The War For Eyeballs: Communiques From The Front
Roger B. Wyatt
Communique 3: Overflight to WHD-TV

I needed to lock on with hard data. Along with my compadre, techno-pistolero Herbert Achleitner to cover my back, I initiated a recon incursion into the only operational HDTV broadcasting station in the United States, WHD-TV, located on the premises of WRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC. Our insertion mission was a go.

Jim McKinney, HDTV Model Station Project Director, was our gracious guide. He provided an engineering overview of a HDTV transmission. From the antenna to the racks of systems gear, McKinney clearly and easily explained the system. A television signal is like a river system. The signal flows through a myriad of techno-channels until like some sort of electromagnetic salmon. Shooting the rapids, the signal spawns an image on your screen.

Jim put on a demo tape. On screen appeared shot after shot of aerial flybys. Herbert's jaw dropped. Flying over Midwest farm land, I could easily make out not only individual rows of corn, but individual stalks as well. I was impressed. I struggled to keep my jaw shut. The picture is beautiful. It is so clear and sharp that watching HDTV becomes a cinematic experience not a television experience as we now know it. HDTV embodies a different order of magnitude in clarity, resolution, and aspect ratio. At times quantity is its own quality. The AC-3 Dolby audio is very impressive. The viewer is surrounded in a clear audio environment. The entire signal is digital; from the mpeg-2 video to the AC-3 audio to the multi-data channels.

The HDTV Data Channels.

What data channels? I thought we were talkin tv here? The multiple data channels that are part of the standard are what make Hi Def part of the information highway. Data and information become part of the broadcast signal. The HDTV standard calls for three data channels to be of varying band width. The data channels could, at one extreme take up 100% of the available bandwidth when the station is off the air. No picture, all data at 100%. The other extreme is zero percent of bandwidth available for data. When the station is transmitting HDTV sound and picture with all its visual glory. The complexity will emerge from the intermediate positions between the extremes. What if the broadcaster elects to give up some of the picture bandwidth, still a stunning picture, and use ten percent of the bandwidth for information purposes? A website, and the contents of a CD-ROM could be downloaded while watching a program.

HDTV is about more than pretty pictures.

Like this one here.

Techno-pistolero Herbert Achleitner in high definition.

A scenario. A viewer sees an ad for a greatest hits of the 70's CD along with an 800 number. I still haven't found those white bell bottoms. The viewer is interested and calls in an order. After the credit card clears, the seller downloads the CD, via the HDTV data channel to the customers CD-R recorder (or hard drive). In minutes after the ad appeared, the seller has sold, the buyer has bought, and the product is delivered. With downloading, order fulfillment is even faster than Fedex. This scenario will work for books, video, images, audio, software, data. Anything that can be digitized can be downloaded. New distribution horizons for Digital Cinema makers are emerging.

It is clear that those who dismiss broadcasting as being irrelevant to an information age are premature in their critique. The Eyeball War Movie of the Week isn't going have the broadcasters playing the role of techno-Iraquis and the computer industry cast as the Coalition Forces doing some kind of mop-up operation. True, Andrew Grove would be an interesting choice for the Schwartzkopf role.

Digital data and information, including Digital Cinema, can seamlessly flow in the HDTV data channels along with newsgroups, email, any other form of digital information. Broadcasting is now a link in the Global Information Highway.

Like techno-ninjas, Herbert and I exfiltrated WRC-TV. Back on to the street we were in search of a Metro Station. Or maybe it was an espresso we were in search of. Do you have a need to know?

Metro, Dupont Circle Stop.

Communique 3: NAB97 Battle Joined

Just in time for NAB, on April 3rd, the FCC announced the length of the transition period from NTSC to HDTV. Now there is a nine year transition to an all digital broadcasting network ending in 2006. This doesn't mean that nothing will happen for 8 years then a mad scramble in the last year of transition. Wrong boyo, the announcement pinpoints the end of a transition period that will begin in earnest in 1998. Things will be happening constantly.

Airborne over the desert.

Meanwhile I'm landing in the middle of the Great American Desert. Back in Vegas again. I'm not alone. 100,245 are attending NAB 97. There are 22,2272 international attendees, up 8.6% from last year. I don't know about them but I'm tired of the incessant ding ding of slot machines and the triple jolt of flashing neon. Vegas, the land of the neon midnight sun.

