Change it, Rebuild it, Move it, Take it off the Air. Broadcasters and PCS Spectrum

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.

Everyone! Stay CALM! I'm in charge here. - Alexander Haig

The CALM Act. 

 

I really didn’t think I’d see a lot about it but it seems the CALM act is everywhere. Yes, today’s the deadline for implementation and, no doubt, tomorrow the Notices of Apparent Liability will start flying.

 

I’ll be up-front with you:  I’ve written about this before and about the futility of passing laws about anything that starts with “psycho”, in this case, psychoacoustics, especially when trying to rely on machines to control the outcome.  Might as well outlaw a disease; in a similar vein, it doesn’t matter since physics behaves as it does and doesn’t pay much attention to congress.

 

More on that later.  I want to discuss this little thing called compliance.  You see, not only must stations comply with the rules, they must document their compliance.  A number of operations maintain programming for 90 days after airing.  Others, as much as 2 years.

 

The 90 days is the minimum retention period and during that time, the station must be able to provide any segment of the broadcast day to an inspector or government representative should they request it.

 

That means that if a viewer challenges a telecast – maybe he/she heard a commercial that was too loud – the commission can come back and say, “Give us 5 minutes on either side of the commercial and the commercial, itself.  Oh, and send the log of the dialnorm on the audio.”  Huh?  Yep.  You have to be able to step up and provide the data/metadata that supports your claim that you were legal at the time.

 

Stations are keeping the logs for longer and longer periods because of the possibility of complaint.  But wait, there’s more.  It’s not just CALM compliance.  It’s everything else.  Closed captioning?  You don’t want to be challenged.  Political ads?  Same thing.  Contests and all else, too.  You really want to be able to pull up the goods, send ‘em off to the commission with a note like, “See?!”

 

That’s a “fur piece” as Bob Shreve used to say on the SchoenlingAll-Night Theater, from the old audio or VHS loggers.  It requires much more.  And, son of a gun, there are a couple of devices out there that’ll do it and more.

 

Last nite, a bunch of us got the inside scoop from Ken Dillard at Digital Nirvana, Inc.  Now I don’t know how they decided on that name – maybe it means somebody with all 1’s on their bank account number.  That aside, these guys make the Monitor IQ box.  Yes, there are others out there.   This box is particularly intriguing.  It can do it all.  And more.  Ken explained how it integrates with sales, programming, legal, and engineering.  First, you can watch all the stations in the market.  Then, as it archives, you can pull up any segment and look at it – content, captioning, CALM, and (in metered markets) ratings.  

 

You have to think about watching a sportscast running against other stations in the market and easily spotting what keeps folks around and what drives them away…overnight.  This is not a cheap box, but given all the new rules and the fines that can be incurred, it’s cheap insurance.

 

And now for my favorite topic:  the audio, itself.  Let’s all pick dialnorm -24.  Cool.  Our processors are going to take everything to -24.  That’s cool, too, but, first do they really know what’s going on around them?  When Martha and John are whispering sweet nothings on the porch swing, should the processing really take the following commercial down to that level?  As it brings it up, it creates a different mood.  Is that OK with the advertiser?  How does it change the spot?  And what happens to the louder one after it?  Oh, and did I pay for a particular level of modulation when I bought the commercial time?

 

Let’s go farther.  What if (as I’ve written about before) the mix has an overabundance of highs or lows?  What are you going to do?  The system says dialog is the benchmark.  Well,  just the simplest look at an oscilloscope while listening to dialog tells you that there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between the actual power in a piece of audio and the apparent loudness.  But that’s exactly what we’re asking a processor to look for and act upon.

 

So, when that 5.1 mix comes barreling through and totally masks the dialog, what’s going to give?  Well, as they say in the retirement home, “Depends.”

 

And that means that every mix is different and it’ll be the psychoacoustic elements that will cue the viewer as to whether the sound is balanced from scene to scene.  Once again, you can process it like crazy but until you can teach the machine to listen like a human, it’s going to get it wrong a good part of the time.  Check the link below.  Read it closely.  If you don’t see any problems, you didn’t read it closely!

 

And when you realize that most of the ATSC parameters for CALM and dialnorm are based on those developed in Europe (including France, the folks that gave us SECAM), you also know that it means stations will be compliant – and still sound bad.  How do I know?  Take a trip to London, Frankfurt or Rome.  Listen.   Case closed.

 

But, compliance is the goal so, congratulations to all the techs who have been slaving over the past months to get their stations to that point.  We’ll be listening...on receivers...all of which will vary and will interpret audio and its metadata differently, thereby creating a [vastly] different listening experience for each receiver owner.

 

ATSC’s CALM and DIALNORM

I'm Seeing Yellow

I’m seeing yellow.  No, really.  Finally.

I’m talking television.  Since 1953 we’ve been watching color television in NTSC and its compromised chroma modulation.  Yellow suffered tremendously – the combination of chrominance and luminance on a bright yellow object would lead to overmodulation…so that whole sextant of the chroma topography was compromised, usually sent toward the darker shades.  Nearly as bad, differential phase problems are most easily seen in the yellow areas.

Enter ATSC.  The yellows are just another bunch of numbers as is any other color.  And they get equal treatment.  So the likelihood of yellow being yellow is a LOT greater.  Of course, magenta (and all her sisters) is better, too, but that yellow thing really makes a difference.  At least one manufacturer is bragging about better yellow through the addition of yellow LED’s but in reality, it’s the modulation scheme that makes the real difference.

So – all those better yellows.  Now turn your attention to compression – not ATSC but the compression being applied to video signals over cable and DTH satellite.  Well, so much for yellow…and red, blue, and green and all their buddies, too.  Bit reduction and other compression along with conversion (in some cases) to QAM took that wonderful yellow away.  Well actually it didn’t – it took away the range of yellows; packed them all into one convenient “yellow.”  Same with the rest of the spectrum. 

Wondering why faces look “cartoony” and the color gradation seems inconsistent at best?  Put an ATSC over-the-air signal next to your cable or satellite version.  Check it out.

The solution?  Less compression, of course but is that going to happen?   Doubtful given the channel proliferation and competition between cable and satellite suppliers.  It points to other access methods that might allow download of the full digitized signal, maybe beyond ATSC.  Hint:  web services like Hulu and others.  If these services provide full bandwidth digitized signals, as Americans see the difference, they will gravitate toward the better service.  After all, with one-to-one delivery, number of channels is meaningless.

The only issue that affects the full bandwidth delivery will be the decision of ISP’s and alternate suppliers to move from “all you can eat” to metered bandwidth charges.  In that case, maybe that beautiful range of yellows isn’t worth it after all.