These days, you don't hear much about radical plans to make public services work, crime rates fall or trains run on time. At the fag end of a disillusioning second term, ministers have twigged that the smack of firm government only upsets people and loses votes. Or have they? In an unlikely corner of the undergrowth, the Blair regime is inching its way towards a third-term project whose political perils could dwarf those posed by foundation hospitals or top-up fees. Voters may not want their health or education threatened; but what government would dare set about wrecking most of their TV sets?
This one, apparently.
Though more than half of British homes now enjoy digital TV reception, the rest don't. And even in homes that have supposedly gone digital, second and third sets continue to rely for the most part on the familiar analogue signal. The vast majority of the sets still being bought every day pick up only analogue. Yet under a plan the government is on the brink of adopting, analogue transmissions will be peremptorily abandoned - perhaps within the next three years, in some areas.
In one region after another, after a succession of ominous on-screen warnings, analogue viewers will discover one night that the BBC2 buttons on their sets summon up hissy nothingness. Six months later, BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and Five will also vanish from their lives, and the region's analogue TV sets will become useless junk, unless their owners buy new digital reception equipment. The intention is that the process should begin in 2007, with the last region losing analogue transmission in 2012, as engineers trundle around the country dismantling hundreds of transmitters.
As might be expected, it is unlikely that this scenario will be welcomed by everyone. A survey of 4,000 viewers for the Department of Trade and Industry found more than 70 per cent "angry" about switch-off and "suspicious" of the government's motives. Over three million householders said they would refuse to buy digital equipment, and half of these said they would maintain their defiance even if they had to give up TV completely.
For a while, such alarming sentiments stayed the hand of the focus-group-sensitive Blairites. Thus, in 1999, the government pledged that there would be no question of analogue switch-off until at least 95 per cent of the population had acquired digital equipment. The idea then was that nobody would lose analogue service until already provided not just with a cable or satellite subscription alternative, but also over-the-air digital transmissions, access to which would require only a once-and-for-all upfront outlay. Unfortunately, market and technical realities soon put paid to this comforting posture.
It became apparent that 95 per cent digital penetration would be unlikely to occur of its own accord before the 2020s, if ever. It also turned out that, in some areas, there is not enough bandwidth available to provide both the existing analogue service and an effective digital equivalent at the same time.
This means that, on whatever fateful night is selected in each region, analogue services will have to cease transmission at 2am so that engineers can reassign their frequencies to replacement digital services in time for breakfast TV. Only viewers who have the foresight to buy digital decoders while they are still using the analogue service will escape the catastrophe of waking up to a screenful of snow.
By the time these unwelcome facts had emerged, however, a switch-off bandwagon was already rolling. Digital-only television appeals to the tidy-minded, because it optimises use of resources. At present, we gobble up 46 ultra-high frequency (UHF) channels just transmitting the analogue versions of the five "steam" services. Each UHF channel can carry at least six digital services, compared with a single analogue service. So after switch-off, it will be possible to transmit many more services, while roughly 14 channels become none the less freed for other telecoms purposes. Auctioning these frequencies would create an asset worth a billion or two to the nation.
A consideration which seems to have weighed more heavily with some politicians, however, has been the prospect of techno-glory. Britain leads the world in digital television: no other country has so far matched our take-up. To be the first country to go wholly digital could perhaps give us something to boast about. Apparent triumph on this front might help disguise our failure in other, more important fields of techno-endeavour, such as broadband roll-out.
Not that politicians are really driving the switch-off project these days. From the outset, the Treasury refused to bear any of the costs that the changeover might necessitate. This has saved the taxpayer from bailing out impecunious digital "refuseniks" by providing them with free equipment, but it has also deprived the government of real control of the process. Ministers have had to resort to chivvying "stakeholders" (such as the industry's manufacturers, retailers, broadcasters and regulators) to push the policy forward. The chivvying has worked - all too well, in the eyes of switch-off critics.
Businessmen have sniffed a boost to trade comparable to that engendered by the switch from black-and-white to colour TV, with dispossessed analogue viewers opting (if grudgingly) for expensive, integrated sets that do not have to be accompanied by puzzling black boxes. Broadcasters have spotted that an all-digital world will enable them to unleash new attractions, such as extra channels, more interactivity and internet access.
The BBC has volunteered to do much of the spadework, calculating that such public-spiritedness will do it no harm in the charter renewal arena. Ofcom, the communications regulator, has decided it had better plan for a brave new all-digital world.
Under the wily oversight of the industry's self-styled "digital sheepdog", Barry Cox (no relation of this author), the only plan that could actually work has gradually gathered momentum. It may involve political costs, but politicians, supposedly committed to the agreed goal, have felt obliged to go along with it. So far, the two lead ministers - Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, and Patricia Hewitt, the Trade Secretary - have welcomed progress, though nowadays they talk nervously of "digital switch-over" rather than "analogue switch-off", in the hope of playing down the full horror of what is involved. They have yet, however, to commit the government irrevocably to the scheme.
There remain a number of loose ends. There are still technical wrinkles, worries about the availability of engineers and concerns about interference with Continental transmissions. Consultations with the commercial broadcasters could throw up niggles. But the moment is fast approaching when parliament will have to be told what is in prospect.
An announcement is expected early next year. If it materialises, the government will have a rational and courageous new policy ready to pop into the election manifesto that will by then be taking shape. Do not, however, expect to see the switch-off plan given too much prominence. Except, perhaps, in the Daily Mail, under the possible headline: "How Labour will trash your telly".
