Service aggregation

A guide for regulators, policy makers, and media strategists on the role of DVB-I and the Service List Registry in enabling virtual aggregation.

The importance of aggregation

Television has historically been an aggregated medium that was greater than the sum of its parts. Licensed broadcast spectrum supported a set of channels, starting with one or two and expanding to many more, often a mix of public and commercial services, presented in a unified and accessible way. No single network or channel was sufficient to sustain an audience, and it was not necessary for it to justify its independent existence. Collectively, a range of channels provided enough choice and variety to satisfy viewers, in the absence of strong external competition.

The aggregation of a combination of channels offered significant advantages:

Audience reach and discovery across multiple media providers.
Ease of navigation through recognisable ordering and numbering of channels.
Shared prominence based on priority, providing visibility.
Editorial diversity within a common distribution environment.

This multichannel model allowed viewers to explore a wide variety of choices while ensuring that important services were easy to find, especially in societies with strong public service mandates, where this was encouraged through media regulation.

Although the scheduled channel paradigm is sometimes derided, this simple structure was one of the great strengths of television as a medium.

How is television changing as it moves online?

As broadcasters and media providers shift toward online delivery, many have followed their own competing online strategies. These often involve promoting:

Dedicated apps or portals for each provider.
Proprietary user interfaces with their own navigation.
Programmes rather than channels as the primary focus.

While this approach gives media providers more control, and aims to keep viewers within a provider world, it also leads to fragmentation and frustration. Viewers need to navigate multiple apps and interfaces, leading to:

Loss of discoverability as broadcasters promote their separate apps.
Greater reliance on dominant global platforms for distribution.
Weakened visibility for public service media.
Reduced shared audience experience as viewing fragments.

This fragmentation dilutes the collective power of national media providers and makes them less competitive against global streaming and technology companies.

Television was once a simple user experience, supported by habitual viewing. Media providers should not assume that viewers are highly motivated to seek out programming. Viewers will tend to stick with services that reliably deliver sufficient choice through simple selection.

In imitating global online players with dedicated apps, national media providers are competing with them directly, and risk undervaluing the distinctive characteristics that give them competitive advantages.

How do subscription services manage aggregation?

Pay-television platforms have long acted as super-aggregators. They bring together commercial and public channels, bundle on-demand services, and offer a unified interface across them. They offer paying customers the convenience of simplifying and integrating an otherwise disparate set of services.

However, this aggregation comes at a cost to media providers:

Negotiated carriage agreements to gain distribution on third-party platforms.
Complex commercial models that may compromise distribution strategies.
Limited promotional opportunities for content providers.

While commercial platforms can sustain a bundled proposition through subscription revenues, free-to-view services increasingly struggle to match the cohesive experience that paid platforms can afford to offer.

How can public service media remain relevant?

Public service media organisations still hold significant strengths. They have:

Trusted brands that have been carefully regulated.
Nationally relevant and resonant programming with popular appeal.
Deep cultural relevance that supports national identity.
Established remits and mandates to serve diverse audiences.

These strengths are undermined when services are isolated or hard to find. For media providers, re-aggregation, on their own terms, becomes strategically essential to maintain visibility, audience trust, and collective impact.

By combining forces, public service and commercial media providers can create compelling multi-provider service lists that preserve autonomy and maintain viability while offering a coherent and consistent viewing experience.

How does DVB-I enable virtual aggregation?

DVB-I supports the virtual aggregation of services from multiple providers, without requiring a central distribution platform. With DVB-I:

Media providers host services independently.
Services retain control over branding, metadata, and playback.
Multiple providers contribute to shared service lists
Aggregated lists represent ordered sets of services.

This approach preserves editorial and commercial independence while supporting coordinated presentation, shared navigation, and service-level interoperability. For example:

National authorities can approve regulated lists featuring multiple public and commercial providers.
National lists can be extended to include different selections of additional online services to offer greater viewing choice.
Multinational services from global media companies can be included in the same lists, while preserving prominence for national media providers.

What role does the Service List Registry play in distribution and discovery?

The Service List Registry acts as a neutral, standards-compliant platform for virtual aggregation and discovery. The SLR allows:

Enables device-based lookups by country, language, or capabilities.
Offers curated and regulated lists for regions and territories.
Supports coexistence of multiple lists, offering consumer choice.
Integrates scheduled and on-demand programming in a unified service list.

By using the SLR, public service media providers can contribute to interoperable, dynamically updatable lists that reflect shared values and reach broad audiences, without ceding editorial control.

Conclusion

Aggregation was once a defining feature of broadcast television. It remains essential in the online era. DVB-I and the Service List Registry offer an open, practical, and pragmatic way for public service media providers to reclaim their collective presence. This approach is aligned with public policy objectives and the need for an open and competitive media market.

Through virtual aggregation, media providers can maintain trust, visibility, and relevance, ensuring that national programming and public value stay central to the viewing experience as platforms evolve.