I guess I'm tired of working on my moontan. This time I'm going to see where the real people live in Vegas. No more buffets. Leaving the Strip, turning on West Sahara, over the overpass and around a mile ahead on the right side is In and Out, a really good hamburger place, right side of West Sahara if you're driving away from the Strip. With all this driving I discovered radio is good in Vegas. Give your FM dial a twirl to 91.5 for a good jazz station. Twirling on, you will find 93.1, a good oldies station. The ever ubiquitous and necessary NPR can be found at 89.5.

Over my burger, I ponder my questions about HDTV. How will the standard be implemented? Changing standards is hard to do. Thinking about it, how many miles per kilometer signs do you see along the highways and byways of America? The move to metric was roadkill in the cultural history of the 80s in America. If the people refuse to change remotes on this one, it could be a big mess.

Suits in Denial:

Clearly HDTV was the big NAB story. What is interesting is the ambivalent reaction of the broadcast industry. For all its high-tech veneer broadcasting is a pretty stick in the mud industry these days. Using conservative technology, like that prewar concoction the NTSC standard, owning a broadcasting station has been since the end of World War II, a license to print money. The managers like the cash cow steady state of television. They make programs, advertisers sponsor them, and viewers watch them. Mooow! Have some more dollars Bessie. Think about it, all the innovators in broadcasting are gone now. Edward R. Morrow? Today he would be working for CNN, which is a cable company not a broadcasting company. Were broadcasters in the forefront of the cable revolution of the seventies? Were broadcasters taking the lead in direct satellite broadcast to the home? No. Might I suggest, "50 years of tradition, impervious to ideas and untarnished by progress", as the motto of contemporary broadcasting.

It's interesting how FCC action is going to force as many changes in broadcasting as court ordered deregulation did in telecommunications. The broadcasters are as conservative as AT&T was before the break-up. There will be both progressive and reactionary forces at work within broadcasting just as there are in the telephone industry. Dreams of steady cash flows of monopoly environments fade slowly. HDTV does to broadcasting what court ordered break-up did to telephone industry in the early 80s. It is a kick in the pants, a way of saying get with the Age of Information. Smell the coffee, it's the 21st Century.

However broadcasting truly is in a war for eyeballs with not only the computer industry but also now with satellite data providers. For broadcasters HDTV is a necessity for survival, not an option for enhancement. I'm not sure they really believe it yet.

I'm not sure Suits think beyond the next quarter. A great many of them thought that FCC squabbles would tie the whole thing up for a long time, or at least until after they retired.

I think the Suits are suffering from sticker shock. It not just the TV that has to change, it's every component in broadcasting. All production, post-production, distribution, and transmission, as well as reception that has to be replaced. Figure $2-$3 million for just the HDTV transmitting antenna. What about the entire studio and edit bay? It's beginning to sound like $8 million per station to rebuild for Hi-Def. Do they give frequent flyer miles when you buy that stuff?

The shell shock realization amongst the managerial class in TV is that HDTV is here and they really do have to pay for it. It's not their only problem. While they are whining that no clear business model exists for HDTV, looming over them is the small matter of Mr. Bill, you know, that guy from Redmond. To consider whether HDTV is a nice addition to their cash machine or not isn't an option for broadcasters. In 1996 the tv viewing audience dropped 18% and the world is getting seriously wired. The argument is over. How fast broadcasters can convert to HDTV is a matter of whether they even survive at all. There was a time before broadcasting and there very well could be a time after broadcasting as well.

Show Me The Gear:

For a show where HDTV was the big story, there wasn't a whole lot of HDTV gear to see. The impact of HDTV was more at the policy level than at the production level.This year Hi Def hardware was more of a virtual thing. Next year I suspect will be very different.

However there were some items of note. Sony and Panasonic were showing HDTV cameras. In the Hitachi booth the SK-3000P Digital Multi-Standard Camera could be found. That it can tape in either NTSC or HDTV makes it really special, the perfect standards transition camera. It comes with a 2 million pixel CCD. The HDTV specification is 1,200 lines of resolution. Television used to be called radio with fuzzy pictures. Not any more. Next