IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO ENVISION every existing TV transmitter in Canada being upgraded to digital for high definition broadcasting. Ain’t going to happen.
Yesterday, www.cartt.ca released a bonus for subscribers, a comprehensive study of all sides of HD in Canada. It’s the most comprehensive look at high-def ever undertaken by a Canadian trade publication. We used seven writers who collectively spun eight stories, or about 16,000 words on HD, including public and private over the air broadcast, specialty services, distribution, regulation, production, consumer electronics, and the lagging Quebec HD market.
If you missed it, click here to peruse the stories.
Part of what emerged from those pieces is that broadcasters don’t want to provide over-the-air HD to everyone. It costs too much. Period.
So far, CanWest Global’s Leonard Asper is the only one to have broached the subject publicly (although they all talk about it privately). It’s costly enough making the transition from analog to digital in the largest Canadian markets for still very few HD-viewing eyeballs. Plus, unlike when cablecos or telcos rebuild their plant and can earn additional revenue and apply cost savings, upgrading to HD for a broadcaster is just money out, with none back in.
“(Since) most people get TV via cable or satellite, the question is, do we need to operate transmitters any more?” Asper told a conference call last month. “That’s a cost in the business we really can’t afford anymore, especially if we have to go digital, or high definition.
“It’s one thing to do high-def through fibre but it’s another thing to have to do high-def when you have transmitters. That’s a big, big expense difference.”
So will the government really force the traditional broadcasters, which are now (some would say finally) spending on producing some HD – and who also face upgrades to expensive items like master control, editors, cameras and other newsgathering gear, and who have already installed digital transmitters in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and a few other places – to also place digital transmitters in Sudbury, ON, or St. John’s NL or other small markets in order to keep their licenses?
With nearly all Canadian homes receiving their TV signal from a cable or satellite company, is it proper to ask broadcasters to spend multiple millions on over-the-air transmitters that virtually no one will use to watch HDTV?
Except for Asper, the broadcasters aren’t saying what they think about this. Let’s say the Canadian government decides to follow the Americans (who have set a deadline of April 2009 when broadcasters have to shut off their analog signals) and reclaim the analog broadcast spectrum rending the TV system here all-digital. This is where public policy comes into play because those who can’t afford to go digital (and the steadfast tech-dinosaurs who just don’t want to switch) will need help.
In the States, the government is mulling spending billions to give out decoders to millions who can’t/don’t want to change.
Maybe this is where our government will be forced to kick in some help. The price tag, however, will be far lower than in the U.S. Even if half of the 10-million subscription households were to hold out, which seems unlikely given the trending below, the cost to give 5 million homes a box would amount to “only” $250 million, based on the low-end, $50 Motorola 700.
And then if everyone has a box? What the heck are the TV towers for then?
Sure, a case could be made for multicasting in digital, or selling additional broadcast spectrum to businesses, but I’ve yet to hear of even one Canadian broadcaster exploring that.
According to leading research company Convergence Consulting, by year end 2005 approximately 17% of those who legally subscribe to TV will have a HD-capable TV. The company estimates that this will rise to 49% by year end 2007.
And, by year end 2005 Convergence says that there will be 410,000 cable and satellite HD subs; by year end 2007 we estimate that there will be 1.36 million cable, satellite, telco HD subs. And that’s just HD. Right now, we are closing in on five million digital TV households in Canada already.
With this kind of trending, we need to be less worried about licensing HD transmitters and more concerned with making HD content and bridging the digital divide, if necessary, with government subsidized decoders.
