New Technology TV

It's now secret that the United States has been slow to warm up to the idea of HDTV in some respects. After all, HDTV has been prevalent in Japan for years, and even Europe is rapidly warming up to it. This lack of response to HDTV from the American public has stemmed from a combination of ignorance about high definition television, and a fear that newer technologies like HDTV haven't been well enough proven to be worth investing in. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone given that HDTV hasn't been particularly well publicized until recently and the industry as well as retailers haven't been very good about educating the public. Canada has a different set of problems when it comes to making a switch to HDTV. One of the most major problems that's confronting Canada when it comes to high definition television is the fact that Canada still doesn't have a clear date for a switch over between analog TV and digital TV. This situation is further complicated by the fact that much of the TV viewing population lives so close to the border with the United States that when the United States makes the switch over to digital TV for broadcast television, it will effect many Canadian viewers.

There's also a dual problem with switching over to HDTV for Canada from the business end of the situation. In general, there's the consensus among the Canadian TV viewing populace that switching over to HDTV would be a good thing, but advertisers aren't willing to pay more to put advertisements in high definition programming. This could lead, in turn, to more Canadian TV stations relying on High Definition TV programming from the United States. While letting the United States create the HDTV programming that's shown in Canada might be an okay economic situation, there is also wide spread concern that too much American TV programming will water down the Canadian culture, and be destructive in that way.

Economics is another problem with TV in Canada. Right now there are only about thirteen million households in Canada that watch TV. This really isn't that many households to produce TV for in general when it's compared to the one hundred and ten million households in the United States that have TV sets and watch them with any regularity. (Actually there are more people subscribing to satellite TV provider Directv than there are people watching TV in Canada.) What these lower numbers mean is that there just isn't as large of a market in Canada for the production of programming in the more expensive HDTV format as there is in the United States. This, in turn translates into significantly lower advertising revenues from any given HDTV show produced for a Canadian audience than one would earn if it was produced for an American audience. Of course the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) is state funded so it will probably not have the same kinds of economic obstacles to converting to HDTV as the private TV producers.

In any case, the Canadian situation demonstrates how economics can sometimes limit technological development, and it may be that Canada will just have to rely on the United States for its HDTV programming for a while.