[opendtv] Re: Local TV stations face uncertain future

At 4:23 PM -0800 2/23/09, Dale Kelly wrote:

This has been the major Networks alternate business plan for about eight
years and those of you who have been on this list that long will recall my
oft-repeated prediction of such an eventual outcome.

The "shot heard around the world" precipitating this likely outcome was the
ATSC receivers very poor performance achieved during Sinclair's 1999
ATSC/COFDM tests. Given such bad news the Networks recognized the need for
alternative business plans.
IMO, had the second generation receivers resolved the reception issue as
promised, this plan B may have never been pursued to this outcome.
You may be correct Dale, but I would humbly suggest that the networks knew that ATSC would not as advertised, even before the standard was adopted by the FCC. I believe that one "unINTENDED consequence" of the DTV transition was to slowly kill the local OTA distribution platform, so that the networks could have total control over their content and the resulting ad revenues.
IMHO, the "shot heard around the world" was the 1992 Cable Act, which gave the networks the retransmission consent leverage they needed to rebuild their empires. They knew that they could take over most of the prime cable real estate, and then off-load affiliate compensation onto the cable systems.
If they were blind-sided with their long term plans, it was the Internet that caught them by surprise.
You may also recall the many discussions we have had about content restrictions on FTA broadcasts. The networks would love to have the same freedom as HBO, Showtime, et al to include nudity, sex, and language that cannot be presented via FTA broadcasts.
So the next shoe to drop will be direct carriage of uncensored network programming via cable and DBS, with the affiliates getting the censored version for broadcast a week or two after it is aired on cable.
One can hear Roy and Dale Rogers singing Happy Trails as DTV rides off the digital cliff... 

Regards
Craig


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