Permanent linkI have to wonder what TV would look like with no
regulation whatsoever. The whole regulatory framework seems designed to keep an
army of attorneys employed. I have nothing against attorneys. Some of my
closest friends have attorneys. Without attorneys, there would be a large void
in the world now occupied by abstruse, circular logic.
Such seems the logic that dictates what’s on TV where and when and why and how
and how much and for whom. E.g., cursing and privates are OK on cable-only
networks but not on broadcast networks, though both are generally delivered to
the same households the same way. Cable nets can pretty much program whatever
they want whenever they want to, while broadcast networks have to have to cater
to kids.
Cable networks, on the other hand, have to be provided in some capacity to all
comers. Broadcast networks don’t, though they can use that power to extract
fees for their signals. Cable rates are regulated; broadcast TV is free and TV
over the Internet is a legal dance in progress.
The laws governing television are based a good deal on assumptions; about who
is watching when, and what they have a “right” to watch. The program-access
rules upheld today by the federal appeals court in D.C. infers that people have
a “right” to watch whatever they want on the pay TV system of their choice. For
the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
The federal government does not assure that I have access to sunlight on the
east side of my home. It does not assure that my car is equipped with satellite
radio. It can barely keep me in water suitable for drinking and air suitable
for breathing. Why, for example, should the federal government make Comcast
sell E! Entertainment to Time Warner Cable so that I, Deborah, am not deprived
of, God help me, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians?” This, to me, is akin to
praying the wind won’t blow on Sunday because I have a bicycle ride scheduled.
I have this thing about more important uses for the powers that be.
The D.C. federal appeals court ruled 2-1 upholding the FCC’s program-access
rules, meaning Comcast has to provide its networks to AT&T, Verizon, Dish
Network, SureWest Communications, Canby Telephone and anything in between. I
understand that folks running the smaller operations need access to programming
to survive, but is there really no other way to compete than forced access? There are surely areas that Comcast does not intend to serve.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. court wrote the dissenting opinion in the
program-access ruling. He said the Supreme Court “repeatedly ruled” that pay TV
companies and networks are protected by the First Amendment. Precedent provides
for regulating those entities only where “important” or “substantial”
government interest is at stake. Judge Kavanaugh didn’t think that forcing
cable operators to share programming served the government interest at the
necessary level, and neither do I. There’s other ways to compete in the multichannel
video market. Picture quality, a la carte availability and price are three that
come immediately to mind.
Even the judge who wrote the majority opinion said program-access rules were
likely to end. Hopefully when they do, we’ll see what type of competitive
innovation they’re now holding back.
Permanent linkSen. John Kerry of Massachusetts this week
implored the FCC to “help protect TV consumers.” He’d written a letter to FCC
chief Julius Genachowski urging the chairman to prevent WABC-TV from yanking
its signal off Cablevision systems. The two are deadlocked in retransmission
talks. WABC is threatening to cut Cablevision off the night before the Academy
Awards.
“These are private negotiations, but there’s a public interest at stake,” he
said. “Its resolution matters to the consumers who take hard-earned money out
of their wallets each month to pay their cable bills and shouldn’t become
collateral damage in wars between executives.”
In reality, there are no bodies strewn on Long Island in a firestorm waged by Disney’s
photogenic Mr. Iger and the earthy Dolan patriarchy. No one has suffered so
much as an inconvenience and it’s unlikely they’ve even noticed this battle
royale that has our friends in Washington grumbling and sermonizing like
codgers in the Parliament.
The Democratic senator knows this, of course. And he probably wouldn’t care had
not one of his Westchester pals called and said, “John, could you be a dear and
please tell Charlie and Bob to knock it off. I’m having an Oscar party on
Sunday. Tipton is dressing up in a bomb suit and I’m going to be Neytiri from
‘Avatar.’”
The preceding conversation was a dramatization, similar to Sen. Kerry’s
battlefield allusion. Both are meant for effect. Had he really wanted to make
WABC stay on Cablevision, he could have whipped up a law. Granted, that takes
some doing, but it has a bit more gravity than a publicized letter to an
appointed bureaucrat. That’s a way for the good senator to appear to be doing
something about which he has no intention of doing anything.
But just to make sure he has no intention of doing anything, Rep. Joe Barton of
Texas wrote a letter of his own, now don’t think he didn’t. Barton is a Texas
Republican, and with all due respect, I wouldn’t play poker with the man even
if the alternative involved watching reality TV. He’s got some shift to him,
that one, but he does talk like a human being and not some programmed meat
puppet like a lot of folks on the Hill.
“The deal is best left between the respective companies... free from government
interference or cajoling,” he said in the slightly more formal written word.
“The alternative is to ask the government to weight the relative value of
carriage and of particular programming. This is a risky proposition.”
I have lived in Washington. I have worked on Capitol Hill. I don’t even want to
start imagining what these people watch on TV, particularly what they don’t
admit watching.
Barton goes on to make the multiplatform argument. That if WABC yanks its
signal, Cablevision customers can get the programming another way. E.g.,
possibly another pay provider, although most subs now have bundles that include
voice service that DBS can’t provide. And overbuilders are still rare in cable
TV. ABC isn’t streaming full coverage of the event online, so there’s really
only one other way for people to get the Oscars.
Free. Over the air. With an antenna. Not exactly a tragedy of monolithic
proportion. I’m with Joe on this one. Let the boys battle it out. They’ll come
to some sort of deal, if only temporarily, by Sunday if not sooner. It’s the
Oscars. And Westchester County. Duh.
Permanent linkThe FCC is determined to reclaim all of the
broadcast spectrum for broadband. Even with a bill pending for the full inventory
of who and what is using the radio frequency bands, the FCC is going full-tilt
after that occupied by TV stations. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski this week
revealed a voluntary plan for
broadcasters to turn over their spectrum in a “Future Mobile Auction.” While he
stressed “voluntary,” he also failed to mention any other single source of
spectrum. The question is, why?
As NBC chief Jeff Zucker reportedly pointed out during a House Judiciary
Committee hearing yesterday, broadcasters now occupy roughly 200 MHz of the
spectrum. Even if the commission kills broadcast TV entirely, it needs another
300 MHz to reach its stated goal. Robert Seidel of CBS noted last week at the
Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat that, “One of the single largest users of
spectrum is the federal government, so I’d say to them, ‘check your own house
before you come to ours.’” Art Allison of the NAB said the DTV spectrum
allocation model was flawed, and that only single-interference models were used
for testing. Hence TV stations and networks continue to work out signal
coverage and reception issues. (See “Post-transition Issues
Persist”)
If ever there was an opportunity for conspiracy theory, this seems to be one.
The government agency in charge of regulating broadcast television appears intent
on killing it. The reality of most conspiracy theories, however, is they assign
far too much cleverness on the part of perpetrators. The spectrum battle is
just a political lobbying pig dressed up in public-interest lipstick. To hear FCC
Chairman Julius Genachowski tell it, nationwide broadband will heal the world.
It will put everyone to work. It will resolve the health-care schism, raise
literacy levels and clean up the environment. No, really. Clean up the
environment:
“With mobile broadband,” the chairman said Wednesday, “consumers and businesses
can utilize Smart Grid-enabled information services. A whole new world of
‘energy apps’ can adjust lights, heating, and cooling from a smartphone or
netbook, saving electricity, saving our environment, and saving money to boot.”
