[fredfa]

Will Congress Act?
Upton: “At the end of the day, sometime probably this spring, we’ll let everybody know…what we have to do to make sure that we can move the broadcasters totally to digital…â€

By Ted Hearn multichannel.com 2/16/2005 5:16 PM ET

Congress would consider new cable-carriage rights for digital-TV stations if private negotiations fail to produce results, House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Wednesday.


“We’d like to see that happen on its own. If it doesn’t happen, then Congress probably will have to step in, particularly as we look at the whole issue of the transition to digital,†Upton said on C-SPAN program Washington Journal.


Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission ruled 4-1 that digital-TV stations were entitled to carriage of a single programming stream. Over cable-industry objections, many local TV stations were hoping that the FCC would mandate carriage of five or six different programming streams that current digital technology allows each station to transmit.


Upton said he hoped that cable and broadcasters would conclude a multicast-carriage deal akin to the one recently announced between the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Association of Public Television Stations. But if no deal emerges, Congress will take up the issue, he added: “It is something that we are going to take a serious look at. I don’t know the answer yet.â€


Cable operators currently voluntarily carry the digital signals of more than 500 digital-TV stations, largely HDTV programming. The United States has 1,366 commercial TV stations, according to the FCC.

TV stations that received free licenses for digital TV have to surrender their analog licenses by Dec. 31, 2006, or when 85% of TV households in a market have digital-reception equipment, whichever is later.


Some Capitol Hill lawmakers -- fearing that the 85% test only prolongs the transition for an unknowable period of time -- support a firm deadline for recovery of the analog spectrum, some of which is to be auctioned for billions of dollars to wireless-broadband companies.


“I want a hard date, as well, and you are going to have to convince me if we have to move that date,†Upton said. “We are going to try to do this in a very bipartisan way.â€


The exact date for ending the transition has been something of a political football.


House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) supports a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline.


An FCC plan -- now on the backburner with chairman Michael Powell leaving next month -- supports Dec. 31, 2008, as the deadline.


“At the end of the day, sometime probably this spring, we’ll let everybody know where the votes are and what we have to do to make sure that we can move the broadcasters totally to digital so that we can sell the analog spectrum and get so many more services that the rest of the world already has,†Upton said.


According to the National Association of Broadcasters, any digital-TV-transition deadline has to take into account the fact that consumers currently possess 73 million analog-TV sets that won’t display digital pictures without converters. Connecting $300 boxes to 73 million sets would cost $21.9 billion, according to the NAB.


It’s unclear whether 73 million sets would, in fact, end up being stranded. Some consumers would connect analog sets to cable or satellite, and others might decide to buy digital-TV sets to replace old analog receivers.

Currently, 20.5 million households rely exclusively on free, over-the-air broadcasting. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) has said that lawmakers would be committing political suicide if broadcast-only consumers were harmed by an abrupt cutoff of analog-TV service.


The universe of U.S households that are broadcast-only might shrink in the months leading up to the end of the transition.


In studying the digital-TV transition in Berlin, which ended in August 2003, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that as the deadline approached, between one-third and one-half of Berlin households that were broadcast-only reacted by subscribing to cable or satellite instead of purchasing converter boxes.

 

[foxeng]

Is that a "compromise" I see on the horizon?

 

[fredfa]

That would make sense, foxeng...but, sadly, we are talking Washington, here.

 

[foxeng]

Here is my prediction. I have no more information that what everyone else is privy too so I may be right or I may be wrong.


I believe that a hard date WILL come out of Congress, and Jan 1, 2009 seems to be the date. But in order to reach that date, I see some form of must carry coming out of this. I don't see a total must carry. I would guess that someone will attempt to create a yardstick to measure if a channel is "must carry." I also suspect that yardstick will be flawed. I also see some type of STB give-away either with cash or a tax credit. How that will be determined is anyone's guess. It also wouldn't surprise me if some form of indecency rule is slide in as well and some additional public service/children's education added as well. Watch for some of the Dem's to turn this into a political fracases and try and add some type of political censorship to get back at FOX News and Sinclair. I predict that will fail based on the action reported today.


Place your bets.

 

[Bill Johnson]

Quote:

Originally posted by foxeng Is that a "compromise" I see on the horizon?

For those of us who have bailed out of cable but nevertheless see a First Amendment right and sympathize with cable on this issue, the compromise has already been struck: Must-carry of a station's primary digital signal.

 

[foxeng]

Quote:

Originally posted by Bill Johnson For those of us who have bailed out of cable but nevertheless see a First Amendment right and sympathize with cable on this issue, the compromise has already been struck: Must-carry of a station's primary digital signal.

According to the above posted article, many in Congress disagree and seem ready to use it as leverage to get the broadcasters on board for a hard analog shutdown date. Time will tell.

 

[SonomaSearcher]

Yep, lots of smoke-filled room, behind-the-scenes negotiations going on. NAB has somewhat of a disadvantage since they don't have their new head guy picked yet, so there is not a single person Congress can really look to at NAB.


I predict expanded must carry rights, but they won't be "everything that can be squeezed into 19.4 Mbps." Maybe one primary + one or two secondary channels. Maybe multicasting must carry is restricted to certain times of the day and/or days of the week (for example 12am to 5pm, Monday through Friday) to encourage HD transmission during prime time and on weekends.


Heck, I could live with multicasting from 12am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, if it meant that I was getting HD from 5pm to 12am and all day on weekends. I wouldn't like it, but I'd live with it.


