Time to throw away the television and start watching on the laptop then? Well, perhaps not quite yet, but this week broadcasters old and new have been queueing up to announce TV-over-internet services in the belief that a new era of small-screen viewing is dawning.

On the one side are the BBC and ITV, who believe they can bring consumers to their websites with archives of recent programming; on the other are newcomers, such as Joost, which are setting up their own distribution networks and snatching advertising revenues too.

These moves represent a significant change. Until now free content has been dominated by clips and extracts, as found on YouTube, rather than full episodes – what the new wave of internet broadcasters want to offer now are full television shows, from EastEnders to Coronation Street.

On Tuesday, Joost, the internet-TV service set up by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the duo who founded Skype, announced deals with Turner Broadcasting and Sony as it heads towards a full-blown launch in the next few weeks. The agreements added to its previous content deals with Viacom, and Big Brother producer Endemol. It also has 32 advertisers on board.

Screen Digest estimates that by 2011 the internet TV market in the UK will be worth £189 million, with more than 50 per cent of revenues coming from advertising. In 2006 it was worth an estimated £18 million; but while the growth sounds impressive, the overall television advertising market is worth £3.4 billion this year.

Broadcasters such as ITV believe that they can keep much of the new internet cash and content in-house. Jeff Henry, who runs ITV’s consumer division and is responsible for ITV. com, said: “ITV is in a unique position of strength because the majority of the content that we broadcast is made by ITV Productions.”

The obvious place for a viewer to look for an episode of Coronation Street is ITV.com, and ITV is going to experiment with a variety of ad breaks – through which viewers won’t be able to fastforward – and it will charge extra for the privilege. But the company says that the vast majority of its programmes will be free.

Meanwhile, traditional broadcasters are trying to peg back YouTube and Joost. As one senior BBC insider said: “While we will continue to do deals with third-party aggregators [such as YouTube] it will only be for short-form content, which will be used as a way of driving viewers to the iPlayer where they can watch the one-hour episode of, say, Bleak House. It’s important that we have control over our brand.”

Against such pressure, Joost is trying to see a way through. While Fredrik de Wahl, Joost’s chief executive, is not enamoured with the thought of getting only short-form programming from the BBC, he does agree that Joost should be seen as a “complementary form of distribution” for broadcasters. He believes that Joost has the advantage of being a global system and that will attract British broadcasters.

Rights ownership is also a complex issue for Joost outside the US. At present UK soap Hollyoaks, made by All3Media, is available on the site in the US but not in the UK because the rights are tied up with Channel 4. The show is only available on Channel 4’s 4oD internet service, again showing how traditional broadcasters have another edge.

However, one problem remains. Each UK broadcaster wants would-be viewers to download their own media players, while YouTube uses the simpler Flash. Dan Cryan, a media analyst with Screen Digest, says: “Having to download so many different applications doesn’t sit well with the traditional TV experience which is to press a button and watch.”

That points to a more basic problem: will people want to watch TV on their computer after a hard day at the office? That will change as people become familiar with sending video files from their computer to the television, but despite this week’s rash of launches, there is still some way to go.

Mediapolis

—How much does Gary Lineker earn from the BBC? You can’t prove this but somebody whose job it is to hire presenters says £1.5 million a year; Alan Hansen earns about £1 million and others such as Mark Lawrenson about half that. Now with no live football on the BBC from 2008 (apart from the odd preseason tournament), some serious money could be saved by dismantling the commentary team and replacing all with the popular and doubtless not so rich Adrian Chiles. Let ITV (programming budget £1 billion) take the strain.

—Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is preparing for a big speech next month that will encompass the wide world of broadcasting. Expect words on what sort of help, if any, Channel 4 should get, and perhaps observations on the future of commercial radio, where Ofcom has identified all sorts of long-term pressures. Mind you, all this may be dependent on whether she keeps her job when Gordon Brown takes over. Word is that she would like to stay but the smart money in Labour says that she will go.

—The BBC won 16 categories in this week’s Sony radio awards, while the commercial sector had to make do with a measly eight. One might ask who else was going to win the drama of the year category, but it is surely too easy to make Today breakfast show of the year, and give a BBC presenter, in this case Mark Radcliffe, music programme of the year. This sort of dominance makes you want to reach for the Competition Commission – which is why everybody made sure GCap Media’s Classic FM won station of the year.

—Scotland’s embrace of the nationalist cause does not appear to extend to its newspapers. Circulation figures north of the border reveal The Scotsman down 10 per cent and The Herald down 6 per cent. Hardly a public clamouring for more Scottish brands at a time when London titles invest heavily in Scottish editions. As The Herald cuts an estimated £2 million from its budgets, will Scotland be left with little more than regional media?

As Channel 4 pleads poverty, what evidence is there of belt tightening at Horseferry Road? Staff numbers rose 8 per cent to 813 last year.

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