Regulating TV becoming increasingly difficult

Because by then the most efficient way for TV and radio stations to get to their target markets will be down fibre optic lines into home servers.

Communicate with voters

And any Government with half a brain will want to do that because it's the only way they'll be able to communicate with voters efficiently. So, short of banning access to the Internet beyond the country's borders, there is no way an organisation such as ICASA will be able to regulate anything.

Not only will ICASA become largely irrelevant in terms of mass media broadcasting, but so will national broadcasters. Because there is no doubt that video-on-demand is the way of the future. TV viewers and radio listeners will decide what they want to watch and listen to when they want to do it.

Best content

They will simply go to where the best content is available. Where they will find the best news, the latest episode of their favourite soapie or movie and simply fetch it off the Internet without giving a hoot where they are getting it from let alone which country. And they'll do it at a time that suits them. No more rushing home in time to catch a favourite programme.

In exactly the same way as the average South African teenager downloads free music right now. They have no idea where it's coming from and frankly don't care.

Mass media will become nothing more than content providers – something many of them are already morphing into very successfully.

Global relevance

Content will be key to mass media success. But, it will also be extremely expensive if, like most of South Africa's local content on television , it can only be used in South Africa because of culture and language. Economically generated content will be content that can be marketed globally.

So, it was hardly surprising last week when Great Media technical director Malcolm Ramsay told Bizcommunity.com that ICASA would not stop Free2view from broadcasting in SA as it was not operating in SA, had no production, no office, no sales force in SA, just a signal that is incidentally receivable in SA.

Unfair

He quite rightly questioned how ICASA could allow pay SA pay TV operators to sell subscriptions in Africa and not allow African operators to sell into SA?

And if this situation isn't thorny enough when one is dealing with decoders and satellite dishes, it is going to become even thornier when everything is coming down a fibre optic cable.

Of course ICASA will continue to have a raison d'être and relevance in terms of keeping the terrestrial airwaves uncluttered but it will be increasingly frustrated if it tries to regulate the digital tsunami that is sweeping the globe.