Posted on 01/25/2009 8:17:47 PM PST by BAW
As I understand it they (the gov) has already sold a lot of the new bandwidth and they are now under pressure to free it up.
Will they receive more ad revenue? Nope. Same ads. Same sponsors. IF (and ONLY if) everything went smoothly, they’d have exactly the same number of eyeballs watching their crappy programming, from which they derive the rates for their advertising.
They can broadcast 1 HDTV signal and 1 Standard Definition TV (SDTV) signal simultaneously, or they can transmit 5 SDTV signals simultaneously. There will be opportunities to target different markets simultaneously.
But it costs more than double to send out both simulaneously at full power. I was talking to the manager of a local network affiliate that has a 1 megawatt UHF transmitter. He says it would have cost them an extra $10,000 per month to have dual transmitters. The only reason they don't have to spend that is that they just received their analog license a year ago and were not allotted an additional channel for broadcasting digital TV. Instead they will be shutting off their old analog transmitter, and then switch immediately to digital using the same frequency and tower.
Yea, yea. I’ve heard this before too — the promise of multicasting.
Ain’t gonna be worth jack if they can’t get the first signal out to the consumer/viewer.
And that’s the issue with the translator mess. For large numbers of people in the midwest and west, there won’t be a first DTV signal. And then there’s the LPTV/Class-A transmitters - also left out of the DTV plan and given an exemption from the change-over date. The LPTV industry group sued the FCC for the lack of analog bypass requirement on the converter boxes, BTW. All those “women and minority owned” stations — you can bet they’re going to get a hearing in The One’s administration.
A complete charlie-foxtrot from beginning to end. It is abundantly obvious that the conversion plan was written by lawyers and not engineers.
You can’t broadcast analog and digital on the same frequency, so they have to run two transmitters, doubling their power bills. (around here, it means at least $100/hr just for the electricity. TV transmitters aren’t restricted to the 50KW of the other broadcast bands)
One question I haven’t seen answered. Currently stations are doing their digital broadcasting on some other frequency, which maps back to their assigned analog channel. After the cutover, will they switch their digital broadcast to their original analog frequency, or stay on their new “temporary” frequency? The VHF signal has longer reach, so they might want to move as a result. (I wonder because I currently use a UHF only antenna....)
Nancy Pelosi just might be behind the delay because digital TV means exposing her many face lifts.
On the positive side, she may have to cancel all camera appearances on TV and resort to radio. (sarc)
BTTT
Senate votes to delay digital TV switch to June. House
bill now being worked on
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090127/ap_on_go_co/digital_transition_delay
You can pretty much count on one hand the percentage of people who will get a clue between now and June. Then, we’ll need to extend it again.
A lot of TV stations will still switch off the analog next month (among other things, they have leases set to expire
for transmitter sites at that time, etc.) Some already have;
the analog transmitter broke down and it wasn’t worth
fixing, etc.
In Portland, ME, WCSH-TV 6 for years could be heard on the
FM dial since Ch 6 is 87.75 MHz for its audio. They just announced a couple AM stations will carry their newscasts,
so people can still hear their news on their radio....
And now the House has defeated the DTV transition so it’s
still on for 2/17 at least for now
I read that. The best news is that the GOP still has a little power, since they were credited with the defeat in the article I read.
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