Technological eruption is imminent, warns Currie

The chairman of media regulator Ofcom has likened the technological challenges faced by traditional broadcasters to "standing about the equivalent of one mile from Mount St Helen" and warned them that when it blows "it will be too late to run".

Lord Currie said that broadcasters were not taking the seismic changes in technology provoked by the emergence of digital television, personal video recorders, broadband and on-demand viewing seriously enough.

"The rapid growth of first multi-channel, then digital, then PVRs and soon higher-speed broadband are simply the pre-tremors of the real volcanic eruption that technology is about to unleash," he said in his Royal Television Society Fleming Memorial Lecture last night.

"At the risk of being over dramatic I would say that most traditional television broadcasters are today standing about the equivalent of one mile from Mount St Helen. When it blows, frankly, that will be too close and it will be too late to run," he warned.

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