by. Little wonder clients have moved to do their own thing. Fortunately for very good ad people, the clients are doing it with clearly bad creative resources, the results of which are now becoming glaringly apparent at just about every type of industry award. To make matters worse still, after this year’s Caxton debacle, the real ad agencies have gone public and virtually admitted to compromising creative and reducing work standards based purely on the size of the available fee.

The really, really damming thing about all this is that truly great creative (that may well cost a few bucks more and easily pays for itself a hundred times over) is under genuine threat of becoming an endangered species.

The irony about these developments is that ultimately it’s the clients themselves who face the greatest dilemma. You see it’s not about how much further clients can screw agencies but more a case of who will there be left to screw? The very good creative people, the ones who can get a real advertising job in a real advertising agency and create work that generates millions in sales for equally astute clients, are already in very short supply. As for everyone else, maybe they should look to China where everything can be produced and sold for bugger-all.

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