Digital Switchover - you can't tell everyone!

How much would it cost to tell everyone a detailed message?

This question hit me when I realised that the hundreds of millions spent advertising the digital TVswitchover still hadn't got through properly to several people I know.

My media consumption is a little different to the average man or woman but, it seems to me sitting here in the West Midlands, that the digital switchover message has been inescapable.

It seems I'm wrong.

Just before the switchover my mother (okay she's getting on a bit) told me she didn't need to worry about the changes to Freeview because hers “is a new TV”!

Then just after the switchover my friend Helen told me that her DVD recorder had stopped working. She hadn't anticipated this, even though it's a very old machine and only recorded analogue channels. One of her friends was having a similar problem, she said.

She already had an HDTV, so I told her about the latest Humax digital PVR, and she bought one. Job done. (Even after buying and using it, she didn't know what "PVRs" were - which reminded me that many people don't recognise terms that have been around for years. I had no idea that PVR was just for geeks!)

But it got me thinking how much money it would take to tell everyone in the UK what was going to happen; what the consequences were and what they would need to do.

It's a well established fact that marketing messages have to be simple, focused, single-minded and repetitive.  There's no room to mention aerials, DVD recorders, or your old VCR.

I guess the switchover team decided to make enough noise to ensure that people would visit a website, call the helpline or talk to a relative.  At least when something stopped working they’d probably half-remember they’d seen an ad about it.

I think Digital UK set aside £200 million for marketing and it seems that success is measured by simply counting how many households can still receive television programmes on at least one set by the date of the switchover.

But how much would it cost to tell everyone everything they needed to know?  A billion?  More? Probably...

I don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t be worth it!