Welcome to Switched On, your whistle-stop tour around the big news stories breaking in digital communications this month. Forward this email to a friend

Partners of parasites? We'll begin this month with a broadside from a distinguished member of the old media fraternity, aimed squarely at the new media arrivistes. Michael Grade, chairman of ITV, speaking at the IBC conference in Amsterdam defended the commercial broadcaster's position in the UK production value chain. "Google and YouTube are just parasites," said Grade. "The day they start spending one billion pounds a year on content is the day I'll start worrying." Good strong stuff, articulating a widely held belief that many new media business models are dependent on other people's, expensively produced content. Other messages from an on-form Grade included that broadcast TV is the 'shop window' for top-quality content, and that HDTV was now hugely important to ITV. "But mobile will have to wait. It's clunky, it's slow and 3G streaming seems usually not to work."

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Things you need So, from one technology that doesn't yet seem to work quite as the industry or consumers want, to one that certainly does. According to a survey commissioned by NDS more than 70 per cent of digital video recorder (DVR) owners say that they cannot live without their DVR. According to the survey, which asked respondents to rank relative importance of a list of household appliances, apart from the washing machine and the microwave oven, no other household item was deemed more essential than the DVR in today's homes. And when it comes to essential technology gadgets, the DVR is second only to the mobile phone as the item consumers can't live without. The vast majority of respondents would rather give up their landline phone, dishwasher, radio and MP3 player than their DVR. And its wonders don't stop there: more than three quarters of DVR owners with families in the US, Italy and Australia also feel that having a DVR has improved their family relationships, eliminating arguments over TV and allowing for the whole family to join the dinner table. In Britain, the figure was around two-thirds. The survey showcases the lowly DVR as a technology that works and allows people to change their behaviour.

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Things you want 'Content is king' is a refrain that is bandied around aplenty these days as people try and understand what is driving the media consumption habits of consumers. Very often in the UK when people talk about premium content, they mean one thing only: live premiership football. As such it's no great surprise that BT Vision is considering entering the bidding to secure the rights to screen live Premiership football matches when they are auctioned next year. It is likely to face stiff competition from BSkyB and Irish broadcaster Setanta, while Disney-owned ESPN is also thought to be considering a bid. BT Vision chief Dan Marks said bidding was "an interesting idea", but admitted it would be difficult to trump Sky. The last sale, covering the three seasons to 2009-2010, raised £1.7bn, 66 per cent more than in 2003. Expect Ofcom to intervene here and set some sort of wholesale price for premium (football) content.

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Still a pipe dream? And on the subject of large sums of money, the £1.7 billion Sky paid for the premiership rights looks like small beer compared to some of the figures reported by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) this month, who warned that the cost of connecting Britain to super-fast broadband could be between £5.1 billion and £28.8 billion dependant on the solution (to the street level or to the home). Furthermore the expense of installing optical fibre networks to rural areas could see them miss out due to the lack of coverage by major companies such as BT and Virgin Media. BSG CEO Antony Walker commented, "If rural areas are to be served in a reasonable timeframe, thinking needs to start now about creative solutions for making them more attractive to investment." This last remark is interesting in the context of what Anna Bradley of the Ofcom Consumer Panel who has been saying for some time that the "worst should be first" in any next generation access roll out. Questions about the digital divide look here to stay for some time yet.

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It can be done And finally, from black spots to Blyk stats. Convergence, often mentioned in these pastures, places a premium on new and innovative business models. Many of these new models do fail and are increasingly likely to do so in today's challenging economic environment. However, this month Reuters has reported on the success of the advertising-supported mobile network whose membership has doubled since April 2008 to reach 200,000. Blyk, based in Finland, and launched in the UK in 2007, offers a number of free text messages and call minutes to 16 to 24 year olds in return for agreeing to receive up to six advertising messages daily. According to the article 25 per cent of those who receive adverts respond to them, at a cost to advertisers of 50p per reply. This is certainly one way to go.

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