Not that most in Congress care, but the perceptive Members can see that more than 3 digital channels for any given station = zero HD for that station and the more stations with zero HD, the slower the digital transition will occur. HD has always been the big selling point to consumers for the digital transition, even though we all know that HD is not mandated in any way.

 

[michaeltscott]

If congress puts a hard date on the end of the transition, then nothing slows it down. DTV doesn't need to be sold with HDTV. It was inexorably coming, anyway.

 

[trbarry]

Since we are making unfounded predictions I predict that a lot of noise will be made in Congress stirring up the lobbyists and campaign donations from all sides.


But I also predict that a year from now they will still just be talking about it.


- Tom

 

[Thomas Desmond]

> For those of us who have bailed out of cable but nevertheless see a First Amendment right and sympathize with cable on this issue


And then there are those of us who don't sympathize with cable on this or any other issue -- and think that the idea of "first amendment" rights for cable is as silly as granting those rights to the phone companies to decide which phone calls they will carry.


It does appear that this issue is far from dead, although it seems likely that it won't be resolved anytime soon. Still, with the congress starting to talk about revising the Telecomm Act, we can predict that various issues involving the digital transition will come into legislative play. It's also a safe bet that neither the cable nor broadcast TV industries are going to get exactly what they want -- since both seem to have seen something of a slide in popularity with the politicians in recent years.

 

[michaeltscott]

Quote:

Originally posted by Thomas Desmond > For those of us who have bailed out of cable but nevertheless see a First Amendment right and sympathize with cable on this issue And then there are those of us who don't sympathize with cable on this or any other issue -- and think that the idea of "first amendment" rights for cable is as silly as granting those rights to the phone companies to decide which phone calls they will carry.

This is hardly analogous. AFAIK, the phone company is paid to carry all of the phone calls on their networks, and is not required by the FCC to deliver a certain percentage of their bandwidth up to "public service" phone calls or to "community access" phone calls, etc. Must-carry is more analogous to the phone company being required by the FCC to carry, without fee, the phone traffic of any wireless phone company who wants it.


I do agree, however, that calling multicast must-carry a "curtailment of the cable provider's First Amendment rights" enobles the motives of the cable MSOs far too much. Make's it sound as though they'd be prevented from broadcasting enlightening and profound messages, rather than from bringing us ever more fascinating new content like "The Grass Growing Channel" .


One sad fact of the matter is that, if the broadcasters were granted multicast must-carry, they could not deliver content to the cable carriers exceeding half the bandwidth capacity that the cable providers were required to give them for NTSC--the 19 Mbps of an 6 MHz air channel fits into half of a 6 MHz 256 QAM pipe. So, even if the broadcasters were using 19 MHz for their primary channel, they immediately get back 2/3rds of what they're using for digital+analog right now, and cut their broadcast bandwidth load in half as compared to the pre-digital world. If they all did deliver them 19 Mbps on their main channel, the cable companies would probably rate-shape it to suit their requirements.

 

[SonomaSearcher]

Quote:

Originally posted by michaeltscott If congress puts a hard date on the end of the transition, then nothing slows it down. DTV doesn't need to be sold with HDTV. It was inexorably coming, anyway.

Yes, but the more people that see the benefit of HD and buy sets with ATSC and/or QAM tuners BEFORE the transition date, the less public and political controversy, complaining and tax subsidies when the transition date finally does come around.

 

[fredfa]

Some of the estimated costs were discussed at a Thursday Capitol Hill hearing.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=510604

 

[JWhip]

Maybe we should out a tape together to show members of Congress what multi-casting does to HD. Show them how a show used to look and how it looks when multicasting is added. Point out to them that we are now in the 21th century not the 20th and that full bandwidth HD is the only way to go. After all, digital SD is still that, SD and does not advance the field at all. Frankly, if we are just going to ruin HD, what was the sense in going digital anyway?

 

[CPanther95]

Quote:

Originally posted by JWhip Frankly, if we are just going to ruin HD, what was the sense in going digital anyway?

HD was the carrot to get us to buy DTV sets - unfortunately, HD really has nothing to do with why the government wants to push the transition.

 

[fredfa]

Agreed CPanther95.

But HD was also the carrot broadcasters used to get Congress to give them lots of extra bandwidth, too - and unfortunately, HD really has nothing to do with why the broadcasters apparently really wanted that bandwidth.

 

[William Smith]

The government did not give broadcasters bandwidth to make this transision, its on loan, we have to give one channel back..



Facts please..

 

[fredfa]

Wait a minute.

Broadcasters will be getting far more bandwidth than they had.

Then they will give the smaller portion back (that is what is on loan).

(Facts, please!)

It is obviously a giveaway -- which only came after long and expensive presentations touting (and showing) HD pictures to Members of Congress.

 

[William Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by fredfa Wait a minute. Broadcasters will be getting far more bandwidth than they had. Then they will give the smaller portion back (that is what is on loan). (Facts, please!) It is obviously a giveaway -- which only came after long and expensive presentations touting (and showing) HD pictures to Members of Congress.

How?


A 6 MHz. RF bandwidth slot is a 6 Mhz. RF bandwidth slot...


The FCC regulates RF bandwidth not payload bandwidth..


Or are you saying that someone such as a licensed DBS provider should have to pay more to use the space segment spectrum because they change modulation schemes to increase payload?


The amount of RF real estate is the same.

 

[Keenan]

Yes, Fred, you lost me there as well, to the best of my knowledge, it is as William Smith indicated, it's 6MHz of spectrum, period. Just like it's always been, just currently though they have the loaned 6MHz to facilitate the transition.