[SBE] The future of Broadcasting.

[A9xw at cs.com]

In case you missed it: The CPB hired a consulting firm. The consulting firm 
said stations in major markets needed to consolidate transmitter facilities 
to free up spectrum.  Now in case you forgot 1987, The FCC said there would 
be two spectrum packings, the first to clear out ch 52 and up (ignoring the 
VHF channel death that didn't fully happen) and then a second packing so we 
were on mostly adjacent channels or second adjacent channels depending on 
adjacent market channels.  

In the report, based on PBS stations in LA where 4 stations are proposed to 
share 1 transmitter and each told which PBS channel will be their primary 
channel. Now I don't know how to get 4 HD channels in 19 MHz, I do know I am 
running 2 HD and 2 SD, and using the worst case of simulcasting all 4 the 
system I have works fine. And with a little effort, you could get 2 HD and 3-4 
SD< or 1 MPH and 2 SD but it gets ragged from there. Yeah, some guy is 
running 10-12 SD channels, I don't know what that looks like but I don't think I 
would want to watch the bit starved channels much. 

Now in the report, the three PBS stations in Chicago are used as an example 
and we supposedly would all share ch 21D, which presents a lot of technical 
issues, as my 17D covers 7 counties not served by the other two stations, 
21D is also the lowest power of the three and the worse coverage overall.  
And the big dog WTTW likely has the best engineering crew to man the 
transmitter.  Supposedly we would all have / retain our licenses, but why 3 licenses 
for 1 transmitter?  We basically become program sources.  We do news and 
sports, a big part of our programming. WTTW is a down the line PBS station and 
WYCC is a City of Chicago owned community college station. 

The report says the money raised from auctioning off the vacated channels 
will go into a public TV trust fund. Sure, just like Social Security.  Spent 
before it is even collected. 
Play and grant $, if not, no bux.  Strictly voluntary.  Commercial stations 
can just clear out and sell spectrum to the next user, a telco, wi-fi etc.  
So if you are a struggling TV station, teetering on or over the brink of 
financial collapse, you can sell out for some Millions $ turn off the lights 
and go into some other business with your dough.  Existing archives would be 
available from a massive server to school kids.  That bypasses local content 
and text book control. 

Those that remember what I said while at GWSC/SNC in 1982-3, when TV goes 
all digital, there will be no stopping it from all being pay TV and 
subscriber based because FTA [free to air] operation is expensive and spectrum values 
will be said to be worth more than the TV revenue because of the ever 
declining audience for OTA TV.  In 1978 I published an article that stated 
digital TV would be sending shapes, textures [representations] and sizes not 
pictures, long before I knew of MPEG or digital compression that came along 
later. We barely had DTL. RTL chips. 

Radio reaches a mobile audience, something ATSC does not do, MPH may do it 
but has to share spectrum with ATSC so its an either or for some of the 
bits. There is no technical reason the FLOTV phones cannot receive OTA TV or 
radio, its a software application.  Terrestrial or satellite delivered. CDMA 
delivers 20+ channels in 6 MHz. I'm waiting for the home TV market to include 
an all mode tuner, ATSC MPEG, CDMA, etc. If it comes down the coax from an 
antenna or a program server in NYC, who cares?  The consumer has been 
conditioned for 30 years to pay for TV service, to the consumer, what's a few OTA 
channels?  ATSC has been obsolete for over a decade since MPEG 4 delivers so 
much more in so much less spectrum, but the TV sets and transmitter hardware 
are locked into ATSC.  Keep in mind the FCC didn't ask for a MOBILE TV 
service, according to the ATSC members, so they developed a FIXED receiver 
system, and of course came back almost 20 years later and said, Hey, we just made 
MPH, so you can have MOBILE TV reception.  Would have been nice if the DTV 
system had kept the attributes of analog TV, a simple diode decoder works 
anywhere even in motion.  AM radio, AM TV. FM radio, all work in all 
locations. 

John Battison and others have clearly demonstrated the issues with DTV into 
DTV and the TV sets are getting crappier by the generation as direct to 
base band tuners and no front end filtering or IF filtering take over.  I had 
one owner give up on DTV because the local cell tower signals wiped out 
reception.  The cell tower signals on 940.2 also clobber the radio STL receivers 
that don't have passband filters.  Its an RF jungle out there. Maybe a 
little less so with some AM and FM stations going dark, not even the minority 
radio want-to-be people are taking them.  With the economy in the dumps, 
thousands of car dealers closed by fiat, many markets/stations are finding revenue 
hard to find and operations costs being cut, or groups filing for 
bankruptcy despite major market holdings. Don't even think of buying a newspaper, 
they are sinking faster than the Titanic.  

So you may not like my "political" rants but every one has come true, 
including the farce of global warming.  So I wouldn't get too excited about 
getting into broadcasting anymore. I'm counting the months to social security, if 
there is any left.  

Henry Ruhwiedel




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