On 12/24/06, Haarsager, Dennis <haarsager@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I just completed a study of OTA HH in the US using data from Nielsen Media (which you can find market-by-market under the research tab on the TVB site) and the FCC, updating one from three years ago. Like most such studies, the In-Stat estimate of 13% fails to account for the roughly 1% of HH that subscribe to both wired cable and ADS (largely DBS), so the "OTA exclusives" should be 14%. It also does not account for a larger but unknown number "OTA supplementals," those in ADS households who use OTA for local channels or for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. sets in their home. The OTA exclusives number has fallen nearly 4 million households since the earlier study (almost entirely due to DBS growth fueled by local-into-local), but that still leaves sizable OTA-exclusive numbers. Los Angeles has 20.6% OTA exclusives -- 1,139,000 homes. Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen TX has 37.9%, El Paso TX-Las Cruces NM 32.7%, and Boise ID 30.8% OTA exclusives. A complete chart of the market-by-market numbers is linked to a blog posting I made summarizing this at http://technology360.typepad.com/technology360/2006/12/estimating_tv_o.html . I'm GM of two PBS stations in Washington State, and therefore definitely have a dog in this fight, but to the point of Bob's quote from Chairman Powell, there is a public policy element to this that goes to the economic viability of free OTA television. In a world with dying newspapers and an increasing spread of economic circumstances among our country's residents, the idea of some source other than paid satellite-fed TV seems to be worth protecting. Research on the public television side has shown that the economic value of OTA households is *way* larger to stations than that of cable homes, so presumably that's the case for commercial stations as well. Bob's long-time criticism of ATSC has been spot-on (a decade of DTV has gone by and I just bought my first ATSC set-top box, a 5th-gen chip Samsung, that can get Spokane stations 60 miles from my home). It may very well be too late to salvage free OTA television, but that's what we're protecting. Dennis
The big numbers of OTA exclusives all cluster in larger cities according to your list. I think most of us assumed that. These folks are more likely to know nothing about the coming transition, have little access to rooftop antennas and be willing to make a very big fuss when even a minute of their favorite program goes missing. It is going to be interesting since the US will be going more cold turkey with the worst modulation and least educated public of any country so far. Basically our OTA tranistion will BEGIN in early 2009. It will COME soon after the Chinese will have done their very best to show off their ostensibly locally derived OTA digital modulation DMB-TH. It will come as the UK approaches 100% digital households with many having 5 or more receivers. Cost of receivers, unsubsidized, will be as low as $20 in both the UK and China while in the US some kind of Rube Goldberg/Haliburton assisted God awful distribution of minimalist SD only OTA DTV receivers will finally be examined by the press in all its glory. It will cost the US Government $200 to subsidize $40 of the cost of and distribute these same "converter boxes". It will cost the unsuspecting public another $50 plus with the subsidy to buy one. Will they have an LED included to tell us if they are on? It is going to be interesting politically. Bob Miller ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
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