Future watch: A look ahead (part 3)
Jerry Whitaker
12/30/97
Broadcast Engineering
Copyright 1997 Intertec Publishing Corporation, a PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.
Q & A with key industry leaders on what 1998 holds in store.
Lynn Claudy, senior vice president, Science and Technology, National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, DC.
Q: What, in your view, does the comi ng year hold for broadcasters?
A: 1998 is the year that much of the DTV work will come to fruition. It is _ in fact - the logical conclusion of a decade-long effort. DTV marks a tremendous shift of perspective, of business operation, and - first and foremost - of technology. 1998 will be a banner year, but it's not going to end there.
DTV will initially be a large-market phenomenon; that's where the effort is currently aimed. Beyond that, DTV implementation is a few more years out. When you go to the smaller market environments, I don't think that DTV is the hot subject that it is in New York City or in Los Angeles.
Also, NTSC is nowhere near dead, even on the books; and it's certainly nowhere near dead in terms of where the revenue is. NTSC is still the breadwinner. It is the revenue source that will pay for digital television. Remember that not all bets are in that DTV will be an overnight success. It may be a significant number of years before revenue sources shift to digital operations. Each TV station in each town in America will need to strike that balance of how to stay in business today, as well as over the next 20 years. That will be the balance between NTSC and DTV that engineers and owners need to strike. It will vary as a function of each station's circumstance.
Q: What about spectrum auctions? What future do you see for this curious method of allocating resources?
A: The FCC is quick to point out its success, but it also is quick to point out the reasons why the auctions that didn't work failed. The commission's opening of the concept of spectrum auctions tied to the concept of public interest and the value of a hertz, is bold and gutsy, and it is challenging for broadcasters. It is also a concept that is not going to die an easy death, We are, after all, a free enterprise system in this country. We are used to paying money for goods and services. Just because spectrum is something that you cannot hold in the hand does not mean that you cannot attempt to apply the same types of economic principles to it.
Q: Strategists in the 1990s love business models. What is the business model for DTV?
A: The business model for DTV is "Take the plunge. Go for it. Get into it." In any radically new technology platform, that is the approach that has to be taken. We don't know everything about digital television. We certainly don't know what kinds of DTV services will be compelling and appealing, and what consumers are willing to pay for them. That means there will need to be experimentation. We are beginning a period of the great American experiment of trying out new services, finding where the markets are and chasing them as aggressively as possible. There are lots of business models on the table for consideration, but I don't think that anyone has a lock on understanding what exactly is going to be successful.
Dane Ericksen, P.E., Hammett & Edison, Consulting Engineers, Inc., San Francisco
Q: What regulatory challenges are now facing the TV industry?
A: The broadcast auxiliary spectrum is where probably the greatest threats are right now. The number one issue is mobile satellite services (Engineering Technology Docket 95-18), which will reallocate what is now ENG channels A1 and A2 to mobile satellite services as of Jan. 1, 2000. So, broadcasters will be losing 35MHz of ENG spectrum there. That decision has been made, the allocation has already occurred in Europe and elsewhere; it is only Region 2 where this reallocation will not occur until the year 2000. There was a pending rulemaking on how this transition was to be accomplished, and who would pay for the new gear for the refarmed spectrum. One of the proposals was that broadcasters would get some replacement spectrum, another 15MHz or so that would go on top of what is now ENG Channel A7. In effect, this would shift the band up a bit. Under this scenario, broadcasters would take some spectrum loss, but not much. Congress, however, threw a monkey wrench into the rulemaking in thebudget reconciliation bill, where it instructed the FCC to find some additional spectrum at 2GHz to be reallocated to the highest bidder. This means that broadcasters are looking at having the 2GHz ENG band reduced down to as little as 70MHz, with the best scenario being 85MHz of spectrum.
Q: What about the DTV Table of Assignments? When will stations be able to bank on the table?
A: The DTV table of assignments is still not settled. The Broadcaster's Caucus had filed a petition as we went to press with this article that proposes a re-examination of 355 of the roughly 1,600 DTV allotments.
The net effect of a re-examination of the commission's DTV table of allotments would likely be to delay the implementation of DTV. The sixth Report and Order was issued in April of this year, and it had 18-month deadlines for the top 10 markets for the four major networks to be on the air. Following that action, there were more than 220 reconsideration petitions filed and about 60 supplemental reconsiderations filed, all of which need to be addressed before things can go forward. It has now been six months, and that reconsideration order is nowhere in sight. It would seem to me that these on-air dates are going to have to be slipped by at least six months.