Wacky as it may be to the chairman, some of us turn off the lights before we
leave the house. But that’s a teensy quibble. The bigger quibble is the
disconnect between the chairman’s notions about how Americans live versus the
reality. This is endemic in Washington, D.C. I remember once telling an FCC
deputy that I didn’t have cable TV because I choose to delegate my meager
disposable income elsewhere. I, a journalist, speaking to he, a D.C. attorney.
He was incredulous that I thought $100 a month was too much to spend on TV.
Frankly, I think any amount of money per month is too much to spend on TV,
which places me among around 20 million or so Americans who watch it over-the-air.
That’s not enough to justify the use of spectrum for broadcasting, opponents
say without so much as a nod to the anti-competitive nature of their position.
Over-the-air television is the only alternative source of programming in many,
many situations. Cable whines about satellite, but the reality is that the vast
majority of Americans have a choice of exactly one cable provider--if that--and
no DBS provider in some cases. Others, the two DBS providers. Where I live,
it’s DirecTV or antenna TV. That’s it.
There are also people who don’t care about TV, just as there are people who
don’t care about broadband. There are actual human beings in America who are
not compelled to tweet their selection of sandwich meat. According to the FCC’s
own survey, 17.7 million Americans think the Internet is a waste of time. I
understand that’s heresy in smartphone-centric Washington, D.C., where the FCC
just tweeted, “Broadband Plan Executive Director Blair on how the Plan will
positively affect investment climate.”
Which answers the “why.” Wireless providers and by association, Wall Street,
can get more out of monthly fee services than broadcasters can from free TV.
And now broadcasters want to take free TV mobile, which would compete with the
incrementally charged video services proffered by wireless providers. Therein
is the crux of this entire effort to reallocate broadcast spectrum for
broadband. That, and nothing else. Public-interest assertions are disingenuous
posturing.
Americans deserve to be told the truth so that when they can’t find drinking
water after the next big natural disaster, they know who to thank.
Permanent linkLegislation to regulate loud content on TV remains pending on Capitol Hill. Such legislation has circulated before, and nothing new has happened since December on the most recent effort. However, the current proposed law has made it further through the legislative food chain than any of its predecessors.
The related bills gained traction in part because just about every American home has a TV set and a third-grader can comprehend abrupt changes in audio volume. Lawmakers occasionally require something they can all agree on in order to prove there does exist in nature something upon which they can all agree.
“All of us have had the experience of enjoying a favorite program only to find ourselves scrambling to locate the remote control when at the commercial break the volume of the television seemingly doubles. Those volume increases must end.” That was Virginia Democrat Rep. Rick Boucher last fall when his Communications subcommittee signed off on the House version.
If it were as easy as passing a law, those volume increases would have ended already. No one in the broadcast industry is particularly keen on annoying viewers to the point of driving them away. And it’s not is if they don’t know people are annoyed by abrupt audio shifts. They get the phone calls.
It’s also not as if they’re doing nothing about it. Broadcast audio was the topic of many hours of discussion at the Hollywood Post Alliance Technology Retreat this week in Rancho Mirage, Calif. After the display of a startling number of bar graphs, line charts and other plotted values of dialogue, commercial transitions and general program content, it’s clear that audio levels vary significantly and often suddenly on TV. Kind of like in real life.
Except for the sounds of real life generally occur in a somewhat organic or at least contiguous environment. The audio in television is attached to multiple and disparate sources that are stitched together, often on the fly and at the last minute, for distribution to homes. Notwithstanding the multiple variations of the distribution system and all its inherent, potential anomalies, each source of content bears an agenda of getting one’s attention and manipulating emotional response.
Case in point: The opening of the crime drama “CSI” typically begins with the lead character making his inevitable cryptic remark as if to his lapel, immediately followed by Pete Townsend’s full-body power shred on “Baba O’Riley.” That’s clearly on purpose; the show’s producers do it for effect--typically the Pavlovian signal that it’s time to pay attention to the tube. That type of shift seems to be copasetic with viewers compared to say, a transition from the lapel chat to a caffeine-drenched voice bellowing about free mattresses.
One is apparently acceptable; the other is not. Countless hours of work, intellectual rigor, debate and standardization has been expended to define a comfort zone for television audio. The resulting technology and practices are just now coming into regular implementation, and thus deserve a chance to work.
Should lawmakers proceed with its current audio legislation, it will give the FCC a year to come up with parameters. The industry is already far ahead of that curve. The only thing a law would do is complicate an already sufficiently complicated issue, and probably impose yet another massively cumbersome record-keeping requirement.
Some things are better left unregulated.
Permanent linkToyota this week punished ABC for saving lives.
That may be an overstatement; certainly it is to the carmaker. Toyota dealers
beat down ABC affiliates in the Southeast for the network’s ongoing coverage of
the carmaker’s recalls by shifting ad dollars to competing stations. Toyota’s message
to the news media: You report what we like or we pull our money.
And so ABC responded. The continuing Toyota story, possibly one of the most
nefarious of corporate misbehavior, is no longer front and center on ABCNews.com. It’s now buried down in the
Blotter section, where a former attorney with the company said it
systematically destroyed and subverted evidence of safety problems. Toyota says
the guy’s crazy; the usual recourse on whistle-blowers.
In the meantime, the L.A. Times has a
story
from one of many drivers suing the automaker; he’s pictured glaring at the
camera from the confines of a neck brace he earned rolling over a suddenly
accelerating Corolla. The Christian
Science Monitor, which doesn’t own TV stations, notes that questions
remain about the car company’s explanation for what has been revealed as
endemic sudden acceleration. The Monitor found
reports of Prius complaints as far back as 2005 models; only 2010s were
recalled.
The ball started rolling last September with a Lexus and Toyota recall
affecting around 4 million vehicles over floor mats that were said to get stuck
under gas pedals, causing unintended acceleration. ABC News investigated,
running a story
in November with drivers who challenged the floor-mat explanation. They were going
faster when the brake pedal was pressed.
Another 2.3 million Toyotas were recalled in January, about one-third of them
for an acceleration-related mechanical malfunction. Around that time, ABC’s
Brian Ross did a story
on a guy who had the same experience and credited the news outlet for saving
his life when he shifted the car into neutral and nursed it to a dealership
where it sat revving for no explicable reason.
Then production was stopped on eight of the company’s most popular vehicles,
and further recalls continue worldwide. Around 60 lawsuits have been filed,
including more than a dozen for wrongful death and personal injury, according
to AboutLawsuits.com.
Defenders are speaking forth, including governors of four states with big
non-union Toyota plants representing manufacturing jobs that are now nigh-on
impossible to replace. Edmonds.com
released a complaint
report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration listing
Toyota as 17th among carmakers with the most complaints per vehicle sold.
“No one should overlook the issues raised by the Toyota recalls, but it is
important to keep things in perspective,” said Edmonds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl. “A broader view shows that consumer
complaints reflect an industry issue, not just a Toyota issue. As Toyota’s
experience in recent months clearly demonstrates, it is no longer an option for
car companies to dismiss consumer complaints, even if the event is difficult to
replicate or diagnose.”
Anwyl may have a point, but there’s no telling about how Toyota would have
handled the current situation without the bright, shining light shown on it by
Ross and his ilk. The company could very well have continued blaming drivers,
as it did in the case
of a couple who’s car dragged itself over a cliff, killing the driver’s wife.
