[opendtv] McAdams On: TV's Current Transition
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 01:02:45 +0000
Here's a thought. Instead of trying to make the spectrum repacking contingent
upon the simultaneous deployment of ATSC 3.0, why not make it contingent upon
Supreme Court approval of Aereo? Or by extension, the automatic approval of
similar schemes, although FOTI perhaps, that the broadcasters themselves could
deploy (over the Internet, geographically limited)?
I would suggest that this second option should be easier for the consumer to
accept and for the broadcasters, and would make any angst about spectrum
repacking diminish markedly. If not vanish altogether.
Bert
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http://www.tvtechnology.com/mcadams-on/0117/mcadams-on-tvs-current-transition/270845
Deborah D. McAdams /
06.12.2014 02:02PM
McAdams On: TV's Current Transition
The interpretive dance
HERE, THERE -The FCC issued rules last week that will alter the nation's video
media infrastructure in ways not yet fully imagined much less understood by all
who will be affected. That is the one certainty regarding the spectrum
incentive auction, due to take place next year. The ambiguity of this untried
type of spectrum auction is but one factor of many contributing to the
prevalence of uncertainty in the media delivery business, especially for
broadcasters and their suppliers.
Aereo is due to be decided this month by the U.S. Supreme Court. If Aereo
prevails, it will not mean free-for-all Internet distribution of all broadcast
(and cable) signals right away, but it will be a step closer. Aereo's legality
is not the question before the high court. It technically will not be deciding
if Aereo is violating copyright law by carrying broadcast TV signals without
obtaining permission. It is deciding on whether or not the lower court erred by
not granting an injunction to broadcasters to shut down Aereo while the
copyright question was being deliberated.
There's a lot of SCOTUS-watching on this one. Experts with far more insight
than I possess are giving even odds, and I agree in the sense that I think the
court will rule on this as narrowly as possible. Even though the justices
appeared skeptical of Aereo's claims during oral arguments, they also
acknowledged the complexity beyond the question of the injunction-how to apply
1990s media law to a medium that did not exist then.
Into this cauldron throw network neutrality and what it may or may not come to
mean to the Internet and everything distributed therein. Including whatever
Aereo may or may not do, and whether or not the two or three giant pay TV
distributors left standing invest their billions in wires or towers.
And then, Google. Google stands on its own because it has single-handedly
thrown media policy into chaos with subtle cunning. Google invented network
neutrality, opened the TV spectrum to unlicensed devices, and stranded the D
Block of spectrum in the 2008 auction. The NSA calls Google when it loses its
keys, so it's a very safe bet that no matter where the chips fall in
Washington, D.C., Google will sweep through them like a baleen whale in a swarm
of krill.
Media ownership deserves at least a mention in the examination of moving parts,
if only a cursory one. FCC rules are forcing TV station divestitures and
closings even as the agency kisses the rings of Comcast and AT&T and their
respective multi-billion dollar alliances with TWC and DirecTV. It's so absurd
as to have crossed the threshold of credulity, like putting a lobbyist in
charge of communications policy.
As if all of these things and a million other picayune rules weren't enough to
throw the broadcast sector particularly into turmoil, there's the rapidly
accelerating transition from iron to circuits, from hardware to software, from
facilities to remote network connections. A couple of years ago, vendors on the
floor at the NAB Show in Las Vegas were calling it "function collapse." Today,
it's a race to recast oneself as software-defined network provider in one or
another iteration. Manufactured, fabricated hardware is being displaced by
coding. With that comes the reality that no two jobs will be the same.
The larger vendors are evolving through M&A and the ability to leverage an
established customer base with which emerging technologies are being
co-developed. Smaller vendors- entrepreneurial businesses so presumably beloved
by the Washington bloviati-are employing the coping strategies at hand. One
veteran, independent TV facility vendor put it plainly:
"For those of us who service the 'linear' broadcast industry, it's like the
classic vision of the guy hopping over the backs of alligators trying to get to
the other side of the river."
It's a fair analogy if you add not feeding the gators for several days before
throwing a bucket of fish in the middle of them.
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