CTVMA Review

  As governments rethink the future of broadcasting for an internet-first era—and the United Kingdom begins consulting on a strategic transition towards IPTV by 2034—a broader policy convergence is emerging. Platform governance—not spectrum management—is rapidly becoming the defining question for connected television, determining how public service media, commercial broadcasters and streaming services are discovered within increasingly algorithmic home screen ecosystems. The End of the Spectrum Era For much of the twentieth century, television policy centred on a relatively simple premise: governments regulated access to scarce broadcast spectrum. Licensing, ownership rules and electronic programme guides determined who could transmit content and how audiences found it. Today, however, the centre of gravity has shifted. As television becomes software delivered over internet-connected platforms, discovery is increasingly governed not by spectrum allocation but by operating systems, ...