Digital TV Facts: The Latest

While digital TV legislation remains held up in Congress, the broadcast and cable lobbies continue their battle over a provision known as “multicast must-carry.” Thanks to the efficiencies of digital transmission, each station can split its signal into several channels, and station owners say lawmakers should make cable operators carry all of them. The National Association of Broadcasters has launched a web site to promote multicasting as “more local choice.” Meanwhile, ads from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association charge that “broadcasters seek another free ride. They want to take more channels from your CABLE programming.”

Some stations, particularly PBS affiliates, do offer multicast channels. Yet multicasting has not gained a foothold in the U.S., given the absence of a government mandate, minimal voluntary carriage on cable, and digital-TV ownership still in the single-digit percentages. Broadcasters have added hours of HDTV broadcasts—an alternative to multicasting, in a sense, since sending all the information required by a high-definition signal consumes most of a station’s spectrum allocation.

If multicast must-carry were approved, wouldn’t a station owner prefer to have up to six standard-definition multicast channels bringing in ad revenue, rather than devoting most of its spectrum allocation to a single HDTV channel?

That scenario doesn’t bode well for HDTV, Ken Schapiro of Qualia Capital suggests:

Given the limited number of digital television receivers in the market, broadcasters currently don’t have much of a choice regarding what to do with their digital spectrum, and they utilize the spectrum to deliver HDTV programming. However, launching a multiplexed broadcast channel when only viewers with digital broadcasts receivers can watch it is a completely different proposition than launching such a channel with guaranteed carriage by cable. With guaranteed carriage, the choice between HDTV and multiplexing becomes significant, and it could tip the balance toward quantity over quality.

Viewers, in large numbers, remain confused about exactly what HDTV is. Still, as more consumers buy costly big-screen HDTV sets or monitors, viewer demand for high-definition programming is bound to grow—though the broadcast spectrum is not. It’s easy to see why broadcasters are going all out for the multicast provision.

If viewers don’t get more HDTV broadcasts, the prospect of more local programming might provide some consolation. But as TV audiences splinter further, stations are even less likely to spend their scarce programming dollars to produce original content, especially in the absence of a government mandate. Again, the privileged position of broadcasters is called into question.

• Links: theQview; Multicasting.com