Always On:
Beyond the Digital TV Spectrum Skirmish
By Gary Arlen
Contributing Skepthusiast
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
You'd think that Congress would want to stay as far away as it can from the morass of terrestrial digital TV. If the wacky plan to convert the nation's airwaves from analog to digital service actually happened by 2006, as scheduled, at least 70 percent of Americans would lose their over-the-air TV service.
It would be easier for Congress to take away Social Security.
Yet here we are amidst digital TV fact-finding hearings on both sides of Capitol Hill. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., led his Senate Commerce Subcommittee in what evolved into a broadcasting kiss-up session (although a few tongues were lashed) on the last day of February, and Rep. Fred Upton's House Telecommunications Subcommittee scheduled a similar routine two weeks afterwards.
In both instances, there was the predictable bashing about broadcasters' foot-dragging. Today, barely 180 stations are transmitting in DTV format, but 1,100 others haven't even begun to beam a digital signal. In other words, forget about that 2006 deadline! The big-market stations won't even hit their 2002 target. Former FCC Chairman Bill Kennard's swan-song saber-rattling insistence about the DTV transition deadlines is an empty threat of the past. New Chairman Michael Powell does not seem interested in enforcing this kind of industrial policy.
While the mandatory accusations about cable must-carry punctuated the Congressional hearings, the real DTV battlefields were only slightly broached. One of the best punches was thrown by Paxson Communications President Jeff Sagansky, who urged Congress to enact a "digital all channel receiver" law that would required all TV sets to be capable of receiving both analog and digital signals.
You could almost hear the howl from Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association, who wasn't even invited to testify at McCain's inquest. CEA promptly lambasted the all-channel plan as "anti-consumer and anti-free market," a move that would increase set prices and limit consumer choice by adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of a TV set.
By the way, this was the same CEA that a few days earlier had issued a joyous announcement that DTV sets are on a "phenomenal growth" track, with fully 81,629 units sold in January. At that pace, CEA expects that by 2006, more than 32 million U.S. homes will be able to pick up over-the-air digital broadcasts--and that's without a federal "all-channel" mandate. (Do the math: that's fewer than one-third of TV households by the deadline year.)
This bleak battle doesn't include the ongoing COFDM vs. 8-VSB fight and other technical skirmishes that have encouraged broadcast licensees and TV set makers to restrain their DTV urges (see Broadband Week, February 5). These "growth" numbers just add to the justification of licensees and manufacturers to sit on the sidelines while their lobbyists swap accusations about lack of equipment, lack of programming and lack of reasons to move ahead into digital broadcasting.
But what about those airwaves, longing to be used? During the same fortnight that Congress was nagging broadcasters about high definition TV or any-definition DTV, deals were in the works. As was a funeral.
Geocast, an early datacasting pioneer backed by broadcasters such as Hearst-Argyle and Belo and allied with Thomson Multimedia for its data receiver, ran out of money. In its dying days, recognizing that hitching its horse exclusively to DTV put it on a dead-end trail, Geocast allied with DirecTV, but never had a chance to launch its service.
Even as Geocast was cast adrift, two other datacasting hopefuls were beefing up their portfolios. WaveXpress, using Sarnoff Labs technology, signed a deal with PBS, which not only has the nation's largest TV distribution network but has been the most aggressive in deploying data broadcasting services (a revenue-generator for the non-commercial network). The WaveXpress platform will be used to transmit four enhanced TV episodes of Scientific American Frontiers. That's the first step in WaveXpress' aggressive datacasting initiative.
Meanwhile, SpectraRep, which was originally set up to broker digital bandwidth as stations took the DTV plunge, is unveiling its new strategy to expand into satellite distribution and integrated data and video networking services. With the backing if its parent company, the media investment bankers BIA Inc., SpectraRep is bringing a collection of broadcasting and satellite facilities into the data transmission sector.
Amidst this activity, secretive DotCast (which still plans to exploit the long, long analog TV era ahead) and iBlast also are accelerating their datacasting missions.
The broadcasters testifying on Capitol Hill know all these alternatives await them--and their spectrum. Station owners are having a tough time choosing amongst the datacasting options, which still are too numerous and offer too varied a selection of business models.
There are no easy answers--and certainly no sure things, yet--in data delivery through the unlimited airwaves. The multipoint reach and ubiquity of broadcasting, especially in a networked configuration, makes this bandwidth an attractive alternative to wired delivery. That's why Congress has already put that "hefty" 5 percent levy on any profit-making use of those public airwaves.
Those issues were hardly addressed in the latest Congressional look at broadcasting. McCain acknowledged that "the situation is a mess, characterized more by finger pointing than progress."
Rounding up the usual suspects, though, simply allows them to point and wag their fingers. There are deeper competitive issues, such as keeping the broadcasters off the digital skyway so they cannot plunge into datacasting to compete with wired or wireless data transmission providers.
But that gets into the realm of judicial examination, not media oversight.
And one good thing: Congress has not put the DTV issue behind it, having done its de rigeur duty to check on the transition--long before the next election cycle is upon us.
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