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The British government has given a blunt no to the European Commission’s
plans to subsidise the development of widescreen television.

The Commission wanted to spend 850 million Ecus (around £600
million) to persuade broadcasters to use the new MAC TV system, which allows
widescreen broadcasting, instead of the old PAL system. The Commission’s
Telecommunications Council met in Luxembourg early this month to ask European
states for the money. But Edward Leigh, Britain’s technology minister at
the Department of Trade and Industry, says the idea is ‘totally unacceptable’.

‘The answer to whether there is unanimous agreement to spend 850 million
Ecus is no. Nor is there agreement on any other figure,’ he said.

Without the subsidy, satellite broadcasters will not spend the many
millions of pounds a year it costs to simulcast programmes in PAL and MAC.
So MAC, and with it Europe’s high definition TV system, looks likely to
die.