APPLE wants to get us to download films on to the home computer and, from next year, run them over the wi-fi network at home to watch on the 63-inch television (well, we all like to boast).

The link-up between the PC and TV has been a long-time coming, but at last Apple is opening up a new form of pay-TV distribution to compete, up to a point, with the likes of Sky and NTL.

Credit to Apple for admitting that watching TV on the Mac or a portable media player, such as Apple’s own iPod, is not everybody’s idea of fun compared with gazing at the screen in the corner. On the other hand, Apple still has a few jobs to do if it is to succeed with its radical new wheeze.

It wants to charge $9.99 or $14.99 for movies (probably £7.99 and £12.99 in the UK) — cheap by DVD standards, but pricey if you are willing to wait for the pay-per-view window, where movies cost a couple of quid.

On the other hand the DVD purchase market is worth $16.4 billion (£8.6 billion) in the US, about twice the size of rental, as parents pay to please active children with copies of The Incredibles.

Meanwhile, broadcasters are desperate to keep viewers for their own websites, where they can attract advertising. So far, though, Apple’s control of its own format means that it regulates where downloads can be played: stuff bought from other digital music stores is not compatible with an iPod. So, TV and video bought from another site outside iTunes may not be compatible with its TV adaptor either.

That may not appeal to the likes of ITV and Channel 4, which will want to create a Freeview-like version of the Apple device, capable of playing programming they produce themselves, as they try to become mini-pay broadcasters in their own right.

That seems reasonable enough. So if Apple is going to win the TV and film war, it may have to make life easier for consumers to get their programming from any website. But the trouble for a hardware manufacturer is that without some sort of lock-in, its technology becomes just another commodity.

• IT’S hard to fault the energy that The Daily Telegraph has brought to its online revolution. You can download an afternoon version of the paper (as if there were not enough freesheets) that summarises some of the morning’s news. If you read the electronic version, it’s possible even to watch heroic video podcasts of journalists interviewing each other about what you have just read.

  Still, the only thing obviously wrong with Telegraphpm is the absence of an advert; and so a lot of reporter hours are expended with no gain in advertising revenue. That’s not a parti pris criticism: The Times’s afternoon business download doesn’t carry an ad either.

  Advertising will come, though, once these new you-do-the-printing papers find an audience. BT advertises in The Guardian’s equivalent. Nobody, though, is in a hurry to reveal any circulation figures — because they are presumably not yet good enough.

  Channel 4 gives us a clue about the current demand by talking about “tens of thousands” of downloads of some of its internet radio offerings such as SlashMusic from John Peel’s son, Tom Ravenscroft. Music, however, may be more popular; how in demand is late-afternoon click-and-carry news?

• YOU like potato, I like potahto; let’s call the whole thing off. Welcome to the we- almost-agree world of the SMG-UTV merger. The folk from Ulster want 48 per cent for themselves; the Scots, who run the larger but more confused company think that they should get only 45 per cent. It’s hardly a big difference for a deal that everybody thinks should happen, bringing together all the bits of ITV not owned by ITV plc and combining that with Virgin Radio and TalkSPORT. So who should give ground?

  UTV almost certainly: the market has pegged the two companies in line with what SMG wants. Given that UTV’s boss John McCann should be in charge of the combined group — he did a good job of integrating and developing Kelvin MacKenzie’s Wireless Group — he can afford to be magnanimous.

  Commercial television and radio is in turmoil. The best hope for survival is to huddle; if radio in particular is to have any chance against the BBC, it will need to cross-promote and share talent. Emap reckons you can do that with magazines, but it is probably more effective to do it with telly. The opportunity should not be passed up for the sake of 3 per cent.

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