We see interactive television as a way of making such tailored television content available to audiences throughout Australia. As you will see in the demonstration, you could watch the Gippsland news at home in Sale, or when you were on holidays on the Gold Coast. The ABC has already begun to equip each of our 47 regional broadcast centres with digital cameras. This will make it possible to capture the vision as well as the sound of stories as our broadcasters move around their communities. This feature of interactive television is vitally important to enhancing a sense of the local in the increasing global media environment.
Interactive television is also an important trigger for creativity.
If we are able to develop new services, drawn from local and regional content and delivered by free interactive television to households all around Australia, we will be providing an unprecedented incubator for creative talent all around Australia. Programs produced in local and regional areas will be able to find local audiences and showcase opportunities for national audiences. Inevitably, the most successful will migrate to platforms where they are available to larger audiences. Interactive television could provide the platform for decades of regional creativity in Australia. Interactive television is a hybrid medium.