BERLIN'S ANALOG TV SHUTOFF NO MODEL FOR U.S., NCTA TELLS FCC
“Local circumstances” in Berlin made for a hard shutoff of analog TV service there last Aug. with “minimal disruption,” the NCTA told the FCC in an ex parte filing. But it’s highly uncertain whether those “unique circumstances exist even elsewhere in Germany” to support a similarly abrupt transition to digital TV, and they certainly “do not exist in the United States,” the NCTA said.
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The NCTA’s filing at the Commission was consistent with comments at this week’s HDTV Summit in Washington by NCTA Pres. Robert Sachs, in which he discounted the notion that govt. could pattern a U.S. digital transition on the way Berlin was transitioned last summer (CED March 30 p1). In the filing, the NCTA detailed results of a fact-finding mission to Berlin in Jan. to probe whether Berlin provided a “model” for the turnoff of U.S. analog service.
NCTA officials met in Berlin with regulators, media representatives, a network facilities operator and technical experts, it told the Commission. It found that while the Berlin transition “went smoothly,” market circumstances were different from those in the U.S. “in several key respects.” Only 7% of German households rely on over-the-air broadcasting, the NCTA said. German cable operators offer significantly fewer program channels than U.S. counterparts, it said. Moreover, most programming in Germany is provided by broadcasters, NCTA said, and programmers pay for cable carriage, reverse the U.S. pattern. There’s no programming in Germany supported by subscriber fees, it said. In Germany, “must carry” includes payment by broadcasters to cable on “just and reasonable” terms, subject to negotiation, the NCTA said, and the choice of analog or digital carriage is at the cable operator’s discretion. Of new digital channels available over the air, cable operators already were carrying virtually all in analog, the NCTA said.
As for receivers, more than 70 models of digital set-top boxes have been marketed in Germany, the NCTA said. A digital set-top typically is priced 109- 200, but some boxes sold at a 100 introductory price before the analog turnoff last Aug., it said. About 6,000 receivers were provided free to low-income households, “but this program will no longer be offered going forward,” the NCTA said. More than 85,000 households in Berlin bought digital receivers before the hard transition, it said. By winter 2004, more than 200,000 had been purchased, it said.