Smith: Broadcasters Need to Increase Power for Mobile DTV
Broadcasters may miss out on an ad windfall from mobile DTV if station groups don’t broadcast at full power for maximum coverage, Sinclair Broadcast Group Chairman David Smith said in an interview. “It’s a matter of survival,” he said. “If they don’t do this, they may be gone in five or 10 years.” U.S. TV stations could gain $1.1 billion in annual ad sales by 2012 from mobile DTV, and networks would get another $900 million, according to a BIA study commissioned by the NAB. But stations that choose not to operate their digital stations at full power are putting themselves in jeopardy, Smith said.
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“There are hundreds and hundreds of TV stations that are standing on the sidelines, either unbeknownst to them about what’s to hit them in the head, or they just don’t care,” Smith said. “That is a great tragedy because they're essentially signing they're own death warrant.” And broadcasters should invest in circular polarization transmission equipment instead of the vertically polarized antennas that dominate the industry today, Smith said. Vertically polarized antennas could thwart mobile DTV’s prospects because they make it harder for mobile receivers pick up signals when not held completely upright, he said.
Small video screens with built-in DTV receivers will spread widely, if this year’s Consumer Electronics Show is any guide, Smith said. The DTV standard developed by the Advanced TV Systems Committee does a bad job reaching small portable receivers, he said. To reach those TV sets, broadcasters will have to divert some bandwidth from their main programming stream to one of the mobile DTV system under review by the ATSC, he said. “There are lots of broadcasters who don’t understand that. They don’t know that they will want to dumb down those signals to be able to talk to those portable devices.”
The window of opportunity for broadcasters to make these engineering changes is brief, Smith said. That’s a problem, because some broadcasters that lack the cash to operate at full power today may be left behind down the road, he said. “And the government’s saying you've got to get on the air, and if you want to operate at low power, you make that decision.” The FCC’s third periodic review of the DTV transition, which lays out the rules for making the switch, was published in the federal register Wednesday. (See separate report in this issue.)
Meanwhile, the stations’ $1.1 billion prize could also be jeopardized by delays in getting the service off the ground, BIA found in its report. Broadcasters, led by the Open Mobile Video Coalition, have set an ambitious goal of introducing mobile DTV service with the February 2009 shift away from analog service. If that’s put off 18 months, BIA’s estimate of added local ad sales drops to $600 million in 2012. If a technology that competes with the ATSC standard reaches the market, broadcasters could see that play out, the report said.
By the NAB annual show in April, the OMVC and the ATSC will probably have a candidate for the mobile DTV standard, Smith said. The OMVC will begin testing two competing systems -- one developed by LG and Harris, the other by Samsung, Rohde & Schwartz and Nokia -- this month. By the show, “I'm hopeful and optimistic that the broadcast industry through the OMVC in conjunction with discussion with the two prominent manufacturers should have resolved their technology differences and are ready to go,” he said.