Here’s the deal; Toyota certainly doesn’t owe ABC affiliates any allegiance or
advertising dollars, but its tactic reeks of evading culpability. What it
should have done is come clean months ago rather than blame drivers for driving
its cars. Corporate heads should have rolled. Executives should have issued authentic, sincere apologies, and
outlined the rectification strategy immediately. Ross likely would have backed
off.
But Toyota equivocated, much as any corporation doing business in the world
today for fear of being sued, even when denial doesn’t prevent legal action.
It’s about the size of the settlement.
The unfortunate fall-out is the further endangerment of news. News that presses
for accountability from business, bankers, politicians and people in general.
Gathering news is not free. Opinion, such as this and that which dominates most of
what’s published on the Internet, is not news. News is a research and
fact-checking process that takes time and resources, as well as a culture of
integrity from the society it serves.
When business no longer supports a true and viable news media, we’d all better
start riding bikes. Slowly. Permanent linkRegulatory intervention makes for a bad business
plan, and broadcasting unfortunately is so wound up in regulatory relief
Houdini would be challenged to free it. The industry has become reliant on
must-carry, retransmission consent and various other shards that keep
competitors from eating it alive. Now NBC stations are looking down the barrel
of a retrans rival from whom they must also negotiate network affiliations.
They’re now on the front line of a rapidly evolving media environment in which
dependence on traditional regulatory structures yields ever-greater
vulnerability.
A merger of Comcast and NBC Universal would represent the first time a cable
operator would take majority ownership of one of the nation’s largest broadcast
networks. It would put non-O&O NBC stations carried on Comcast systems at
the mercy of a mega corporation with interests diametrically opposed to those
stations. The head of their affiliate board yesterday implored Congress to
create yet another regulatory structure by which retrans and affiliation
negotiations are completely separate.
Few things seem more unlikely. Congress has no say over the proposed merger.
Comcast chief Brian Roberts and NBCU head Jeff Zucker just showed up on Capitol
Hill to be polite. Members of the House Commerce communications subcommittee
were polite back. They got a bit of a spleen venting from Sen. Al Franken
(D-Minn.) over in the Senate Judiciary Committee. He will therefore look tough
on big business to the folks back home.
Other lawmakers will posture accordingly. Roberts and Zucker will promise to be
nice. Zucker will then be relegated to the content community where hubris is a
requirement. Roberts and his deputy Steve Burke will repair to the castle in
Philly and craft a business-integration plan that will assure the further
growth of Comcast. The company started 47 years ago with 15 people, when Brian
Roberts was four. It now employs more than 100,000 people, in spite of
regulatory controls on rates, content and access to its infrastructure. It
could just be that Roberts and Burke know how to compete. That would seem to be
the whole idea of capitalism, until someone gets knocked off the top of the
heap.
Broadcasting enjoyed exclusive residence to that rarified air for many decades.
Now its advocates have to witness its desperate attempt to slow its descent by
clutching at regulations. For years, that community has wondered why
broadcasters didn’t mass market free DTV long, long before the transition date.
It could have emerged a true competitor to cable and satellite. But that didn’t
happen. It instead opted for retrans, the long-term sustainability of which
seems highly unlikely.
Comcast-NBCU is a simultaneous shot over the bow of retrans and the affiliate
model. The future of TV stations might well be 24/7 generators of local content
for any type of platform from cable to ATSC-enabled iPads. Whatever it becomes,
it’s unlikely to be limping along entirely dependent on regulatory relief. It’s
seriously time for the broadcast industry to stop looking back.
Permanent linkWASHINGTON: Everyone has a cell phone, so service providers
have but one way to increase revenues--sell more features. One of those features is full-motion
video, e.g., TV. Cell-phone TV is just getting legs, so the last thing service
providers need is a bunch of broadcasters offering the same thing for free. One
way to make sure they don’t is to relieve them of spectrum, and two lobbies in
Washington have figured out how.
The CTIA--The Wireless Association representing the big cell-phone service
providers, and the Consumer Electronics Association, are proposing that
over-the-air TV be moved to a low-power, distributed transmission scheme. The
pair claim that TV stations with distributed transmission won’t need as much
buffer spectrum, aka white space. They
suggest repacking broadcasters in order to free up the white space for broadband.
Let’s not even bother with the fact that the white space has already been handed
to Google and Microsoft. Let’s play like that regulatory abuse never
happened, and that we can all have free broadband and cell service on Google’s
ad-supported Nexus.
The broadcast lobbies objected to the DTS strategy, saying it would never provide
the same coverage as high-power broadcasting. The technology for DTS was
approved by the broadcast industry’s standards body to fill gaps digital
signals don’t reach. TV stations across the country continue to work out
reception issues from last summer’s DTV transition, when substantial areas of
coverage were lost by many moving to VHF assignments.
Whether or not a distributed transmission system could adequately replace the
current one is beside the point. Redesigning the broadcast television infrastructure
while the last redesign continues is a
waste of taxpayer money. The federal government put up a few billion
dollars to transition public TV stations and the public to digital television.
Towers, transmitters and antennas weighing tons have been put in place for a
channel plan that was conceived of within the last five years. Studios and
broadcast facilities have been outfitted with the necessary, corresponding
digital technology.
The fed helped pay for the digital transition because the fed ordered it. The
fed ordered the digital transition to give wireless providers more spectrum,
which they got last year and have yet to fully use. Now who’s
spectrum-squatting?
The CTIA and the CEA, like a lot of other anti-broadcast groups, are saying
that using the spectrum for broadband would generate billions of dollars. The
estimates are stellar. In this case, the pair say spectrum freed by
repacking for DTS would bring anywhere from $36.5 billion to $65.6 billion.
From whom? AT&T and Verizon, one would presume. Few other companies have
$65 billion lying around, and the software guys know how to get spectrum for free.
The CTIA/CEA filing
suggests that such lucrative auction proceeds could help underwrite this new
broadcast transmission system, though they don’t factor in the cost of the one
that’s not yet entirely completed. Granted, cameras wouldn’t have to be swapped
out, but just about everything necessary to transmit a signal would.
The many, many tons of gear Americans just paid for to accomplish the digital
transition? That would be called, “scrap.”
There is the economic argument that nationwide access to broadband has the
potential to increase small business opportunities for people in even the most
remote areas. That might well be true, but phone companies will wrench
underwriting from the fed to serve remote and rural communities, just like
they’ve done for years with voice service. Estimates for the universal broadband
service fund haven’t been floated. The end cost to the consumer has not been
floated.
Money is the singular reason that every U.S. household, school and business
does not already have access to broadband. It’s not at all about spectrum. The
wireless industry wants to hold everyone hostage to exorbitant monthly
subscriber fees for using what is purported to be the public airwaves. And by
marginalizing broadcasters, they eliminate potential competition for mobile
video services.
Tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, free market. Permanent linkHDTV is about to become as passé as Zip Drives, dot-matrix printers and
vacuums that have to be pushed around. Or so it seems from the rhetoric
surrounding 3DTV. It’s compelling, no doubt. The migration of television to a
digital infrastructure opened the medium up to the same sort of fluidity
characteristic of all silicon-based industries. Nothing, and I do mean nothing,
remains the same for long, and the obsolescence curve keeps shortening. TrueCycle, a consumer
electronics recycler in Pasadena, Calif., says the average lifespan of a
computer in 1997 was four to six years. By 2005, it was said to be less than
two years, “which means that one computer will become obsolete for each one put
on the market,” McAdams wrote from her antique Dell.
