THE GOVERNMENT has now laid down its guidelines on control of the next TV revolution - that of digital television which promises to bring viewers hundreds of new channels, access to the Internet and all kinds of inter-active services, from armchair banking to shopping.

But has it done too much or too little?

That might, as yet, be an academic question for most viewers. But it is one that should concern them for the coming era of digital TV - now less than a year away - will be a magnet for their money.

And the fear is that it could become a monopolised one, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

For though the government has now decided that digital TV will be regulated by Oftel, with the telecommunications watchdog overseeing the price charged and how the channels are shared out among rival broadcasters, the actual control will belong to whoever controls the set-top boxes which give viewers access to the new digital TV channels.

It is over this that traditional broadcasters are concerned since Murdoch's Sky satellite service will be first into the market with its set-top boxes. And like the battle of the satellite dishes - the one lost by the BSB squarial - the upshot could be that the dominant access provider for digital TV is the Murdoch empire.

This is worrying, we think, for even with Oftel regulation, the digital TV service is unlikely to develop into a level-playing-field market if one of the major broadcasters, Sky, is the one controlling the set-top boxes through which other companies such as the BBC and ITV have access to the digital system. The market itself might be theoretically free and Oftel might be there to see fair play, but it will still be open to the influence of one single individual or company - particularly in setting the pricing pattern for viewers - because it holds the dominant technological key to it in the form of the set-top boxes.

For, after all, even if others follow Sky into the market with rival set-top boxes, the viewers who have already bought Sky's are unlikely to buy another that they do not need.

It is vital, then, at the outset that Oftel shows its teeth and determines who is the real controller of digital TV. That said, however, it must not so smother it with regulation that its development is held back.

Yet, one wonders whether it will be British viewers who take the reins. For they will be the ultimate deciders.

They have an in-built resistance to pay-TV as the somewhat slow take-up of subscription satellite TV has shown and they have an outright antipathy towards pay-per-view.

And observing the repeat-filled, junk-laden, an archive-trawling fare that struggles to grab the viewers' attention on multi-channel satellite TV at present, especially in the daytime, it does not seem certain that they will rush at once by the million to buy or rent set-top boxes that will give them access to more of the same by the hundredfold.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.