The director of the BBC insists the future of British TV is on the Internet - and he plans to eventually transition all BBC television stations to web-based only. That's a pretty radical idea - completely eliminate all HD over-the-air signals in favour of receiving them solely over the net. 

According to director-general Tim Davie:

“For the BBC, internet-only distribution is an opportunity to connect more deeply with our audiences and to provide them with better services and choice than broadcast allows.

It provides significant editorial opportunities. A switch off of broadcast will and should happen over time, and we should be active in planning for it.”

While I understand the idea and that many already get most of their video off the web, I admit to having some reservations about it. 

For one thing, not everyone has access to a decent speed connection, especially in some of the far-flung areas across Canada. And that would be a problem for video. 

I'm sure there are very few, but some don't even have or want web access (including older seniors, the most likely to be "uncomfortable" with anything to do with computers.) I speak from experience. My sister is in her 70s and seems terrified of anything to do with PCs. She has a smart phone, but she uses it as just a phone. If I want to email her, I have to send it to her son, who delivers the message. She doesn't even have an email address.

But the biggest problem, to me, is that if your connection goes down - and it does happen, as evidenced by the lengthy Rogers outage earlier this year - you not only lose your web access and your phone service, but also your TV. In the event of an emergency, television provides an information lifeline. But if you can't get it, that goes away. 

And then there's the question of whether Rogers or Bell would raise their prices, knowing you have no other way to get any TV at all. Not to mention the possibility of hackers disrupting what you can see 

How do you feel about the BBC honcho's idea? Would you want to see over-the-air broadcasting come to a halt one day? Or does it not matter to you, since you never watch anything OTA? I, for one, would miss regular broadcast television. But we survived the transition from analogue to digital and we could probably manage this, too. 

One last thing - the BBC guy admits none of this is likely to happen until well into the 2030s or beyond. I just like the option of having that over-the-air choice. And I wouldn't want to see it disappear anytime soon, although I fear it may one day be inevitable. 

BBC plans to close broadcast TV channels and move to internet-only programmes, director-general says