Now television as a platform is much the same, precisely because the hardware
has morphed into a computer platform. Around half of U.S. television households
bought high-definition TV sets within the last four years or so. Prices for
HDTV sets are about half of what they were even two years ago. A 46-inch,
1080p, 60 Hz Samsung is less than $900 at Walmart. That TV would have easily
run $1,600 or more in 2008.
So it is by necessity--at least in part--that the consumer electronics industry
has wrapped itself around 3DTV. The phenomenon is also a natural progression of
the possibilities presented by silicon, and a certain breed of engineers of
the George Mallory school of motivation. They are pursuing the technical
challenges of 3DTV precisely “because it is there.”
Predictions abound about 3DTV; that it will take hold quicker than HDTV, that
the 3D format itself will be a multi-billion business within two years time,
etc. “Avatar” certainly advanced that mileage gauge, though it’s arguably the
first widely accepted 3D movie, and James Cameron spent years and at least a
quarter-of-a-billion dollars on it. It looks good for a reason. A lot of other
3D preceding it--not so much. And the early attempts at 3D sports, meaning
football in the United States, generated mixed reactions. “Some of it was
really tough on your eyes,” offered Shon
Lucas on last year’s 3D coverage of the BCS Championship Game. Diane Pucin
of The Los Angeles Times noticed the
“jerky cameras, unusual angles and just a general sense that it was an
experiment with kinks not worked out.”
To be fair, that was a year ago. A lot has happened since then, but there’s
miles to go according to the TV experts who came together recently at the USC
School of Cinematic Arts for a Sports Video Group event. There are multiple ways of formatting 3D, for one
thing. There’s no single mastering standard, though the work is under way.
Inserting ads is an issue unto itself. Perhaps most complex is the challenge of
syncing 3D video images properly for human visual perception. That is, not
making people sick.
What likely happened to Shon Lucas is similar to what affected folks at Cowboy
Stadium Dec. 13, when a 3D version of the action on the field was displayed on
the venue’s 160-by-72-foot video screen. Pupils are a fixed distance apart, and
vision converges at around 60 feet, where we naturally see two dimensions. The big-screen 3D effect caused people’s eyes to veer out of
alignment. With home 3DTV, this so-called “vergence” occurs at around two feet
behind the viewing screen, giving large venues an on-screen appearance of a
diorama. (Slide courtesy of Mark I. Schubin.)
3DTV is exciting as much for the technical challenges as for the format itself,
but I don’t look for it to supplant HDTV any time soon. Half of the TV-equipped
households in the country have standard-definition TVs, and a significant
portion of those have converters or a pay service hooked up to a cathode-ray
tube. Those of us in the press, and certainly the consumer electronics and
video industries, will hype 3DTV as if it’s the commercialization of cold
fusion.
It is not. It will be an enhancement in a constantly shifting landscape of evolving
media platforms, one day coming to an iTablet near you.
(Share your thoughts with me at dmcadams@nbmedia.com). -- Deborah D. McAdams) Permanent linkThe first week of the new year’s been a doozey,
starting with a cage match between Time Warner and Fox over retransmission fees.
They settled on New Year’s Day after a holiday greeting from Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mass.). Sinclair and Mediacom also made nice for another year. The first
ever trial activation of the national presidential alert system was conducted
in Alaska. It worked but for a few glitches, though some informed observers
noted that if there is actually ever a need for a presidential alert, no one
would be around to hear it.
“Avatar,” in the meantime, broke the $1 billion mark at the box office. James
Cameron’s 3D sci-fi epic movie segued nicely into the Consumer Electronics
Show, where even Vizio, the Wal-Mart of TV makers, announced a new line of
3D-capable TV sets. Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony and JVC did likewise.
DirecTV, Discovery and ESPN revealed plans to launch 3DTV networks. This is
clearly the year 3D video breaks fully into the mainstream market.
The timing of CES assures an avalanche of tech news during the first week of
the year, although Google unveiled its Nexus One on its home turf in Mountain
View, Calif. The first Google phone runs on the Google operating system and
will eventually transmit on Google’s free spectrum courtesy of the Federal
Communications Commission.
It’s good to be Google.
FLO TV meanwhile got into the iPhone while Samsung introduced a handset with
mobile DTV reception, and LG said it had one on the way along with a likewise
equipped portable DVD player.
Automaker Ford demonstrated a dashboard touch-screen for smartphone app
interaction.
In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, two veteran Democratic senators announced their
retirement. Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota
said they wouldn’t see re-election this year.
Across town, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission asked for
another month to complete a National Broadband Plan before presenting it to
Congress.
Broadcast stocks began to rebound after Sinclair revises its fourth-quarter
guidance upward, and NBC appeared to be ending its Jay Leno experiment in prime
time.
Congress reconvenes in Week No. 2 of the New Year. Let the games continue...
Permanent linkOne of the most notable things about James
Cameron’s use of 3D technology in his new epic movie “Avatar” is his restraint.
Nothing in this movie jumps off the screen, the way 3D is so often described.
“Avatar” instead draws in the audience. First, into the austere fuselage of a
cargo aircraft, where a hapless former Marine with no family sits ruefully in
his wheelchair.
The opening of “Avatar” fell in sharp contrast with the 3D trailers that
preceded the midnight opener at The Bridge cinema in L.A.’s Howard Hughes
Center. “Piranha3D” was a wall of toothy creatures headed straight for the audience.
People laughed at it. Not in a good way. If the trailer of “Dispicable Me” is
any indication, the animated feature is a waste of 3D. Both were indicative of
why some analysts have deemed 3D to be a gimmick. Rich Greenfield of Pali
Capital said as much
in November. This morning, Greenfield predicted “Avatar” would have the biggest
December opening weekend in history.
The film is likely to mark the true turning point in consumer adoption of 3DTV.
The glasses are not a bother with “Avatar.” It doesn’t induce nausea, possibly
thanks in part to the Fusion Camera System and Cameron’s employment of it to
see how the motion-captured actors looked within the digitally rendered set as
the scenes were being filmed. In only a couple of instances does “Avatar” jar
the optic nerves. One is the sudden and swift movement of troops off of a transport
that appears to have been shot by a handheld. The other involved split-second
camera sweeps in the CG environment that recall pixilation in fast-motion HD,
only with the brain itself unable to process the visual information rapidly
enough.
Sports was supposed to be the driver of 3DTV, just as it was for high
definition, but “Avatar” may hold the key to why 3D basketball and football
game coverage hasn’t really set the world on fire. The action, camera angle and
capture cannot be meticulously controlled. Cameron’s taken great pains to make
sure 3D enhances rather than distracts.
Only one time does Cameron point anything at his audience, doing a 180-degree
frontal shot of the main character with an arrow drawn in a bow.
“Avatar” works not only from a 3D perspective. The story stands on its own. “Avatar”
is James Cameron’s vision of how things might have gone in the New World if
bison were 15 times larger with hammer-heads and armored skin. It’s also a
contemplation of why Second Life is so madly popular, what with more obese Americans
than ever before. “Avatar’s” disabled main character becomes physically capable
of leaping between moving aircraft and the fluorescent pterodactyl he roped and
reined in mid-air. Then there’s the light-emitting flora, the six-legged horses
with anteater heads, floating mountains, quad-rotor helos, transformer soldier
suits and a mining operation reminiscent of “Forbidden Planet’s” Great Machine.
