EDITORIAL

摘要

Welcome to the third and final issue of 2014. This journal is rooted in a belief in the sociocultural, political and economic importance of digital television and will therefore continue inviting work on the growth of digital terrestrial, cable or satellite TV. To this end, the two main articles of this issue focus on digital switchover in Serbia (the Republic of Serbia is a country situated at the crossroads between Central and South Eastern Europe) and digital switchover in Cyprus (the Republic of Cyprus is an Island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea). That said the International Journal of Digital Television has widened its scope and invites contributions that address in a timely way areas such as audience behaviour and media plurality (relevant articles were published in issue 5.1), technological advances like widescreen images for film and television technologies, television white spaces and television attitude towards brands (relevant articles were featured in issue 5.2), as well as national debates about the role of public service broadcasting in the digital epoch (a special issue on this is envisaged in 2015). Among other themes to be covered are social media (the third main article of the current issue focuses on the social media and celebrity politics), sports programming (a commentary and a book review here deal with this), media mergers and acquisitions (the other commentary on this issue deals with this), and regulatory issues (a book review in this issue concerns independence of media regulatory agencies).