Dyke questions switchover motives

Former BBC Director-General Greg Dyke has admitted to questioning the apparent necessity for analogue shutdown.

During his time at the corporation, Dyke was an active supporter of switchover and one of the founders of Freeview but was recently forced to rethink his beliefs after buying his mother a new television set.

"I expected her to be pleased and excited. Sadly, she was no such thing. When it arrived my mother burst into tears because she didn't want that much change in her life," Dyke wrote in a piece for The Independent.

"Now, if that's how she reacted to the arrival of a new television set and having to learn how to use a new remote control, how is she possibly going to cope with digital switchover? Who is going to convince her and thousands of old people like her that, in the interests of greater viewing choice (choice that she has made very clear to me she doesn't want), her viewing life will be totally disrupted?"

Dyke's comments come days after a definitive timetable for the shutdown process was outlined by culture secretary Tessa Jowell in a keynote address at the Cambridge Convention.

"I scoured Tessa's speech for an explanation," he continued. "I discovered that there was an economic reason - the old analogue spectrum could be sold she reckoned, for between £1 and £2 billion.

"But according to Tessa the decision wasn't really about money at all; it was about better quality television and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone to have more choice. But what if, like my mum, you don't want more choice? No doubt Ms Jowell has ways of making her want it - after all, that's what New Labour is all about, forcing market choice upon those who don't necessarily want it."

Sky CEO James Murdoch has also poured scorn upon the plans, labelling switchover an unfair "ultimatum".