This is “Titanic” for sci-fi geeks.
There still will be quibbles. “Avatar” is preachy on corporate greed and the
environment. There’s evil Anglo Saxons crushing an indigenous pagan population,
which in turn can only be saved by a conveniently enlightened Anglo Saxon. There’s
a ridiculously silly spiral light-chute effect to illustrate how characters
perceive the inhabitation of their avatars, like something out of “That ’70s
Show.”
It will be fashionable in some circles to savage this film, but that will not
prevent it from making $2 billion for the $300 million it cost to make. “Titanic”
likewise left a few people rolling their eyes, but that $200 million James
Cameron epic brought in $1.8 billion.
“Avatar” comes just three weeks before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, which is shaping up to be the 3D CES of 2010. Panasonic, Sony and LG all
intend tooll out 3DTV sets next year. Sony is making 3D a companywide
initiative, and Rupert Murdoch, whose 20th Century Fox made “Avatar,” will roll
out 3DTV distribution on his U.K. satellite systems next year.
Whatever TV stations and the broadcast industry in general can do to get on
this bandwagon, they should do it now, and do it right. If 3D hasn’t lit the
world on fire for all the years it’s been around, it probably hasn’t been done
properly.
Now, it has, and Fox has dibs on it.
Permanent linkIf I hear old school one more time, I might go postal. Except for going postal
is probably old school. Ambivalence over egalitarian live Web broadcasting is
probably old school, too. Allow me to fetch my teeth so I can chew this fat.
Much was made of the news this week that Apple adopted a live streaming app for
the iPhone. Now iPhoners can iPhone in live video of themselves or whomever
doing heaven only knows what on the app Web site, Ustream. I went there and
watched a young woman earnestly strum a guitar and sing painfully off-key.
Thanks to the wonders of technological innovation, I was able to feel a
combination of dread and pity for a total stranger.
It’s not as if live Webcasting is entirely new. All one needed up to this point
is a Web cam and a URL. The majority of folks uploaded video, however, giving
them time to perhaps rethink the impulse.
We’ve all played with the medium. We’re all on WordPress, Linkedin, Twitter,
Orkut, Ammado, Plaxo, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Tripit, TypePad, Classmates,
Flickr, Goodreads, Blip and Meetup like a swarm of pseudosocial butterflies. I
remember when getting a story meant putting on a headlamp, climbing a tree with
ropes and saddles, showing up backstage, shadowing someone, haunting certain
coffee shops. Now it’s about being plugged into the matrix and Twittering
yourself all over the place.
I’m baffled this stuff holds anyone’s interest longer than it takes to Tweet
something. Perhaps that’s because I’m old school.
I’m also ambivalent because I do appreciate the way the Internet allows anyone
to market themselves. I appreciate being able to find just about any type of
music other than the endless blargh of “classic rock” that clogs traditional
radio. It’s nice that the video medium isn’t just the domain of a few movie
studios and TV production houses, but rather anyone with a Flip.
But we are not all stars. Even most of the folks considered stars seem a bit
tedious. Let us put down our collective need to be special and acknowledge our
mediocrity There are 6.8 billion of us skittering around on this wet rock,
folks. We ain’t none of us all that, though I am fan of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Unfortunately, Mme. Suu Kyi will be unlikely to stream anything live on the
Internet anytime soon.
Kudos in the meantime to Chrysler for making a statement that could otherwise not be
made in Burma. Hence the wonder of this medium, also a conduit for the substantial
assemblage that cannot spell, punctuate or otherwise think an original thought.
Now this group has another way to display their particular set of skills. We
must alert the media. Oh, that’s right... they are the media.
We hacks are just old school. Permanent linkConsolidation critics are already all over the
Comcast-NBCU deal, mostly because it’s a doozey. The NBCU acquisition gives the
Roberts family an unprecedented chunk of the nation’s video media pipeline, but
that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
All feelings about media consolidation aside, the Robertses know how to run a
business. They know the meaning of due diligence and they’ve pulled assets out
of the dregs before. AT&T was being dragged down by its cable TV business
before Comcast picked it up in 2002. The margins on that business improved, in
part because Comcast doesn’t just buy businesses to prop up faltering legacy
assets. The company actually invests the resources necessary to get the best
performance from an asset.
Comcast generally has an operational strategy going in that consists of more
than generalized assumptions about synergy--the type that took AOL Time Warner
to the ground. One of the first things Comcast does is start communicating that
strategy to employees of acquired companies, who are supplied with the
resources to achieve it.
Additionally, Comcast is run by executives who are hardly corporate Visigoths.
They’re not starving, to be sure. Brian Roberts received $23.7 million in total
compensation last year, less than 1 percent of the company’s reported net
income of $2.5 billion. But neither Brian Roberts nor any of the Comcast
executive team are known for outlandish personal lifestyles and spending. They
belong more in the category of consummate deal-makers like John Malone, the
Liberty Media chief who has a penchant for tooling around in an RV full of
pugs. Roberts and his deputy, Steve Burke, are easily among the most forthright
and non-egotistical lads in the media industry.
I remember once e-mailing Brian Roberts that I’d become his mother’s fan after
seeing her on a local cable access show encouraging older women to belly dance
for exercise. He was clearly proud of her and thanked me.
The Comcast suite has agglomerated and made successful the nation’s largest
cable operation through attention and acumen. They are likely to do the same
with NBCU, which Jeffrey Immelt at GE liked well enough when it needed no
attention. Now, Immelt can concentrate on light bulbs and rockets, and NBCU can
be run by guys that focus exclusively on media.
The combined assets of Comcast and NBCU include more than 24 million pay TV
subscribers, 15.7 million broadband and 6.5 million VoIP customers; two
broadcast networks, 26 TV stations, cable networks CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo
SyFy, E! Entertainment, Style, Golf Channel, Versus, G4, TV One, PBS Kids
Sprout, New England Cable News Network, 10 regional sports networks, two
professional sports teams, two movie studios TV production and syndication as
well as various other retail and entertainment interests.
The deal is expected to give Comcast annual revenues of $50 billion--roughly
equivalent to the gross domestic product of Bulgaria. In case there’s any
question, this is what is meant by the term, “Comcastic.”
It’s certainly not ideal that so much American media is controlled by so few,
but there are arguably few that can sustain it anymore. If the alternative to
media consolidation is fewer outlets, nothing is gained. The Comcast-NBCU
marriage will cause all sorts of noise in Washington, D.C., but it will go
through, the dust will settle and the Roberts family will buy DirecTV, Google
and Vizeo.
Permanent linkI wonder if the Parents Television Council wouldn’t
be better served by a less overt response to Adam Lambert’s performance on last
Sunday’s “American Music Awards” on ABC. The group issued one of its all-points
bulletins, very publicly urging members to complain to the network, the
producers, advertisers and the FCC. I know righteous indignation is the charter
of the PTC, and more power to them. Someone ought to be monitoring for TV dreck,
but the resulting publicity just serves to draw attention to something most of
us would prefer to ignore. And what could be more horrible for a performer than
to be ignored?
Not much, or so it appears in Mr. Lambert’s case. I have to agree with the PTC
on the point that Lambert’s performance was “vulgar” and “tasteless.” I’d have
to toss “disgusting” in there as well. He held a guy’s head to his crotch and
at one point sucked the tonsils out of his male keyboardist. If the youngster
could actually sing, it was very hard to tell. If he hit a single note in that
“song,” I missed it.
