TWO THOUSAND AND NINE. Geez, when you spell it out like that, the year sure seems like a long way away, doesn’t it?
It isn’t. With the U.S. Congress and the National Association of Broadcasters now seeing eye-to-eye on a hard deadline of 2009 for the transition to digital broadcasting and the complete cessation of analog, it’s time for Canadian broadcasters to stomp on the digital/HD accelerator.
Broadcasters here have been awfully slow in getting digital TV broadcasting off the ground. While that’s angered HD’s early consumer adopters who long to fill their plasma, DLP or LCD screens with pristine video, delaying spending on HD been good for shareholders. Making everything digital will be a costly exercise, given all of the technology that must be replaced, from transmitters to cameras to editors, to mobiles.
HD transition coming at a difficult time for North American broadcasters. While they’re still the largest mass-market ad vehicle around and always lead the ratings, their overall audience is shrinking as viewers turn to specialties, or the Internet, or DVDs, for viewing. And for a growing number of viewers, if they do watch, PVRs let them skip ads altogether.
The transition to digital in Canada will cost many millions of dollars, with no apparent return on investment (the price tag in the States is in the billions). Advertisers won’t pay more for a prettier picture and neither will viewers.
The U.S. government can’t wait for the analog spectrum used by broadcasters to be vacated and for the digital TV transition to happen. The windfall, after they give some of it away to emergency services, will be enormous.
It’s been estimated that when American TV broadcasters ultimately vacate the 700 MHz analog spectrum, the government will auction off much of that spectrum space to wireless providers, bringing in an estimated US$10 billion to US$30 billion.
Our own federal government will certainly be banking on its own bonus here.
Due to the costs of going digital, which are dropping (but not quick enough for some) broadcasters here have done little to advance the cause of HD (save for some specialty and pay exceptions such as The Movie Network, Movie Central, Rogers Sportsnet and TSN). Other than the American simulcast programming they have purchased in HD, Canadian broadcasters have stood on the sidelines, watching and waiting.
It’s now time to get moving. Despite the seemingly far off 2009 deadline, work must immediately begin.
Why not Corner Gas in HD? Hockey Night in Canada? Global National With Kevin Newman? Plans are on the drawing board for the conversion of all of these programs to high definition/digital (look for a number of HNIC games in HD this year).
Beyond that though, broadcasters must insist producers and advertisers shoot their content in HD. So far they’ve been mentioning it, but not insisting.
Look back four years from today, to 2001. Can the digi-nets really be almost four years old already? The 9/11 attacks are now nearly four years away. Blogs didn’t exist. Camera phones were drawing board items. Did the time fly by or what?
Wait until you see what happens in the next four years as WiMAX develops into a video delivery system, as video to the cell phone grows, as IPTV stabilizes and launches, as the telecom market fragments and grows like the TV sector already has.
While the cost and content are important hurdles to jump, still unresolved are two other major social policy issues when it comes to a digital transition: 1. Making digital broadcast available in the hinterlands, where there are so few people that installing an expensive HD transmitter could be considered silly and wasteful. 2. How do we get digital television into low income homes which can’t afford it?
American officials are openly wondering about giving away set top boxes to those who can’t afford to purchase a new digital TV, so that the high def signal can be downconverted for an old analog TV set. With US$50 basic digital boxes now on the horizon, this could be a somewhat affordable option for government to try – or even for cable and satellite, who want to maintain their customer rolls.
Another idea mentioned to me today by Canadian Digital Television’s Michael McEwen is tax incentives for broadcasters to build digital infrastructure both far and wide.
Also being promoted by some in the States are the TV sets complete with cable cards. These conditional access card slots (same as the satellite cards) are being built into televisions themselves so that set tops are not needed at all when the TV is plugged into a properly enabled cable system.
However, MSOs there are loathe to offer the cards because they can’t deliver all the additional products and services which a set top box can – and given the satellite industry’s security issues with its cards, there’s a signal security fear, too.
In Canada, those cards are on no cable company’s drawing boards.
This is by no means a complete list of the issues needing attention (how about Dolby 5.1 audio to go with the HD picture?), but doesn’t a four year time-frame seem tight now?
