Cable may not deliver all locals in HD
September 17th, 2007Cable customers may miss out on some HD programming from local stations, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). Rules approved by the FCC last week require cable companies to provide local “must-carry” stations in both analog and digital form after the shutdown of analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, unless the cable system is entirely digital. The FCC, announcing its rules on Tuesday, also said it “reaffirmed the requirement that cable systems must carry high definition (HD) broadcast signals in HD format.”
But Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the cable lobby, told Multichannel News that
a broadcast TV station will have to decide whether to offer an SD or HD feed as the “primary” [digital] signal to a cable operator. “In the event that some must-carry broadcasters do introduce HD, they probably will still declare SD as their ‘primary’ signal to guarantee carriage of that and reach the widest possible audience,” he said.
If the NCTA’s interpretation is correct, the FCC’s HD “requirement” isn’t worth much to viewers who have paid for HDTV sets and cable service only to miss out on high-def programming from certain local stations.
Must-carry stations are typically independent or public TV channels that elect mandatory carriage under federal regulations. (More-popular network-affiliated stations are in a position to negotiate with cable operators for carriage under “retransmission consent” rules.) Unaffiliated stations tend to show less HD programming—and if cable viewers won’t be able to watch it anyway, the stations will have a disincentive to invest in costly HD equipment.
Earlier:
• FCC: Cable may degrade local HD signals (a little)
• Link: Multichannel News