TV Has Always Been Passive. The Switchover Is a Chance to Change That.

I was recently in a meeting with the BBC about the future of TV, part of the wider conversation around the UK’s move from aerial broadcast to internet-delivered television. Much of the discussion was about connectivity: how to work with local organisations to reach people ahead of the switchover, and how to make sure nobody gets left behind in the transition itself. Inclusion, in that framing, meant not losing what people already have.

The BBC’s Future of TV session with the National Digital Inclusion Network, July 2026.

That work matters, and I don’t want to undersell it. But sitting in that room, I found myself wanting to ask a different question.

A Different Kind of Question

Everything discussed that day was about protecting access, making sure the switchover doesn’t disconnect people who already rely on television. That’s necessary work. But it treats TV the way it’s always been treated: as a passive medium, something people watch for entertainment and relaxation, not something that actively does anything for the people watching it.

I think that’s the real opportunity sitting inside this switchover, and one that’s easy to miss if the whole conversation stays focused on connectivity. The BBC has a platform reaching millions of households, many of them the same households digital inclusion work is trying to reach through other, harder routes: community centres, libraries, volunteer-led sessions, one household at a time. TV already has scale. The switchover is a chance to ask what that scale could actually do, not just preserve.

Why This Matters Beyond the Switchover

This connects to something I’ve written about before: the gap between having access to something and actually being included by it. A device without the skills or confidence to use it doesn’t close a digital divide, it just moves it. The same logic applies here. Protecting people’s access to television during a technical transition is not the same as using television to help close the digital divide it sits right next to.

If the BBC’s switchover is being planned around inclusion anyway, connectivity, reach, no one left behind, it’s worth asking what else that same infrastructure could carry. Digital skills content. “How to” digital inclusion programmes. Confidence-building for people who’ve never used a smart TV interface, let alone a smartphone. And, further out, the same principle applied to AI: helping organisations build the confidence to write their own AI policy, not just their households to use a new remote. A genuinely educational use of a platform that has, for decades, been treated as somewhere information and entertainment simply arrive, rather than somewhere people are actively helped to participate in a digital society.

The Question I Left With

I didn’t get a full answer in the room, and I didn’t expect to. But I think it’s a question worth the BBC, and the wider digital inclusion sector, sitting with properly: television has a real role to play in digital inclusion itself, not just in being something people don’t lose access to.

Access is the floor. What gets built on top of it is still an open question, and this switchover is one of the few moments where that question is actually being asked out loud.