Surprise Player Joins Bandwidth
Scramble - PBS
by Kristi Coale
8:00pm 25.Nov.96.PST Picture Barney at 19.2
kilobits per second.
Well, it may not happen quite that way, but PBS
may be rolling out the next generation of Internet
networking.
PBS National Datacast, a for-profit subsidiary of
the public broadcaster, is taking the wraps off of a
nationwide multi-million dollar network that
piggybacks on the portion of the broadcast
spectrum used for closed-captioning.
PBS uses the "vertical blanking interval" to
transmit supplementary material for television
programming via satellite, wireless, and leased
telephone lines.
Ten to 11 lines of the VBI are available to transmit
up to 19.2 kilobits per second, per line, before
data correction, said PBS Datacast general
manager Jay Traeger. That's slightly slower than a
28.8 modem.
Still, content providers are salivating. "PBS'
network is prime real estate," said Glenn
Williamson, chief operating officer for WavePhore,
an information services firm that thus far has
broadcast news and other data to corporate
intranets for business users, netting the company
annual revenues of US$20 million.
But what Williamson and others, such as chip
maker Intel, want to do is tap a potential gold mine
of an audience - home users.
The notion of using the broadcast spectrum to
speed data to PC users is hardly new. NBC began
just such a pilot in the early '90s. That project fell
victim to the Achilles' heel of the big four networks:
affiliate stations. Affiliates are generally free to do
as they please, and relations with the networks
often run sour.
Enter PBS. Through its member station network,
Traeger says PBS Datacast hits all 183 television
markets. This network is the Holy Grail of an
independent bypass system that cable companies
such as TCI's @Home seek to build.
But PBS' network is here, which is good news for
the nonprofit segment of PBS, says Traeger. "We
needed to generate revenue from VBI, and data
services looked like a way to do it," he said.
Traeger said a major portion of the Datacast
revenue stream will be paid back to member
stations that broadcast data. PBS will reap
another portion of the revenue.
What remains to be seen is how Mom, Dad,
Sparky, and the kids will take to curling up in front
of the PC for their nightly dose of interactive
entertainment. Intel, among others, has built a
decoder card, Intercast, which enables PCs to
receive Datacast and other signals via satellite
dish or television antenna. These sell for US$100,
but users will still have to subscribe to services for
content.
What's on? A thin offering from NBC, CNN, QVC,
MTV, and PBS member station WGBH, which will
produce adjunct programming for the science
program Nova. Stay tuned. |