Mr. Lambert dismissed the objections to his display as discriminatory. Madonna
kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera during the VMAs didn’t raise such
a ruckus, he reasoned. Well guess what, little man? That was six years ago.
Janet Jackson’s flash dance? Five years ago. Madonna’s first sexually charged,
awards-show hijinks? Try 1984. Here’s the deal: It’s been done. Again and again
and again and again. So the most truly offensive thing about Lambert’s
performance was how boring it is to watch yet another Hollywood sausage-made
celebrity exercise his marginally developed emotional intellect on stage.
Please give it a break, already. Playboy’s going broke because boorish, overt
sexuality is shoved in our faces all the time. We are Clockwork Oranged, not
sexually repressed as a few wee-minded ones would like to think. We’ve just had
enough of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder “shocking” us.
Ho hum.
Maybe Hollywood continues to encourage this type of thing because of a
propensity of NPDs running the business. Meanwhile, they can’t for the life of
them figure out why ratings continue to sink through the floor. Hmm... better
add something even more controversial to the mix. Let’s stage a B&D club
with the new kid who just revealed his sexuality, even though that, too, is
something most of us no longer care about.
I remember when Cindy Crawford came out as heterosexual. No, I don’t. And
neither do you, because it’s not a big deal.
From what I understand, Mr. Lambert possesses a notable set of pipes. He’s been
singing on stage since he was a kid, and he made it past that Simon Cowell guy,
who’s not known for coddling off-key yodelers. He’s likely worked up a sweat to
get where he is, and deserves more than to be cheaply showcased for his
sexuality.
I wish the PTC luck, by all means, but I hope it’s response doesn’t make young
Mr. Lambert even more determined to allow exhibitionism to overshadow his
skill. He needs to remember... Madonna can’t actually sing.
Permanent linkPrima facie, South Carolina spectrum lease could
not have come at a worse time. While broadcasters fend off aggressive calls to
give up TV spectrum to make way for broadband, South Carolina leases out its
licenses for that very purpose. The state’s licenses belonged to its
Educational TV organization, which for some reason had spectrum in the 2.5 GHz
band--well out of TV territory. South Carolina’s been working on a deal with
wireless and WiMax providers for months to make use of the spectrum. It just
happened to come together at the precise moment that the attack on broadcast
frequencies reached a fever pitch on Capitol Hill.
Yet South Carolina’s lease begs the question--why, if 2 GHz spectrum is
adequate for broadband, is there such a hue and cry to wrench licenses away
from broadcasters? Cost would be the obvious reason. Signals travel much more
efficiently in the 700 MHz spectrum freed up by the DTV transition than in 2
GHz. GigaOm estimates that building a
nationwide wireless network in the 700 band would cost around $2 billion versus
$4 billion for PCS network at 1.9 Ghz. The primary reason for the cost
differential is that the higher band requires roughly 10 times more cell towers
to achieve the same coverage as one in the 700 MHz band.
Then again...
Clearwire and DigitalBridge got 1.59 GHz of bandwidth for $143 million for 30
years--around $90,000 per megahertz. Bidders shelled out $19.6 billion doled
out for the 52 MHz auctioned off in the 700 MHz band--around $377 million per
megahertz. That’s 4,189 times more than what Clearwire and DigitalBridge paid.
So which broadband network would logically cost less to the subscriber? I
wonder.
I also wonder which one will be built out first. It’s truly disingenuous to
hammer for more broadband spectrum when what’s already been allocated to 4G
wireless services has yet to be built out. It’s also delusional to believe that
any commercial wireless provider is going to build out in remote areas if they
haven’t done so already, which is why a singular nationwide broadband network
seems to be an ill-conceived concept.
It’s an attractive concept, to be sure, from the perspective of a few
regulatory resumes. But the approach is reminiscent of Yul Brenner’s Pharaoh.
“So let it be written, so let it be done.” Not, “what is the most efficient,
cost-effective and technically feasible way to bring everyone in the country
online?” The first mode of operation launches immediately into justifications
for itself, e.g., economic projections, social benefits, etc. The second asks
right off the bat what’s the best way to reach these benefits.
An admittedly oversimplified comparison of South Carolina’s deal with the 700
MHz auction certainly doesn’t comprise a white paper on the topic of approach,
but it’s unfortunately closer than the hyped being shoveled on Capitol Hill. A
community-by-community approach to building out broadband might be the most
logical, cost-effective way to achieve ubiquitous and reasonably secure access. It may not make one or
two wireless providers unimaginably even more wealthy, but based on the
government’s own mandate, that’s not the point.
Permanent linkThere seems to be no clearer message that
networks don’t feel they need TV stations any longer than the emerging demands
for a piece of retransmission fees. The network shakedown couldn’t come at a
worse period in the industry, and arguably seems time to kill off the affiliate
model. TV stations across the country are just now beginning to dig out of the
auto-industry collapse and a loss of households in the digital transition. They’re
also under attack from the federal government for their spectrum.
Retransmission consent fees, which cable and satellite operators were reluctant
yet willing to pay, has been making up at least a portion of the lost revenues.
So now networks, which have ratcheted up affiliate fees in recent years, are
getting ready to strong-arm stations for a piece of the retrans action. Belo’s
chief, Dunia Shive, told TVNewsCheck
this week that ABC had come after the Dallas-based broadcast group, which
pulled in $10.6 million in retrans for the third quarter--nearly 8 percent of
revenues. Nexstar of Irving, Texas took in $7.9 million in retrans--13 percent
of revenues. Nexstar chief Perry Sook said he was not yet “having any specific
conversations” with networks about splitting retrans because the group had no
affiliate agreements up for renewal this year.
“Having said that I am not of a mind and don’t understand why the networks
would feel that they’re entitled to a piece of a revenue stream that we
developed that they had no hand in negotiating, documenting or collecting,” he
said during Nexstar’s third-quarter earnings call.
Sook said a local cable operation in Stroudsburg, Penn., carried three NBC
affiliates, including Nexstar’s, for which it paid retrans. Sook said it was
proof that the value placed on affiliate signals was for local rather than
national programming.
Robert Seidman, posting at TVByTheNumbers,
said who’s kidding who:
“If I’m CBS I’m laughing at Sook’s comments and thinking, ‘Yeah right. How many
people watch your local news broadcasts and how many people watch ‘NCIS’ and
‘NFL Football?’”
Seidman also has a point, one that goes to an increasing skepticism about the
continued viability of the affiliate model. Yet if networks could go directly
to national pay carriers, why haven’t they done so before now? Perhaps that’s
the very question that will be on the table for the next round of affiliation
renewals.
It remains to be seen how this particular battle unfolds, but right now it’s
hard not to see it as just another nail in the coffin of free TV.
Permanent linkPublic interest advocates need a
reality check when it comes to news and media ownership. There’s a prevailing
notion that greater ownership concentration yields less diverse and competitive
coverage. There may be a kernel truth to that assumption--sometimes, in some
markets. It may be the case in Hawaii, for example, where a local watchdog
group is vigorously opposing a shared services agreement among the CBS, NBC and
MyNetworkTV affiliates.
Coverage may become less diverse, but in all likelihood, it will look exactly
like it does now.
That’s because news costs money. It has to be paid for, even if competent
journalists are expected to work 24/7 for the sheer joy of doing so. News
requires boots on the ground, face-to-face exchanges, research, access and
quite often, time to develop a story. Sometimes those stories turn into rabbit
holes. Sometimes they shine the light on wrongdoing by very powerful interests.
