BLAME GAME ON DTV CONTINUES WITH COMMENTS TO FCC

NCTA told the FCC that devices to make DTV viewable on analog TVs must become cheaper and more readily available. “If the transition is to end, progress needs to be made to provide affordable equipment for making over-the-air digital broadcast signals viewable on existing analog sets,” NCTA said. The cable industry is investing in and deploying such equipment for cable delivered DTV and HDTV.

Paxson Communications said the most important issue facing the DTV transition was DTV must-carry, an issue the FCC wasn’t addressing in its review. “The cable and satellite industries’ success at maintaining for themselves a pain-free DTV transition has been spellbinding, given the fact that they are now the primary vehicle for delivering over-the-air broadcast signals to consumer households,” Paxson said.

The CEA blamed the slow rollout of DTV on broadcasters and cable operators. The adoption rate of DTV has been more rapid than PCs, VCRs, CD players and color TVs at similar times after their introduction, CEA said, but many broadcasters had failed to meet the FCC’s May 1, 2002, low- power deadline and most still were broadcasting only low- powered signals. The broadcast transition also is hampered by cable operators’ reluctance to pass through broadcast DTV signals, CEA said.

The broadcasters aren’t pushing equipment for over-the- air DTV transition, NCTA said. “It appears that the broadcast industry is making little effort to ensure that consumers who rely on their over-the-air transmissions will be able to view their digital signals short of replacing the 80 million analog televisions sets that are currently not connected to cable or DBS,” NCTA said in its comments. It said cable operators had invested more than $70 billion to create additional capacity for digital services, which the association equated to $2 billion for each 6 MHz of newly created bandwidth: “The cable industry has committed to carry such high-definition programming even during these early stages of the digital transition in order to encourage cable subscribers to purchase digital television sets.”

Once the 85% threshold is met, “cable operators will be prepared to carry broadcasters’ digital signals in lieu of their analog signals,” NCTA said. Any interpretation of the 85% test should be done “in a reasonable manner that facilitates the transition,” it said.

Even though all 10 ABC-owned affiliates were simulcasting nearly all of their analog programming in DTV, Disney said the 50% simulcast rule could stifle the development of innovative and creative uses for the digital spectrum. It said the FCC should: (1) Incorporate ATSC technical standards and provide a grace period for broadcasters to implement those changes. (2) Require carriage of PSIP and move swiftly to adopt and implement the broadcast flag. HDNet, an HDTV distribution platform, said simulcast requirements discouraged broadcasters from seeking innovative uses of digital technology.

In joint comments, NAB and MSTV recommended that the FCC should: (1) Establish a channel election deadline of May 1, 2005. (2) Not permit broadcasters to “swap” their DTV and analog channel allotments “because of the potential for disruptive interference and because such swaps could circumvent the channel election process.” (3) Establish a “use-it-or-lose-it” replication and maximization deadline that coincided with the end of the DTV transition. Such a deadline would “assure flexibility in the repacking process, avoid stranded investment, mitigate financial hardships on smaller broadcasters, mitigate interference to analog services during the transition.” (4) Eliminate the simulcasting rule. (5) Not require broadcasters who were awaiting action on a properly filed DTV application to construct low-powered facilities.

(6) Permit small and smaller market broadcasters additional flexibility to phase in DTV hours of operation. (7) Permit satellite stations to relinquish their DTV authorizations and “flash cut” to DTV on their analog channels. (8) Establish technical standards that would enhance the delivery of DTV. (9) Give meaning to statutory language and Congress’s intent to ensure that a significant number of consumers in any given market were not left without broadcast TV service once analog service ended.

Sharp Electronics said cable subscribers lacked significant programming options. “The inability of consumers to access ample amounts of HDTV programming on cable systems results in the reduced incentive for consumers to purchase DTV equipment, thereby hindering the transition,” it said. Sharp said the FCC should establish a defined deadline for “permitting market forces to govern the production and carriage of HDTV programming.” If such a deadline isn’t met, govt. should impose mandates, Sharp said. It recommended that the ATSC A/65B Program & System Information Protocol (PSIP) standard be mandatory and that Active Format Description (AFD) be mandatory in some circumstances.

