Looking out over the increasingly crowded media and television landscape it's getting harder to predict where it will be by the end of the century. In fact it's hard to say with any certainty where these industries will be by the end of the year - who will own what and which services will be available to you and me. But one prediction that can be made is we viewers will be enthusiastic consumers of the best and worst they can give us.

It is this unpredictability - with the tantalising assurance that there's money to be made if you can cover enough positions - that keeps the owners of large media companies awake at nights. Not to mention having to daily tap into the thousands of other media and communications services just to know that rivals aren't getting ahead of them. And this uncertainty also means there could be a new and better way to provide media and communications just around the corner that will sweep away the old media order - or there may not.

There's been much discussion about the increased "democracy" such a variegated media provides by addressing the particular needs of the many different interest groups in society. But others say our democratic society is being destroyed through the loss o f the "shared experience" of commonly-viewed programs, a sort of social "glue" that held the nation together. The same applies to the benefits of global media - giving all countries access to information and simultaneously taking away local customs, lang uage and identity. And more channels might be a good thing until the hundredth channel begins to look the same as all the others. Taken together, you could say they cancel each other out leaving us with no real effect from a simple proliferation of different media channels.

And although broadcast media veterans bemoan the loss of the mass market as the many new "channels" of television, radio, print, computer-based Internet services and video hire and sales proliferate the reality - a dangerous word in these virtual times - is that the overall audience is growing. And, a bigger audience - albeit shattered into many smaller demographic parts - will always be a good thing for your average media magnate and be more profitable for media companies. They merely have to ensure ownership of enough elements of the new media real estate so you'll land on a least one of their properties as you go round the game board in search of information and entertainment.

So what's really changed for us in our living rooms as we celebrate the fortieth birthday of Australian television? Only that we have a stronger television industry after the debacle and near-bankruptcies of the late eighties. And this provides a more stable platform for Australians to make better Australian film and television. The rest will be history.