The headline says, “The FCC Is Promising Big Payouts for
Local TV Stations That Go Off the Air.”1 Well, with respect to Dana
Carvey, “Isn’t that special.”
Let me get this straight: In the mid-nineties, when the government and
administration were running record deficits (don’t let that “peace dividend”
fool you) they went looking for new
revenue.
Well, alrighty, then…digital
television.
Now, to be sure, we had been
investigating DTV as a replacement for the weary NTSC for some time. But it bumped into itself at every turn. SPMTE, NAB, PBS, NTIA and others conducted
numerous tests, all designed to fit 50 pounds of, uh, stuff in a 5 pound
bag. Yeah, 50 – actually more when you
look at the bandwidth demands of a digital signal. Then, once they got all that in a bag, they
had to find a way to deliver it without the bag breaking. You’d think we’d be smart enough to pick the
most robust system consistent with the compression we needed (that necessary
for the 6 MHz “five-pound bag” we wanted to keep.)
And, true to form, ATSC chose
8VSB. Brings back memories of the
Magnavox AM stereo system. In this case,
at least, some people liked it.
Everyone swallowed hard and implemented
it. It brought with it a lot of
promises, not the least of which was multiple channels within the 6 MHz
bandwidth. That was a sacred value, the
width of an analog channel.
And everyone changed. They really embraced it. OK, June 12, 20092 was declared the
final, final, really final, We’re not
kidding final date for turning off the analog signal and no one had a
choice.
The transition meant billions of
dollars of plant upgrades – from camera to transmitter and news van to file
storage. Everything had to be
upgraded. And we did that, too.
Some stations immediately launched
second channels, the so-called “dot-two” channels offering additional
programming. A few even added dot-three
and more, choosing to keep their main channel at 480 lines.
Networks began feeding in HD – a huge additional cost to them. Do the quick math on a golf tournament or NFL
game with 20 or more cameras, multiple replay devices and recorders, backhaul
then studio and control room changes and, finally, HD distribution. You’ll get to a number somewhere around the yearly
GDP of a South American country.
But it was worth it. Worth all the expense to deliver great digital
television to the masses. (sarcasm)
Should I quit here? Not without mentioning that the real reason
for the move to digital was the government’s recognition that they could move
most stations to the UHF band, freeing up, a great deal of spectrum in the VHF
band to auction off to personal communications services (PCS). That
was responsible for the cutoff date, the development of digital and all of the
money spent by broadcasters to convert.
The extra channels within the 6 MHz bandwidth became carrots, as did a
number of regulatory concessions the commission offered to broadcasters when
they moved. Don't kid yourself; it was about the money.
Now, the commission is asking stations
to take a bribe – fall to the canvas, if you will – in order for the PCS guys
like Verizon, AT&T and the rest to have additional bandwidth to distribute
their streaming fare on a 1:1 basis.
I wrote about the inefficiency of 1:1
awhile back. To date, the ratio of
bandwidth costs for 1:1 to bandwidth costs for 1:many hasn’t changed. It’s still abysmal.
But we’re going to move forward with
that. In fact, the government is
proposing to pay the broadcasters for the spectrum so that they can auction it
off to the PCS guys. From their point of
view, it’s “better.”
It could be a windfall – a station in
LA could receive over a half billion dollars to turn off the transmitter. That's a “B” you see there.
Once again, the Libra feels very
strongly both ways:
·
It’s a free market
·
PCS can be important
· Stations could easily exist by serving
their relayed customers (cable, satellite, copper) with the direct feed most of
them now use
Then again,
· If you’re that willing to give up the
frequencies, where’s that public “interest, convenience and necessity” you’re
supposed to be operating under
· What about that [small] percentage of
people who rely on OTA signals (I’d add away-from-home but given the 8VSB
standard, away from home or portable viewing isn’t possible in many locations.)
· If the commission’s actions are, in and
of themselves, in the public interest, why should stations get any compensation? How about another auction at the end of a
station’s current license term. Verizon
and AT&T, Scripps and Linn, get out your checkbooks
Broadcasters have gotten the short end
of the stick on this so far. The minute
the conversions to HD finished, the industry began nipping at their heels. Channel repacking, channel movement3
and now channel vacation. Upgrade an
entire facility just to turn it off.
Ditch your dot-twos and combine with another broadcaster to save that
precious spectrum.
As I showed in one of my earlier writings, there isn’t enough spectrum – DC to white light – to accommodate streaming
to everyone all the time. Do we really
want to try? Is you sending me a funny
video of the squirrel in your back yard treed by a cat more important than news
coverage of a major chemical spill?
No? Well how about more important
than The People’s Court or ET.
The commission is forming a task force
to go on the road to sell in the idea to broadcasters. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?
1http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/the-fcc-is-promising-big-payouts-for-local-tv-stations-that-go-off-the-air-20141001
2September 12, 2015 for LPTV stations
3NB: A
number of stations lobbied hard to keep their VHF assignments in the conversion
to digital. They found out the hard way
that the digital envelope behaves differently compared to analog and that it
penetrates building far less reliably.
That prompted a number of filings to move to the very UHF channels they
reviled.
