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DAVID CONNELL
Tough issues dissolve in thin air Recently, I spent an afternoon at the Association for Maximum Service Television's 14th annual "Digital Television Update."
For 14 years this group has been holding conferences on the digital conversion, and for 14 years the majority of TV watchers have had no idea what exactly digital television means. They have heard about HDTV from RCA commercials but would likely stare at you blankly if you mentioned the words multicasting and datacasting.
As I sat there at the MSTV conference listening to broadcasters lament the lack of digital TVs in the marketplace and scold cable operators for not volunteering to carry their stations twice, I was struck by what a carefully crafted, well-implemented, digital conversion could mean to the entire television industry. It could mean the end of the must-carry and open access debates.
If the Federal Communications Commission, broadcasters and the consumer electronics manufacturers can come up with a way to broadcast digital signals so they can be picked up without significant degradation, with an indoor antenna, must-carry becomes a moot point. Broadcasters might argue: Why should cable companies be forced to carry The WB if viewers can get it in HD using rabbit ears?
Even if viewers have to use a rooftop antenna, must carry has to go out the window. Just ask the more than 14 million DBS subscribers if they have a problem putting an antenna on their roofs. Plus, with multicasting, the networks could form their own mini-cable systems to compete with the industry. Disney could beam ABC, the Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN Classic, SoapNet, Teen Disney, Disney for 2-year-olds - whatever niche programming they could fit into their spectrum - right to the home, bypassing cable all together. The networks should be licking their chops over this, not fighting it.
Groups like iBlast and Geocast are also experimenting with datacasting, using the digital spectrum. If they can make that a two-way connection, use a phone connection as a temporary solution or team up with DSL providers, the need for open access goes out the window, as well. Disney could not only deliver its precious Go Network to computers outfitted with a small antenna, they could also deliver it to PDAs, cell phones and whatever other Wireless Web devices the eggheads come up with next.
Of course, to make this work, engineers will have to devise a way to deliver digital signals as robustly as possible.
I believe they can do it, if they invest the time and energy. Just look at the strides the computer industry has made in the past 14 years. In 1986, I was using a Commodore 64 to type term papers. Now I'm typing this on a Macintosh PowerBook that can connect to a network via a wireless connection.
The Wireless Web is what everyone is shooting for right now; it's the reason the FCC wants to free up some of the spectrum the broadcasters are now occupying. They've been given a gift; it's time for the broadcasters to put forth a "maximum" effort to achieve "maximum" results.
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