Occasionally, those powerful interests are the ones paying the bills for the
news organization. There once was a day that journalism could bite the hand the
fed it. That day is gone, and no one so much as peeped about it. Public
interest groups are happy to say they’ll boycott advertisers in shows that
displease them. Where are the groups supporting businesses advertising with
Hearst-Argyle’s Peabody-winning news? Where are those guys?
You hear the word “greed” a lot when it comes to media consolidation. That
greedy broadcasters just want to make money. I want to make money. I don’t feel
greedy. Greed, thy name is Bernie Madoff, perhaps, or even corporate officers
of money-losing companies firing a few thousand folks to fund their bonuses.
There could be a few broadcast executives like that--sluicing a bit more than
their share, pretending magic ponies will save them. But I doubt there’s many.
Several top broadcast executives have taken pay cuts, roll backs and furloughs.
A $500,000 executive can absorb that more easily than a $50,000 newsroom
employee, I get that. But we all live to scale, don’t we. We plan our lives
according to numbers. When those change, so do our lives.
Corporate executives are the poster folks of greed in this country, rightly or
wrongly so, but shareholders should be on milk cartons as well.
Most of the media in this country is publicly owned. It’s owned outright in
stock, tucked into 401ks and mutual funds and vicariously owned by bondholders
and banks. And shareholders--that would be the public--want as much ROI as
possible and typically more.
If media consolidation is being driven by greed, there’s certainly plenty of
places to point fingers.
The public bears culpability in another fashion as well, and that’s
consumption. There’s the old saying in news that if it bleeds, it leads. It’s
true, because mayhem draws the biggest audience. If people hankered for
esoteric, detailed, intellectually rigorous reporting, that’s what they’d be
dished, Mr. Copps. Seriously, dude. How many people do you really think can
accurately identify Jim Lehrer versus Rihanna?
Which brings us back to Hawaii, at least in our dreams. Hawaii has around 1.3
million people. How many big stories can there possibly be going on every day? The
local news there is probably pretty cookie-cutter already. The Los Angeles
market has around 18 million people, and the local TV stations here all cover
the same thing, sometimes in the same rotation.
The situation with media ownership and news certainly isn’t ideal, but further
regulation of TV stations at this point could very well mean the end of local
news altogether.
I’m not sure anyone wants that.
Permanent linkIt seems odd that wireless is the holy grail of all
transmitted media except TV: Wireless broadband, wireless networks, wireless
phones--as in, the demise of land lines. Television alone has migrated the
other way. Very few domiciles lack a snake of coaxial cable, and because of
that, many folks argue that wireless TV is no longer necessary.
It may not be, if only in the sense that TV’s not exactly “necessary” the way
water and food are “necessary.” But relegating TV to wires so cell phone
companies can charge people subscriptions for the public airwaves seems
backward.
A massive, nationwide infrastructure already exists for wireless television.
That infrastructure was completely retooled in the last few years at the behest
of the federal government. It’s now been live for 140 days.
It’s the only television transmission system whereby high-definition
programming isn’t crushed into foggy blur. It’s a shame broadcasters didn’t
shout that fact from every one of their transmitters, but that train done left
the station. It’s onward, into a future where bureaucrats and lobbyists are
busy rolling up the tracks.
The medium is under siege, there’s no doubt. Yet another “study” was rolled out
this week asserting the spectrum is worth more for broadband than broadcasting.
It doesn’t say to whom, however. The government coffers argument is a joke. Whatever
money the government might make from it at auction has already been spent 192
times.
The projected economic benefits assume ubiquity, and ubiquity requires
infrastructure. There are millions of Claudville, Va.’s across the country
skipped over by broadband providers now. That’s not going to change under a nationwide
plan. Those communities will have to develop their own strategies, as
Claudville did--one in which local broadcasters participate at some level.
There’s also that $62 billion that wireless providers supposedly would pay for
the broadcast spectrum licenses. All cap ex ends up coming out of customers’
pockets. That’s just business. That’s just $201 for every man, woman and child
in the country. Toss in construction costs, marketing, lobbying, bonuses and
incidentals, and you probably have $1,000 per person.
Phone bills will skyrocket. That’ll be fun.
There’s also scads of WiFi pockets around the country already generating
millions for carriers. It’s unlikely that those will be jeopardized.
Nationwide wireless broadband is a
good idea, but not dictated by the Pharaohic school of management, “so let it
be written, so let it be done.” The very fact that communities like Claudville,
Va., had no Internet provider into 2009 suggests nationwide access is more than
a matter of spectrum. It’s economics. No service provider in business is there
to make things cheaper for their customers. I am typically reminded here that
long-distance calling is cheaper than it once was, but I pay the phone company
five times what I did when long-distance calling cost so much per minute. My
phone use is precisely the same.
This assault against broadcast television is just gathering momentum. There’s
little being said about the competitive element it provides for cable TV, and
what will happen to cable bills once it’s gone.
There’s a mantra in much of Washington, D.C. that no one would notice if
broadcast TV went away. Meanwhile, nearly 35 million coupons were redeemed across
the country for over-the-air digital TV receivers. Chances are, someone might
notice if wireless TV goes away.
Permanent linkHello Gordon Smith! You have your
work cut out for you. The FCC is now fully engaged in killing off broadcast
television, deploying its bureaucrats to get a feel for who might want to give
up their spectrum license for a cut of auction proceeds. This might not wash
with the guys on the NAB board, who are actual broadcasters (as if John McCain
would ever let it happen).
Debt holders are another story. Broadcast bankers might like the idea of a cash
payout for spectrum, and Washington clearly has no problem giving money to
banks.
The spectrum reclamation movement is in full flush, and as such, rife with
distortion.
The first and most persistent is that broadcasters get the spectrum for free.
They receive licenses in return for fulfilling public obligations, and in turn,
the public has access to free TV. The infrastructure to provide that service is
by no means free, nor was the recent government-mandated upgrade to digital
transmission. The billions just spent to create digital broadcasting was also
intended to free up spectrum, which it did--Chs. 52-69. Most of it, as
expected, went to Verizon and AT&T, and is not yet built out. Another 10
MHz hasn’t even been auctioned off.
Some of the pressure to give up spectrum is coming from the wireless giants,
who started the gambit. Verizon’s lobby in Washington is one of the most
powerful. It is second in influence only to Rupert Murdoch, who has to merely yawn
and stretch to get an administration to sit up and roll over.
Then Motorola got into the game, blaming the 9/11 deaths of first responders on
a dearth of spectrum. The loss of life was tragic, no doubt, but the spectrum argument
was disingenuous. Emergency communications had long suffered from incompatible
technology standards and disparate jargon. And on that fateful day, someone
failed to switch on a transmitter.
Now Google, Microsoft, Dell, et al, have skin in the game, and they’ve made the
Verizon team look like a bunch of geezers in seersucker slacks. Google did
nothing but pretend to bid on spectrum and got nationwide access to it for
free. Absolutely free. No strings attached. No public interest obligations.
Nothing. White space. Free.
If white-space broadband networks work properly without taking out TV signals,
most broadcasters are for it. Claudville, Va., is a perfect test bed. No
carrier was going to string Claudville, Va., at the foot of the Blue Ridge. It
will be interesting to see if people in the area experience TV interference,
and if they have any idea what might be causing it. Chances are, since
Claudville’s network just does backhaul in white space from fixed points, there
won’t be much of a problem.
