Digital Terrestrial Television in Italy. Approaching the Audiences

This paper present the initial results of a wide-ranging research project devoted to investigating the forms of domestication (Silverston, Morley & Hirsh 1992) of digital terrestrial television in iItaly. The research is based on non-standard methodologies, and folows the indications of multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995). The results presented here refer to an initial phase of research intended to reconstruct the process of domestication of the digital terrestrial television by users resident in Milan. The research step discussed inh this paper was conducted using the technique of non-structureted interviews with the members of 8 different households (making a total of 24 subjects). What emerges is the predominance in the processes of domestication of DTT of an instrumental and practical orientation, which reveals a great cohesiveness in the definition of DTT as a television integrated into traditional television which enables premium contents (football) to enquired at low cost or the reception signal to be improved (in order to see better TV images). These data place digital television within the line of evolution of the television medium, excluding any reference to broader fields of ICTs, to which DTT is very rarely related (not even where reference is made to interactivity, whiciis tipically associated with ICTs).