BEING first with ground-breaking technology can be a painful and costly experience. Philips found that out after developing the first mass-market video recorders only to lose out to the Japanese. Britain has just learned the same lesson, this time with digital television. Last week, ITV Digital—Britain’s only digital TV service to broadcast from ground-based transmitters—was put in the hands of financial administrators.
Leaving aside questions about the company’s business acumen and the quality of its programmes, this raises big questions about how a nation should switch over to digital TV. Britain was the test bed for this changeover,…