Andy Butler, director of engineering, Public Broadcasting Service, Alexandria, VA
Q: PBS has a long history of leadership in new broadcast technologies. What is your involvement today in DTV?
A: For starters, we have a DTV test feed up on our satellite. It is available to the industry as a whole for early implementation testing. It is a 19.4Mb/s ATSC-compliant stream. We try to keep it up as much as possible on a full-time basis. Several manufacturers are currently using it, and several of the early test stations also use it.
Q: What response have you received from member stations with regard to DTV implementation?
A: We have had an enormous, positive response from our member stations. One of the really exciting things about DTV is that PBS, on behalf of its member stations, has been involved in the DTV development process from the very beginning. One of the results of that involvement is that many of the capabilities of the DTV standard quite nicely support PBS's rather diverse mission. As an example, the multiple SDTV capability of the DTV system is extremely attractive to a number of PBS member stations because it answers a dilemma that they have faced for many years, which is the need to provide service to a number of different niche clientele within their area of responsibility.
Robert P. Seidel, vice president, Engineering, CBS, Inc., New York
Q: What is the CBS DTV implementation plan as it currently stands?
A: CBS has pledged voluntarily to have four of our stations on the air prior to the regulatory requirement of the FCC. The requirements specify that the top 10 markets of the four major networks must be on the air by May 1, 1999. We have said, voluntarily, that we will place four of our own stations on the air prior to that, by Nov. 1, 1998. Those stations will be in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and San Francisco.
We have purchased the major transmission components and obtained the necessary construction permits, FAA clearance and other regulatory approvals to ensure that we meet those dates. We are phasing the tower projects with the construction season, since at many of these large tower sites, you can construct only during the summer months. So, even though you have a May 1, 1999 date, you need to have completed the outdoor work during the summer of the previous year if you are going to meet that deadline. So, CBS is looking at all these issues requiring advance planning to make sure that we have everything in place.
One of the major concerns in this process is whether the manufacturers will be able to handle the avalanche of orders that will occur for towers, transmitters, antennas, transmission line, and all the other components required for broadcasters to meet their air dates. Spreading the orders among a number of vendors makes this process easier, but still, it will be a challenge.
Q: Are all of the hardware elements of DTV now available? A: I think some of the HDTV equipment has yet to be invented. We need to have the same production flexibility in digital TV and HDTV as we do today in our standard NTSC product. There are now two manufacturers who are making HDTV production switchers that have the capability and functionality that we will need in the control rooms. A wideband digital router (1.5Gb/s) still needs to be developed, and I know of a number of companies working on that. I am convinced that they will draw on technologies that have already been invented by the telephone companies for use in applications, such as the optical SONET networks, which operate at 2Gb/s and up. If we can take the equipment developed by the telecoms and repurpose it for television, it will solve a lot of these problems.
The standards required to make all of this work are currently in place: SMPTE 292 serial digital (1.5Gb/s) and the embedded audio standard 299. The necessary hardware will be on display at NAB 98. If you start the service with film programs - because you have already made the programs and paid for them - then early programming should be relatively easy to come by. Many times we tend to focus on the technology, but we also need to pay attention to the programming necessary to feed all of these channels.
I think that in the first few years, the challenge will not be how you're going to make money; it's going to be how you control your costs. Until a significant receiver population of DTV-compliant standard-definition or high-definition sets are in place, cost-control will be the major business challenge.
Q: What lessons are to be learned from the early work of CBS on bringing DTV to the public?
A: The conversion to DTV is not just a technology issue. It's a political issue and a programming issue. Getting everyone to focus on this reality is the difficulty. In the recent past, the typical approach was, "It's tomorrow's technology; we'll worry about it tomorrow." Well, tomorrow is happening today, and people are finally beginning to focus on it.
Who is to say that one crystal ball is better than the other? I think that if we use history as a guide as to where this is going, we will see that people preferred color over black-and-white; they preferred FM stereo over AM; they preferred CDs over vinyl records; and _currently - they will probably prefer DVD over tape. I think consumers are realizing the ever-increasing quality that is available. Who would have predicted that in a period of three short years, the audio industry would stop pressing records? The rate of change of technology, and its acceptance by consumers, is accelerating all the time. I think that a lot of the technical issues are already well on the way to being solved, and now the political and programming issues are beginning to surface. |
