My vision of the future for British television

We spend more on buying television programmes from abroad than we earn in exporting them

If we are so good at making TV programmes, why don't we sell more to the rest of the world? As any Briton who has travelled much in the US will testify, wherever you go people will tell you about the wonderful Pride and Prejudice on public broadcasting or that they listen to the BBC World Service every morning on the Net to find out what has happened. Elsewhere in the world there are many places where the World Service is the most trusted source of information.

This is an astounding achievement, a testimony to the talent, independence and intellectual honesty of the people who work in our television and radio industries. Trouble is, as a country, we don't make much money out of it – we spend more on buying TV programmes from abroad than we earn in exporting them. Arguably even more serious, we could be achieving so much more impact if we had the right structure to do so.

What's up? The answer is that we have had 45 years of TV regulation that may or may not have given us the television we want but has also made it impossible for British broadcasting companies to achieve sufficient mass to compete on the world stage. Only one company, the BBC, is big enough to be a serious potential global player. But its state ownership, guaranteed fee income from a poll tax, and competing objectives prevent it from competing abroad. The rest of the conventional TV companies are fragmented. And the most successful "British" TV company of all, the satellite station Sky, is not British at all. We have no broadcasting equivalent to, say, BP or (a slightly less happy example) Vodafone, because our regulation has stopped those companies being created.

Instead we have a few medium-sized television firms, with managements that are, in general, pretty feather-bedded and self-indulgent. These have at best a lack-lustre record and at worse have created commercial catastrophes such as the collapse of ITV Digital.

Yesterday, the Government presented its shot at reforming the British television and radio industries – an event billed as the most important for broadcasting since the formation of ITV – the old framework for terrestrial broadcasting that has been such a failure. It would be lovely to think that it might create an environment for British companies to be more successful in the new digital age than they were in the old terrestrial one. Will it?

Well, it is at first sight not a bad shot. If the central problem of the old system was that there was too much control over ownership and arguably not enough over content, the new one looks like correcting the first element of that.

But beware. Beware because of the usual rule with this Government that what it appears to be saying is very often the opposite of what it is actually doing. And more concrete, beware because for all the promises, it is seeking to regulate the TV world as it is now or in the very near future, rather than the one that may exist in 10 or 20 years' time.

So try to imagine what the global TV market will look like in 10 years' time and then ask whether this set of regulations is likely to help British firms get a larger share of it. Most predictions about the future of TV focus on technology and technology is certainly transforming the number of products available and will transform the ways in which it can be delivered. But what really matters is the market: what do people around the world want to watch? Here are 10 propositions about that market.

One: the English language will be even more important a decade from now than it is today. So television firms with an English language base will have a chance to be global broadcasters rather in the way the giant oil companies and pharmaceutical firms are global players.

Two: there will still be cultural barriers in the television market, akin to that of the newspaper and magazine markets and unlike the film and popular music markets. So people will not in general watch the same programmes in each country, whereas they do increasingly watch the same films or listen to the same pop music. The clever companies will be those that can create networks of programmes of a similar "feel" or formula, rather than trying to show exactly the same programmes everywhere.

Three: though there will be a boom in specialist TV programmes most people in each country will still spend most of their time watching half-a-dozen or so channels. In that sense, mainstream television will be more like newspapers (where there are national papers like this one) and less like magazines (where there are no general interest national magazines at all).

Four: people will however, watch the same programmes at different times. With the exception of sport, television-watching will be done at the time chosen by the viewer, rather than the time chosen by the TV company. Companies will not be able to compete by clever scheduling; they will have to compete by quality of content.

Five: the time spent watching TV will in general decline, with the fastest fall taking place among the wealthiest segment of viewers. But these viewers will remain sufficiently attractive markets for advertisers for firms to try to create products for them.

Six: most people will still watch most TV on things that are recognisably TV sets, but the option of watching specialist programmes on the next generation of computer monitors will be important for specialist programmes. These will be delivered either by cable or high-speed telephony. This creates huge opportunities for new programming because the entry cost will be much lower than at present.

Seven: new companies will spring up to create these specialised programmes.

Eight: the "celebritisation" of TV will continue. Though the next generation of celebrities will in the long term tend to become less dependent on media companies for their status, the ability of organisations to trade their stars across different media will in the short term give conglomerates more clout.

Nine: television will get better. Yes, the present phenomenon of clever people producing clever rubbish will continue. But the money will increasingly be made by attracting viewers with high spending power. So TV companies will have to hold up the quality of their viewers rather than just have eyes watching the box.

Ten: more foreign companies will seek to enter the UK market, but the BBC will remain the best shot the UK has at creating global reach for British programme-makers.

Now these propositions will not all prove correct. I would accept six out of 10 as an OK score. But you can see the way in which we should look at this new legislation. Does it create a climate here that encourages companies to invest in our talent to make programmes for a rapidly changing world market?

Yes and no. My guess would be that it will give our not-very-competitive private sector TV industry a rather better shot, assuming the present ownership issues are settled in a satisfactory way. But the really big game is still to be played. That is, what happens to the Beeb? If even half those points above are right the present structure of a state-owned, tax-funded national TV company is not sustainable. It has an amazing reputation, but one based on the excellence of its Cinderella departments like the World Service. In other areas it simply replicates what the private sector would do in other countries – and now will presumably do better here.

So maybe we should see the revamp of the structure of the private-sector TV industry as a path-clearing exercise for the revamp of the public sector one. First, up the game of the ITV companies – and then clear the way for the Beeb to play global.