DTV Education CE ‘Obligation,’ But NAB, NCTA Help Needed, Shapiro Says

In his keynote, Shapiro repeated CEA’s mantra that relatively few households relying on over-the-air TV will be disenfranchised when analog service dies in 2009. Those households are the ones for which the govt. created its DTV converter box voucher program, he said. In a 2003 analog cutoff in Berlin, the govt. bought converters for the disenfranchised but was left with a surplus, Shapiro said. The same will happen in the U.S., he said.

Noting that CEA and NCTA recently began collaborating to flag the analog cutoff, Shapiro said: “We've invited the broadcasters to join us. We hope they will. It’s very important that the industries work together. Sometimes we have serious disagreements in Washington, but on certain things, we're very capable of working together.” He noted, for example, that CEA and NAB allied recently to fight energy restrictions on DTV converter boxes in Cal.

As for policy disputes, Shapiro said, one of the things he loves most about CE is that “we succeed in driving change, but other businesses have to change because of us.” CE has “disrupted a lot of businesses out there,” so it often finds itself in D.C. dust-ups with industries trying to preserve the status quo, he said. “There are those in Washington” who say the analog cutoff is “all for the benefit of the consumer electronics industry,” Shapiro said: “That is not true. The spectrum being freed up is very valuable beachfront property that will be repurposed for very important uses,” such as for first emergency responders.

Shapiro branded as “pretty irresponsible” recent remarks by NAB Pres. David Rehr to the effect that broadcasters don’t want to leave DTV education to salespeople. Retailers are and should be on the front lines of a DTV education effort that needs extensive public service announcements to run, Shapiro said.

Rehr made his comment 2 weeks ago in an opening-morning keynote at the NAB convention, saying NAB soon would have a “comprehensive” DTV consumer education plan (CD April 25 p1). Broadcasters have a “responsibility to let consumers know the benefits of free, over-the-air digital television. They can’t absorb this through osmosis. It falls to us to let them know that one of the most pristine signals they can receive is over-the-air DTV,” Rehr said. Educating the public on DTV can’t be left to Congress, he said: “We can’t leave it to our competitors. And certainly we can’t leave it to the guy who sells televisions at Best Buy.”

“There’s nothing irresponsible” about devising a way to educate “millions of people” otherwise “disenfranchised” from receiving free, over-the-air local TV after the analog cutoff, an NAB spokesman said. NAB soon will announce an education campaign involving the FCC, PBS and NTIA, he said. CEA and NCTA “also will want to participate,” the spokesman said. “It’s self-evident there’s a lot of misinformation” on DTV piled on the public at the retail, the spokesman said. NAB wants “a leadership role” in DTV education, “making sure that Americans have all the information they need” about the cutoff, he said.

Asked from the floor who will qualify for $40 vouchers on DTV converter boxes, Shapiro said not as many households as feared will be caught in an analog cutoff, since 88% or more rely on cable or satellite for their primary TV viewing. “You don’t want some senior citizen or poor person” unable to get a TV signal when the service goes dark, he said. But $1 billion in DTV converter box subsidies is “in my view, more, more than enough” to serve those in need, Shapiro said.

Then Shapiro again flamed broadcasters, criticizing what he called NAB scare tactics. “Whether there'll be a massive panic” in Jan. 2009 -- “I doubt it,” he said. But broadcasters “are trying to plant the seeds of terror,” warning members of Congress that consumers will turn them out for enacting a law to turn off analog TV signals. As an aside, Shapiro said, “it should be noted” that Congress fine- tuned the analog cutoff’s Feb. 2009 date to minimize political fallout, picking neither a hard date in Oct. 2008 - - a month before elections -- nor one in Jan., so as not to interfere with the Super Bowl.

CEA agreed to work with NCTA on DTV education, but Shapiro indicated there’s bad blood in the CE industry toward the large MSOs for what CE sees as slack cable support for deploying CableCARD. Responding to an audience question on whether CEA can use its clout with NCTA to force cable to hone installers’ skills on CableCARD deployment, Shapiro said he doubts it. He asked retailers in the hall to indicate how happy they were with their local cable operator’s record on CableCARD installations. No hands went up.

When CEA made its pact with NCTA on one-way plug & play CableCARDs, cable “swore up and down” it would back the deal, Shapiro said. “But the fact is no one can really say with a straight face that the cable industry is supporting CableCARD,” he said. Cable “doesn’t want a one-way customer, they want a 2-way customer, because they made a strategic decision that the money is in 2-way and they don’t want to train their people,” he said: “At the senior level of cable industry management, the message on one-way CableCARDs has been a lack of enthusiasm and support.” He said “frankly, that has affected the trust we have” toward NCTA and thwarted the industries’ efforts to reach an agreement on 2-way CableCARDs.

Declaring cable apparently doesn’t consider CE important to its business model, Shapiro said: “The good news is we got together with Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth, and we cut a deal rather quickly” to draft standards on “national portability” based on “reasonable” licensing terms. The telcos “want to work with us because they're hungry to compete with cable,” he said.

An NCTA spokesman said cable “has lived up to all of its commitments in fulfilling the one-way plug & play agreement and we will continue to do so. One of the key consumer benefits of cable’s $100 billion network investment is the ability to develop more consumer-friendly options for viewing cable content and CableCARDs are an important part of that effort. Cable has supported and will continue to support CableCARDs, over 150,000 have been provided to consumers to date and cable operators are dedicating significant resources to ensure these devices operate correctly.”

Content industries are another frequent CE foe, Shapiro said, answering a query on DRM. Natural “tension” arises between the CE and content industries on DRM because content owners rely heavily on Washington for favorable policy, “while we depend on Washington to leave us alone so we can introduce new products without restrictions,” Shapiro said. The content industry “has more lobbyists than this hotel can fit, frankly,” he said, referring to the 512-room resort hosting the PARA conference.

He cited RIAA-backed elements in a telecom bill introduced last week by Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) that would direct the FCC to convene a “digital audio review board” to set policy and technical recommendations on an audio broadcast flag for digital radio. A flag would thwart unauthorized redistribution of digital radio content on the Internet, but Shapiro described it as a restriction that was “absurd.” He said Rep. Berman (D-Cal.) soon would introduce a companion bill in the House. Of RIAA efforts seeking curbs on private noncommercial home copying of digital radio content, Shapiro said, CE has “kept our side of the bargain” on the 14-year-old Audio Home Recording Act, but the recording industry “is trying to force things back to the table.”

Shapiro also said: (1) Of a Cal. decision issuing energy rules that would “severely restrict” DTV converter boxes, Shapiro said “we're perplexed -- we don’t know how they can fulfill the mandate of the HDTV transition and basically put energy restrictions on a device that hasn’t really been invented yet. But they're convinced that they can do that.” CE has an unfulfilled obligation to promote CE energy consumption to consumers, Shapiro said, vowing to make that a “top priority.” CEA has begun “gearing up” its standards-setting committees to define energy usage parameters; once they do, CEA will devise a clear way of communicating those to the public, he said.

(2) On e-waste recycling, CEA backs a “national standard,” not a patchwork of state laws, Shapiro said. Recycling law must address industry’s and consumers’ “shared responsibility,” he said: “Consumers should know up front that part of what they're paying for is recycling products.” He denied charges that the Feb. 2009 DTV date will mean a spike in discarded analog TV sets, inundating municipalities with an unmanageable e-waste glut. Analog sets last many years, and won’t be obsolete at the analog cutoff if fitted with a DTV box or cable or satellite set-top, he said.