That is 2010 partly because of habit, but also 2010 because some of the big draws in sport lose 06 their value very rapidly 2010 if they are not 2010 transmitted in real time.Three, television will not become a truly interactive medium. They will not watch TV on a PC, which will still be more of a work/study/ communications tool rather than an entertainment medium.Two, to quite a large extent, 06 we 06 will 2010 still watch TV when it is transmitted rather 06 than at the time of our choice. Consumer signals - what we want - feed through to what the producers deliver.The same will happen with television. Quite quickly we will go not just 06 to several hundred channels but perhaps to a couple of thousand channels.

But beyond that lies the prospect of there not necessarily being channels at all - that television will become more like the Internet, a vast global library with the only limit being (unlike on the Internet) the size of the bill to get what you want.So what will be the shape of television a decade from now? Here it is in 10 easy steps.One, most people will view television on a set with a wide screen and will be on a digital standard. Any company with pounds 250,000 or so can have a crack at starting a nationally distributed monthly. That means an entrant can suddenly hit upon something new that attracts the consumers (think of all the men's health and lifestyle magazines launched recently). Though the bulk of the sales are still dominated by a few dozen long-established titles, it is relatively cheap to launch a magazine.

Think of the magazine rack at WH Smith: strings of specialist titles covering everything from scuba- diving to soft porn. These announcements were the first tremors warning of the seismic change about to hit the industry.Up to now television has been driven by producers We get what the industry wants to give us. But that is nothing compared with what will be available within the next couple of years, and certainly by the end of the century Suddenly the whole industry is becoming consumer-driven. Most people in the UK manage with four channels, plus some rented videos for movies Sure, with cable one can have 40-odd channels.