• by Erik Sass , December 15, 2006

Online video advocates that forecast the demise of "traditional" TV because of new services like YouTube and IPTV might want to look at Belgium. An entire country is in an uproar, due to a single broadcast by public television.

The furor over a fake news report claiming the country had been dissolved underscores the continuing popularity of broadcast TV, despite high penetration of disruptive technologies like video-on-demand, IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) and interactive digital TV (DTTV). It's also testimony to the medium's ability to engage viewers--at least when an alarming pretext is provided.

During the broadcast Wednesday evening, legitimate journalists announced that the northern portion of Belgium had seceded--backing up the story with interviews with real politicians, in a daring stroke of television verite that did Orson Welles one better.

By the end of the day, the country was in chaos, according to a report from The New York Times. Callers jammed the switchboard of the public television channel RTBF to find out if the broadcast--painstakingly crafted to look like a real breaking news story--was real. Belgian diplomats worldwide nervously phoned home to see if their jobs were in jeopardy.

The fake news report was especially plausible--and alarming--because Belgium is a multiethnic country straddling cultural and linguistic divides. The biggest division separates the Dutch-speaking north from the French-speaking south. Although the different parts have coexisted peacefully for most of modern history, in recent years, extreme separatist parties have gained popularity in the north.

An RTBF spokesman said the story was meant to be provocative, given the current political climate.

RTBF has come under fire for the broadcast, with politicians condemning it as "tasteless" and "irresponsible." But it leaves no doubt about the powerful reach of TV. The huge reaction is especially significant because of the growing popularity in Belgium of digital technologies, like video-on-demand, IPTV and DTTV, which some broadcasters fear spells doom for traditional TV broadcasts.

Europe has adopted both DTTV and IPTV technology at a much faster rate than the United States or Asia. Currently, Europe accounts for 55% of IPTV use, versus 20% for the U.S.

According to some forecasts, by 2010, Europe will have 16 million households signed up for IPTV, versus 11 million in America. And within Europe, Belgium leads the pack. Per IPTV provider Belgacom, it is delivering interactive IPTV to more than 100,000 subscribers out of a total household pool of about 4 million.

That's still a relatively small percentage of the country's total TV audience, of course. However, in September 2005, one of the country's leading broadband cable providers, Telenet, rolled out a VOD "open architecture" system to 1.6 million households, which allows viewers to watch programs and movies as they would a DVD.

In the same period, Belgacom began aggressively pushing VOD as well as DVR-type set-top boxes in July 2005. The percentage of households with VOD capabilities is thus over 50%, versus about 25% in the United States.

Still, broadcast TV has a powerful hold on the Belgian population. Of course, the inflammatory nature of the broadcast was perfectly designed to attract widespread attention. Both TV news and fake news enjoy a logical advantage in the broadcast medium, suffering less from consumer frustration with its fixed broadcast schedule.