Broadcasters are failing to promote over-the-air reception of DTV, CEA said, citing the lack of advertisements for DTV programming in newspapers and on analog channels. There’s virtually no daily listing of digital programing in local newspapers, CEA said. Individual manufacturers have committed “tens of million of dollars” to sponsor the HDTV programming being offered by network broadcasters and CEA has allocated $2 million in the last 4 years for HDTV promotion, it said.

The Assn. of Public-Safety Communication Officials (APCO), stressing the urgency for more spectrum for police and fire personnel, said the FCC should establish a hard deadline for broadcasters to vacate the analog spectrum. APCO said the Commission should protect only “actual” broadcasts in the 700 MHz spectrum. “In essence, the smaller the protected contour of the television station, the greater the area in which public safety operations can be initiated without waiting for the end of the DTV transition (which could be far into the future under current law),” APCO said.

The Community Bcstrs. Assn. (CBA) said the FCC should adopt firm deadlines by which all full-power TV broadcasters must: (1) Replicate their NTSC service areas or lose DTV service protection. (2) Build out maximized digital facilities if so authorized, or lose service protection in the uncovered and unbuilt portion.

No new public interest obligations are necessary for digital public TV beyond those required for analog, the Assn. of Public TV Stations (APTS) and PBS said. That was because PTV stations had taken their educational mission seriously and had provided “thousand of hours of programming and services to address the needs of children and to enhance public discourse,” they said, and with the conversion to digital PTV could “continue this legacy and accomplish much more.” Referring to the potential for PTV stations to provide broadband-like services, they pointed out that those stations had committed 4.5 Mbps of their DTV bitstream to the delivery of formal educational services. That will deliver data at rates 80 times faster than dial-up modems and 15 times faster than DSL, the public broadcasters said. PTV stations also planned to offer new public safety services. For example, they said, Ky. Educational Network (KET) stations, in partnership with the local branch of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), debuted a new service to the state police, emergency management agency and weather service that could send emergency storm alerts, weather information and criminal profiles to computers around the state. PTV stations also should have flexibility in satisfying whatever public interest obligations the Commission might require by either using the entire digital allocation or one multicast channel, they said.

The FCC should keep open the possibility of using distributed transmission technologies (DTT) for DTV, but that would require new rules for power level, interference and other parameters, the Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) and consultant Merrill Weiss said in separate filings. Weiss called DTT, which would use a network of low-power cellular- like transmitters to deliver DTV signals, “a promising technical solution to some of the difficulties that numerous broadcasters have faced in delivering sufficient signal levels.”

ATSC has developed technical specifications for DTT that were tested by the Advanced TV Technology Center. Weiss said the FCC should “take a light-handed approach” to regulating the technical side of DTT, giving broadcasters “the flexibility to adjust their networks as experience shows they can be improved.”

Saying there was considerable confusion and differing interpretations about the FCC’s rules relating to DTV closed- captioning and programming requirements, the CPB/WGBH National Center For Accessible Media (NCAM) called on the Commission to issue a public notice clarifying the following issues: (1) DTV signals must include DTV closed-captioning (DTVCC) data. Without DTVCC data, none of the advanced display features required by the FCC’s rules would be possible, the NCAM said, and many DTV receivers in the market today would look only for DTVCC caption data when tuning and displaying a digital signal. (2) DTVCC caption data must be included in all digital broadcasts. There’s a misconception that the rules require DTVCC data only on HDTV broadcasts, NCAM said, and exclude SDTV from carriage. The agency should clarify that the rules apply to all DTV signals. (3) The FCC must reaffirm that its rules require carriage of NTSC caption data in DTV programming as a condition of counting that programming toward closed-captioning requirements. (4) The agency should clarify, in the case of multicasting, that each program stream had a caption requirement. (5) Revenue exemption rules granting exemption from captioning requirements wouldn’t apply automatically to DTV broadcast channels. The NCAM also called on the Commission to require the CE industry to label products to inform customers whether a DTV device included an advanced closed-caption decoder or required an additional device to display advanced closed captions.