[opendtv] Shapiro on LPTV
- From: "Bob Miller" <robmxa@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 10:20:52 -0500
Shapiro Slams CBA
Calling it "the latest bump" on the road to a successful DTV transition,
Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro Thursday took aim at
the Community Broadcasters Association in a speech to the Media Institute in
Washington Thursday.
Saying he had never even heard of CBA, a low-power lobby group, until a few
months ago, and adding that it reaches "fewer than one percent of the
American public," he argued that instead of "rushing to provide DTV service
to their customers, they are "trying to change the rules of the transition
in the 31th hour."
Low-power stations are not required to make the switch to digital in
February 2009. Few are planning to do so by then, the group has said, and
the government likely won't require them to before 2012, FCC Chairman Kevin
Martin has said. But the problem CBA sees is that only a handful of the
40-plus converter boxes so far approved by the National Telecommunications &
Information Association pass through the analog signals of all those low
powers, which mean they could lose viewers when the boxes are installed.
Shapiro says that in 2007 the group testified about the transition, but
never discussed the pass-through issue. "They only discussed their desire
for mandatory cable carriage." The FCC is currently considering helping some
600 low powers by helping them gain that cable carriage.
Shapiro said NTIA allowed, but did not mandate, the analog pass-through
function because it feared "reduction in the recieved signal level and an
increased cost. The overwhelming 99% of Americans wouldn't even need this."
Shapiro pointed out that the program was voluntary and said he thought that
fact that it was terrific thing that manufacturers were participating given
that it was a low-margin item, with no chance to upgrade because the coupons
can only be used on an NTIA-approved box, which can't have bells and
whistles like a built-in DVR, and it has a very short life.
He says a mandate that all the converter boxes would have to have an analog
pass-through function, as CBA wants the FCC to require, would be
"technologically, economically and practically impossible and would mean a
delay in the transition."
But Shapiro wasn't done. He said CBA had done "absolutely zero to positively
educate consumers about the transition and options available." He also said
CBA should be switching to digital anyway, and criticized a CBA PSA calling
the converter box program a scam."
John Eggerton
Broadcasting & Cable
Phone: 202-659-3852
Fax: 202-659-2235
Bob Miller writes...
This guy Shapiro the head of the CEA rears his ignorant head once again. At
least this time he admits to his ignorance claiming that he had not ever
heard of the CBA, Community Broadcasters Association, until a few months
ago. I had an agument with him at the hearings on the DTV transition in
2000. He had stood up and shown his ignorance in the hearing room my
announcing first thing in his statement that Sinclair had needed 8 MHz for
the demonstration that he had just witnessed.
He is one of the chief reasons we are saddled with 8-VSB. Without it LPTV
stations would have been eager to switch to digital years ago since they
don't have must carry and would have thrived in a DVB-T/MPEG4 world. Instead
most of them face extinction as the DTV transition causes a drop in their
viewers of 90% or better just because of the confusion let alone the fact
the the NTIA didn't seem to know they existed up till recently.
The incompetence and ignorance in high places in DC is only exceeded by the
extremely sensitive antennae that its inhabitants have in detecting that
their careers may be in jeaprody. See the rats leaving the NTIA. First
Kneuer who was the head of the coupon program leaves a few months ago and
now the acting head of the NTIA is leaving. Just yesterday the Acting Head
of the NTIA and point person on the coupon program, Merideth Atwell Baker,
who just replaced Kneuer left abruptly after smiling just a week or so and
saying all is well on the Communicators.
It wasn't so long ago that the last head of the NTIA, Nancy Victory, left
abruptly. I had talked to her just before she resigned and she became
hostile, very hostile within the first. What was I talking to her about? The
fact that the converters were going to be a very big problem and the LPTV
stations would suffer.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6536613.html
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