[opendtv] Re: OTA

  • From: Mark Aitken <maitken@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:24:06 -0500

On 3/8/2012 8:48 PM, Craig Birkmaier wrote:
All of this is interesting, but mostly irrelevant. Only a small percentage of people in the U.S. are still watching TV via antennas - and here I am speaking about ATSC receivers, not other mobile devices that ALSO have antennas.

If you think that broadcast TV is going to experience a renaissance with the existing ATSC standard, you are living in another world. But there is hope that they will get the next standard right.


Craig, I am one of the hopeful, and I can not disagree with any of what you have written here.

You can take the following to the bank...there will be a renaissance for broadcast TV. My job, and the existence of this entire industry is fully dependent on that happening. How that will happen is being shaped, and there are many more chapters of a book that should be written that are yet to unfold. Part of such things happening are being driven by the understanding of what we are really up against, and the fact that that there is no alternative to remain alive.

I will tell this audience what I have been telling broadcasters across the country, in a variety of settings and environments. It is really, really simple, and is fully the background of the fabricated nature of "the spectrum crisis". The short version...

*************************************************
The wireless phone companies are our enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsmbwQCpxlY

This video is pointing to the fact that the business space that we have considered to be ours for so very long (broadcasting) has been fully co-opted. Broadcasting is no longer just ours. This example (a football event) is exactly the fertile ground for the wireless phone companies to seed their business. There is no doubt in my mind that this should be sending shivers up the spines of every one of the business leaders in our industry. It is but one of hundreds of examples that show how our business has being eroded by more capable technologies (LTE-A rev10 for example...). Not enough TV broadcasters ever even think about the nature of who is going to whack them next. It will be the phone companies...it is happening...eMBMS is just the first volley that will be aimed at the foreheads of every broadcaster. The sooner we take on (in earnest) facing the enemy, and fight for capabilities that match and exceed theirs, the sooner we can deliver our industry out of the hands of the competition. I know that this is a fight that our businesses must support.

*************************************************

BTW...the technology is the easy part. The rest of what is required will be the hardest and steepest mountain we have yet had to climb.

Regards
Craig


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