HDTV: The towers.............................
usatoday.com
11/17/97- Updated 01:15 PM ET
Laws, labor may delay digital TV
Before digital TV arrives for the masses, there must be new transmitting towers. Lots of them.
But broadcasting industry representatives say two major obstacles stand in the way of getting the towers needed for the conversion to digital TV: local zoning authorities and a shortage of crews trained in the art and science of tall-tower building.
Digital broadcasting tower requirements differ with every TV station and every community. In some instances, a station will be able to attach digital transmitting equipment to the tower it already has.
Other stations will need costly reinforcement work on their towers. Still others will need even costlier new towers.
At $1,000 a foot, a station looking at building a 2,000-foot tower - about the tallest required - will spend $2 million.
Art Allison, senior engineer at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), estimates that 1,000 of the 1,700 stations in the USA will need significant tower work to make the conversion to digital broadcasting. As many as 350 stations will have to build towers of 1,000 feet or more, Allison estimates.
Louis Libin, a consultant to TV stations on digital implementation, acknowledges a thicket of engineering, construction and political problems with tower renovation and construction.
But Libin doesn't expect the problems to derail the conversion schedule set by the Federal Communications Commission, which calls for all commercial stations to have the ability to broadcast a digital schedule by 2002, and some of them much sooner.
"The way the whole process has been pushed along by the FCC has been a burden for the engineers," Libin says.
"But it's also the reason that digital television will be implemented. The timetable will slide a little bit - but the intent is there, and the mandate is there."
One way the FCC may push the process along is by adopting a rule that would undercut the ability of opponents to thwart a tower project at the level of city or county government.
The rule, which was proposed by the NAB and is under consideration at the FCC, would set strict time limits for city councils and county commissions to act on tower zoning petitions by TV stations.
The proposed rule sets deadlines of 21 to 45 days on local zoning authorities, depending on the scope of the proposed tower project. If local governments don't act before the deadline, stations may proceed with their digital broadcasting plans.
"This is a direct attack by a federal agency on local government authority," says Bob Fogel, a legislative lobbyist for the National Association of Counties.
Even if local governments can work out the political problems associated with digital broadcasting, many of them still will have to confront the fact that the tower-building industry is nowhere near big enough to promptly respond to orders from hundreds of stations working to meet the FCC deadlines for digital installation.
Allison, the NAB engineer, estimates that about 10 tower-erecting companies have a total of 18 crews working nationwide.
In the past few years, three fatal industrial accidents have depleted the number of available tower builders.
The close coordination needed by tower builders is developed by working together over a period of years, Allison says.
As a result, the industry is not able to simply add crews to meet the demands presented by the conversion to digital broadcasting.
Because the need for broadcast towers had peaked long before the mandate for digital broadcasting, the industry has been getting by with an occasional replacement tower and with the less-skilled tasks of installing cellular telephone towers.
With HDTV, Allison says, "The industry is going from virtually nothing to full capacity."
By Thomas A. Fogarty, USA TODAY |
