NAB2004 Special: Reports From the National Association of Broadcasters Show April 17-22, 2004 - Las Vegas, Nevada
By Eric Taub
Rabbit Ears Make A Comeback
Now that most Americans have given up their TV antennas in exchange for a cable or satellite connection, the broadcast industry has a new message for consumers: come home, we were only kidding.
Stung by the success of cable TV, a technology that was originally designed for those who could not receive a decent over-the-air signal, a consortium of major broadcasters announced at this week’s NAB show that they were ready to go mano a mano with their competitor, by offering a less-costly package of broadcast and cable channels, all received with a standard TV antenna.
For a $25 monthly fee, customers will receive the local broadcaster’s HDTV channel, plus a package of at least 30 of the "must-have" cable services. The signals will be sent over the air; thanks to digital transmission, every picture will arrive without the previous ghosting and snow that encouraged many viewers to subscribe to cable in the first place.
This "digital antenna system" is being proposed by a consortium of broadcasters, including Emmis Communications, Clear Channel Communications, E.W. Scripps Co., and others.
Due to anti-trust rules, cable companies will be forced to license their channels to the consortium, argues Jeff Smulyan, the initiative’s founder and chairman of Emmis Communications. And studies indicate that, if the required digital converter box is given away, 49% of respondents would quit cable or satellite for this new offering. "This model works well with a 10% subscriber rate, and we think we’ll get 15%," Smulyan said.
When a subscriber to the service tunes in to Los Angeles’ channel 4, they could see NBC’s HDTV feed on the main channel, Bravo on the 2nd sub-channel, and perhaps CNN on the 3rd. While current technology allows broadcasters to send one HDTV and up to 3 standard definition channels at the same time, new MPEG-4 compression technology could increase that tenfold.
Capital costs to create the service should be low, around $300,000 per station. Projections call for the venture to accrue $4-6 billion in revenue within 5 years, with a 20% profit margin. Broadcasters will make money from subscription fees as well as revenue from the local ad slots on each cable channel.
A launch date has not been set, nor has a business plan yet been written, as the group continues to try and attract more members angry at other companies making money from their services. The consortium was created, Smulyan said, to stop the giveaway of the broadcasters’ assets to cable and satellite providers. "We created the value. This time, we’re going to own it."
LG Proposes A Clearer Picture
The purpose of trade shows is to present the future of an industry, not its present. And based on what’s on display at this week’s National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, it won’t be long before the entire nation will own a flat-panel digital television, and every station will have digitized their entire workflow, from capture to transmission. Soon, even the news will be presented in HDTV.
"We’re at a tipping point in the transition to digital and HDTV," said John Taylor, vice president for public affairs and communications for LG Electronics. Supporting his belief, sales of HDTV and HDTV-ready sets have more than doubled for the first two months of 2004 compared to the same period last year, according to figures released this week by the Consumer Electronics Association.
Yet unlike the now-dormant 50-year old NTSC color transmission standard, digital’s ATSC system continues to improve. One complaint being addressed is the difficulty some have in even receiving the signal. If you live too far from the transmitter, watching a digital channel is often hit or miss. And with the continued growth of the nation’s outlying suburbs, even more people will suffer from DTV reception problems.
Part of the problem is financial. To save money, some local broadcasters send out their digital signals at less than full-power. However, according to FCC rules, all must increase their feed to full signal strength by 2005.
For those who still have trouble receiving a stable digital feed, help may be at hand. LG Electronics has proposed a modification to the current 8-VSB transmission standard that could eliminate the occasional pixilation and picture freezes that now plague reception in fringe areas.
Called Enhanced VSB, the system would use a chunk of the digital bitstream currently reserved for data transmission to create a fallback audio and video stream. Simply put, when conditions prevented the full HDTV stream from being displayed without breakup, the picture would automatically cut back to a lower-quality version. The viewer would experience a seamless decrease in picture sharpness, which, depending on the size of the monitor and the viewing distance, might be imperceptible.
This enhanced standard, backwards-compatible with existing digital set top boxes, has been sent to the ATSC, which will submit its recommendations over the next several months. Regardless of how far a consumer lives from the transmitter, ATSC technical improvements will eventually enable "everyone to receive over the air digital transmissions with just an indoor antenna," LG’s Taylor said.
Closed Captioning Opens Up
Many inventions originally created for the handicapped have found their way into mainstream culture. For example, while closed captioning of television programs has been a boon to the deaf and hard of hearing, the technology has also improved the atmosphere at the nation’s gyms, where customers can now watch TV without disturbing those neighbors deeply engrossed in cell phone conversations.
As useful as the nation’s mandatory captioning system has become, the additional capabilities that are part of the digital transmission standard will open up a new realm of benefits.
A digital broadcast can contain up to 16 caption streams, four times the number available in the current analog system. Now there’s room to offer not just multiple languages but multiple versions of the same language, including edited versions for younger audiences with less-advanced reading skills.
Tired of the same old white font on a black background? Digital captions can be displayed in a wide variety of type faces and sizes, with or without a background, in varying degrees of opacity.
Early digital set top receivers did not include the circuitry necessary to decode the caption stream, but that’s beginning to change, according to Gerry Field, manager of the DTV Access Project, part of WGBH’s Media Access Group. The problem today: few broadcasters are yet availing themselves of the new captioning features.
Powell Defends FCC Crackdown
Fresh from dealing with the breast heard ‘round the world, FCC Commissioner Michael Powell defended his agency’s actions in dealing with indecent programming as a natural reaction to the nation’s concerns.
In a discussion with ABC anchor Sam Donaldson at this week’s NAB show, Powell said that between 2002 and today, the number of complaints the agency has received about indecency on the airwaves has increased forty fold. However, Powell acknowledged that there was no effective way to determine if those communications were from individuals or part of a broader partisan campaign.
For those producers now fearful of having an on-screen character mutter even a slightly off-color remark, Powell offered no solace. It was not the Agency’s job to come up with a proscribed list of words and actions, he said. In fact, such a list might only increase censorship.
"You don’t want the government to write a Red Book of what you can and cannot say," Powell argued. "That would be like federal sentencing guidelines; it’s a lot clearer, but it would remove the ability to weigh unique facts and make adjustments."
People who argue that racist and xenophobic speech is at least as "indecent" as the discussion of sexual and excretory functions are missing the point. In response to Donaldson’s query as to whether a radio announcer should be allowed to say "kill all Muslims," Powell argued that "the restriction of free-flowing discussion would be unconstitutional. However offensive that sentence is, it’s not part of the indecency statute."
When it comes to indecency, the community can’t have it both ways, demanding that the government mandate "family" programming at one point, while decrying its attempt to stop indecent speech and behaviors. "If you want us to promote positive content, don’t be surprised when we stop negative content," he said.