But the launch itself will be held up by proponents as proof positive that
white-space devices work, bar none. The fox’s nose is in the door.
Broadcasters will have to be nimble in this environment. A head-on battle won’t
do. They’ll lose. Too many people get cable and satellite. The notion of
over-the-air television is a waste of spectrum to a generation that needs it for
texting in traffic. What truly is a “waste” of spectrum is arguable, of course.
If you’re a carrier or you have stock in one, not getting subscription fees
from spectrum is one form of waste. If you’re a tech giant or a stockholder,
it’s not having an operating system that rules the airwaves.
Why it is that Americans want to pay for something that ostensibly belongs to
them, I’ll never quite now. But that’s just a reflection of the press and the
blogosphere, which are one and the same these days. I’m not so sure that all of
America is really fine with the cessation of free TV for all time. The public
deserves to realize what’s really going on in Washington, D.C., and they
deserve to know that if broadcast TV goes away, it’s never coming back.
Permanent linkLet’s hope we hear about mobile DTV as much as
we heard about Jay moving to prime time. The Advanced Television Systems Committee
last night approved the standard for transmitting mobile DTV over the air. The
effort was nearly two-and-a-half years in the making, giving Verizon a
significant head-start with VCast.
The wireless carrier doesn’t break out its VCast subscriber numbers, but with
nearly 88 million cellular subscribers, it’s safe to bet there’s a few million.
MobiTV, which won an Emmy for its mobile TV technology, is carried by AT&T and Sprint. It surpassed 6 million subscribers worldwide in February.
The incumbent carriers mean some stiff competition for broadcasters, who have
their own advantages.
One is that Verizon led with data; VCast initially was launched on the
carrier’s data network and video forever buffered on the user end. Subscribers
fled. It relaunched on MediaFLO, a far more reliable distribution technology.
Now MediaFLO’s parent, Qualcomm, is making handsets specifically to receive
MediaFLO content--FLO TV.
All of these services cost money. All are subscriber based. The great hope of
mobile broadcast DTV is that it will be ad-supported and therefore free. This
could work, except it will take lots of
loud barking!
Mobile broadcast receivers are expected to show up at the Consumer
Electronics Show in January, but they should be in the market now. Broadcasters
should be slathering manufacturers with Dom and filet mignon to get receivers
to market. They should comp premium air-time to push them for the holiday
season. They should be pushing free mobile DTV incessantly, the way NBC let
every living being on the planet know that Jay Leno would appear in prime time
this season.
There should not be one single life-form in the known universe who remains
unaware that mobile television can be had for free. Because free means squat
anymore without some form of cache attached. This is the United States of
Marketing. Even the best ideas sink without sufficient marketing. Remember
terrestrial DTV, with the best-quality, high-definition video available of any
system--for free? Yeah, that went over big, didn’t it. Who knew? A handful of
geeks and techies, that’s who.
Mobile DTV could work. It could very well be the revenue stream that saves the
broadcast television industry--if people know about it. Having a couple of
anchors push the service in a few newscasts is not enough. Billboards. Air
time. Sponsored extreme athletes. Pink as a spokeswoman. The ATSC M/H comet.
Ads at bus stops, in local neighborhood rags, on the radio, in the air from
smoke-trailing biplanes.
Just this once, I hope this industry uses the power of its own platform to
predicate its success rather than the petard-hoisting that was terrestrial DTV.
It’s OK to take a lesson from HBO. C’mon. Feel the noise.
Permanent linkIt’s that time of year when days get shorter and
lawmakers in Washington have less time to spend an enormous amount of money. The
pace of hearings accelerates and bills are churned out like sausage before
Oktoberfest. Irrational legislation based on what seem to be logical premises get
thrown into the mix. Such concepts often become law not because of contextual
merit, but because of what’s attached--earmarks.
Jim Harper of the Cato Institute maintains WashingtonWatch.com,
where he tracks every bill proffered in each Congressional session. Harper
holds an annual earmark contest, imploring followers to ferret out the pork
lawmakers tack onto bills for pet projects. Among the prizes for this year’s
sleuths, an Amazon Kindle, an iPod Shuffle and a “deluxe regular fruitcake.”
Readers tallied up more than 40,000 earmarks comprising billions in spending. The
allocations are all over the board. Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) is looking
to get $2 million for a contractor to keep track of the Navy’s stuff. That
Navy. The one with all the navigators. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) is seeking
$2.5 million for pasteurizing egg shells to prevent bird flu just in case it
spreads on egg shells. It might be cheaper just to tell people to wash eggs
before they’re cracked, but that would make sense. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is
looking to take $9.5 million back to the great state of Montana for a
hypersonic wind tunnel. Surely the same effect can be achieved between
Constitution and Independence avenues.
The list clearly goes on. Not all earmarks will pass into law, but these things
do influence lawmaking more than the actual issues. There’s one guy on Capitol
Hill that works for the nation. The rest work for an individual state or a
portion thereof. The seeming debates on national issues seemingly followed by
the mainstream press are mostly the stuff of obfuscation. There are people who
go to Washington with every intention of being a pillar of integrity. A couple
of cognacs and a Cohiba later, and the shine wears off the windy car lot back
home. Then it’s game on; time to make a haul for the home constituency.
They call it “Potomac Fever” back in the ’hood. Some legislators get so addled
by it, they start believing themselves. Harper has a tagline for the fruits of
that condition--legislation that promises more than it can possibly deliver.
“And a pony.” E.g., “Congress will eliminate loud TV commercials... and give
you a pony!”
Frankly, I wish Congress would give me a pony, but I can’t imagine what the
poor creature would look like after being legislated into my care. (Shudders.) Neither
can I imagine how slapping a loudness law on broadcasters is going to make the
ad industry stop caterwauling. (The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation
Act made it past a House subcommittee this week. It would direct the FCC to
create a broadcast loudness standard within a year.)
Advertisers have a long and hallowed history of caterwauling. Outlawing it seems a
bit communist, or at the very least, ridiculous.
First of all, broadcasters have a clue. See, they are people, and they watch
TV, too. They don’t especially enjoy getting blown out of the room by a
hyperactive guy mutilating vegetables and shredding cheese. And they’ve
secretly been working on loudness levels for years. It’s just that there was a
digital transition in there. Despite that being legislated as well, it was one
giant-sized science experiment after which a lot of engineers are still
cleaning up. It was a little like going to the moon, but without the space
travel and those unfortunate Gosselin people. And remember, Neil nearly ran out
of gas before getting to the moon. That could have been a $24 billion
“woopsie,” as there were no Piggly Wigglies on the moon back then.
The DTV transition didn’t have a similar major-league near miss, but rather a
lot of smaller complications to mop up. Restoring reception to households that
lost it has been the primary concern. Making the audio arrive at the same time
as the video has been another, since the two are delivered separately in
digital transmission. That it happens at all is something of a miracle.
Loudness hasn’t really been the most pressing issue in broadcasting lately, but
it’s on the agenda. They’ll get to it without legislation. Honest they will. However,
the effort to criminalize loud commercials is instructive on many levels. 1)
Lawmakers watch TV. 2) They are annoyed by loud commercials. 3) They have not
learned, as my father did the first time he used a remote, to use the mute
button.
Then again, the mute button has no earmarks.