Electronic Media 

Published: 10-23-95 



FCC STILL ASKING QUESTIONS ON ADVANCED TV    



Byline:  Joe Fedele 



 This August the Federal Communications Commission issued its

fourth Notice of Proposed Rule-making and third Notice of

Inquiry on advanced television systems.

 In previous orders the FCC focused on the development of

high-definition television. Many of the conclusions reached to

date are a result of that effort. But in this inquiry the

com-mission tries to determine the fate of advanced TV services

by looking back and considering technological changes.

 A major shift toward new compres-sion technologies appears to

be taking shape as the FCC seems to be leaning toward the

inclusion of standard definition TV, or digitized NTSC, as part

of the advanced TV standards.

 Multicasting was also cited in the report as a means to

transmit multiple simultaneous SDTV and HDTV programs along with

several packetized data streams within one 6 MHz channel.

Multicasting is getting a lot of attention from many

broadcasters and the National Association of Broadcasters

because it offers the possibility of additional revenue streams,

including subscription TV.

 The commission reaffirmed its intention to give advanced TV

spectrum to broadcasters at no additional charge so long as they

provide free over-the-air services.

 However, the notice cites that, ``we should consider imposing

spectrum fees for that portion of the spectrum used by

broadcasters to provide subscription service.''

 The FCC has remained firm in its commitment to enforcing its

``statutory mandate to ensure that broadcasters serve the public

interest.''

 This mandate includes the extension of equal employment

opportunity obligations, the inclusion of children's programing

and reasonable access to advanced TV services for political

candidates. With regard to licensing, the FCC has proposed to

issue a unified license for NTSC and advanced TV transmissions.

 This gives the commission added clout because it could revoke

or not renew both licenses during enforce-ment proceedings. The

previously established 15-year transition period is still

considered by the FCC to be a reasonable time frame to move into

the digital world.

 The 15-year clock starts ticking after the adoption of an

advanced TV system and a final table of advanced TV allotment is

established. However, the FCC did not rule out accelerating the

deadline should future events dictate that advancing the

timetable is in the public interest.

 The idea of a more flexible timeline could be based on

objective bench-marks such as when the pool of NTSC households

shrinks to a certain level.

 As expected, the commission is determined to recover existing

NTSC spectrum once the transition period has been reached. The

report concluded that recovered spectrum will be of greater

value if available in contiguous nationwide blocks.

 This is a new twist that I haven't seen before. It would solve

the problem of having a few stations in each market being

scattered across a 69-channel spectrum.

 And while the FCC's assertions and intentions are quite correct

and admirable, the implementation of such a feat is hardly a

simple matter. The only way this could be accomplished is by

doing what I call ``The TV Shuffle.''

 Imagine what a nightmare it would be if a station spent months,

or even years, advertising its new ``identity'' only to find it

has to move to another channel-perhaps more than once.

 Viewers in Miami were recently subjected to this mild form of

torture as the CBS and NBC stations swapped channels. The

onslaught of endless and repeated station promotions, IDs, radio

commercials and billboard ads was like falling off a ladder and

slamming your face against every single rung on the way down to

the hard ground. And this was only two stations.

 I can only gasp at the thought of an entire industry doing

``The TV Shuffle.'