The remote control and television's history of the present

Television’s present is a dangerous intersection of pasts and futures. While the global media economy is consolidating around the power of broadcasting businesses, unresolved industry and policy arguments reflect different understandings of television’s trajectory and its history. The recent fiftieth anniversary of television broadcasting in Australia provides an example: alongside the familiar tales of nation-building public services, pioneering broadcasters, and all-conquering networks, a number of alternative paths can be plotted through the last half century, tracking the gradual decline of broadcast television, the emergence of the viewer as a new social and cultural subject of television history, and the flow of innovation from mainstream broadcasting to the fringes of the audiovisual system. Together with these narratives of past and present, competing images of television’s future also shape commercial and policy debates. Broadcast television remains a remarkably inventive and adaptive medium, and it now looks to the Internet and telephony for models of interactivity, and to cinema and the DVD for advertising and home entertainment. Adaptation is vital for any evolving medium, but the transition to digital broadcasting has revealed new planes of cleavage across the industry.