NAB asks for ATSC 3.0 mandate by 2030

[K.M. Richards]

In light of that quote, I will reiterate what I have said a few times before in various threads: The broadcasters are operating under some delusion that consumers will pay for the programming they presently receive free of charge as advertiser-supported services. And they are, for the most part, wrong.

There might -- might -- be a market for the existing "big network" shows to be receivable and viewed free of commercials, as a secondary pay-TV service alongside the extant free-to-air commercial-supported network service. But even that market has probably already adopted streaming, or (like myself) have a DVR that can skip past the commercial breaks ... I am one of those clever ones who figured out how to program a TiVo remote to jump ahead in 30-second increments like the old ReplayTV ones did, so I likely wouldn't be a subscriber so long as I can still receive what I do now.

In fact, that's really all I am asking for: Innovate all you want, but leave what I already get in place. I suspect the majority of OTA viewers have similar POVs.

 

[yeoldeschool]

In light of that quote, I will reiterate what I have said a few times before in various threads: The broadcasters are operating under some delusion that consumers will pay for the programming they presently receive free of charge as advertiser-supported services. And they are, for the most part, wrong.

Agreed. I think they are confusing the willingness to pay for the removal of ads from entire platforms (e.g. Youtube, Spotify, Netflix) with a willingness to pay for the removal of commercials from only one channel, despite there being no concurrent improvement in the content. The reason ONtv and SelecTV worked was because they were ad-free, and uncensored, and uncut.

I am one of those clever ones who figured out how to program a TiVo remote to jump ahead in 30-second increments like the old ReplayTV ones did, so I likely wouldn't be a subscriber so long as I can still receive what I do now.

The Motorola DCT DVRs popular with many cable companies featured 30 second skip-ahead functions as well, but many of those cable companies distributed remotes with them whose programming excluded the IR codes for accessing them. Using your own universal remote, or re-programming the cable company's remote, gave access to the feature. Given the reputation of TiVo, it surprises me to know this same scam was being perpetrated by them. Perhaps pressure got aimed at the entire DVR industry from a consortium of interests some time after the initial box designs were finished, pressure the manufacturers decided to "comply with" through simple remote de-programming?

 

[K.M. Richards]

The reason ONtv and SelecTV worked was because they were ad-free, and uncensored, and uncut.

And if that is a factor in their thinking, they have forgotten the history.

I presume, since you mentioned those two long-defunct services, we are making Los Angeles the example ... so please allow me to add some facts to the three main points you made:

First, it took a full three years and change from the concept of ON TV to be put into practice; Oak Industries and Chartwell Communications first formed what became National Subscription Television in 1973, but it was not until April 1977 that they did a "soft launch" for 500 test susbcribers in the San Fernando Valley and October of that year for the full launch; one stumbling block was that KBSC-TV/52 didn't want to just lease the evening hours, so Oak had to purchase the station in 1976.

Over the next five years, ON ramped up to a peak of 379,000 households in mid-1982 ... and it was downhill from there. When they started, the only real pay-TV service was Theta Cable's Z Channel, which had begun in 1984 ... and if you didn't live in their franchise areas (largely the Westside) you were pretty much out of luck, although they did distribute the service to other cable companies as they came into existence.

But SelecTV was not far behind ON, launching in July 1978 over KWHY-TV/22, eventually exercising a purchase option in 1981 after Coast Television kept objecting to R-rated movies airing during the leased subscription hours. (Why they cared is beyond me, since they were making a lot of money from the weekdy financial news programming they started in 1966). SelecTV peaked quickly at 125,000 subscribers, and acquired ON's subscribers in 1985. After a short simulcast period, during which I presume the remaining channel 52 viewers had their decoders swapped out, Oak sold it to Telemundo and it resumed full-time unscrambled operation with Spanish-language programming the weekend before Thanksgiving.

The problem was that, even without a large penetration, there weren't enough subscribers for two services to co-exist -- and the weaker service ended up swallowing up the bigger one -- roughly 500,000 if you total up the peak numbers for the two.

By the time SelecTV pulled the plug in March 1989, they were down from the 215,000 combined subscriber base at the time of consolidation.

In a market that had 1.5 million pay-television subscribers at the time, cable won. Big time.

If the current OTA broadcasters really think there is a pot of gold, competing against what's left of cable and the streaming services, it's going to be a very expensive repeating of history for them.

 

[ted chittenden]

And if that is a factor in their thinking, they have forgotten the history.

I presume, since you mentioned those two long-defunct services, we are making Los Angeles the example ... so please allow me to add some facts to the three main points you made:

First, it took a full three years and change from the concept of ON TV to be put into practice; Oak Industries and Chartwell Communications first formed what became National Subscription Television in 1973, but it was not until April 1977 that they did a "soft launch" for 500 test susbcribers in the San Fernando Valley and October of that year for the full launch; one stumbling block was that KBSC-TV/52 didn't want to just lease the evening hours, so Oak had to purchase the station in 1976.

Over the next five years, ON ramped up to a peak of 379,000 households in mid-1982 ... and it was downhill from there. When they started, the only real pay-TV service was Theta Cable's Z Channel, which had begun in 1984 ... and if you didn't live in their franchise areas (largely the Westside) you were pretty much out of luck, although they did distribute the service to other cable companies as they came into existence.

But SelecTV was not far behind ON, launching in July 1978 over KWHY-TV/22, eventually exercising a purchase option in 1981 after Coast Television kept objecting to R-rated movies airing during the leased subscription hours. (Why they cared is beyond me, since they were making a lot of money from the weekdy financial news programming they started in 1966). SelecTV peaked quickly at 125,000 subscribers, and acquired ON's subscribers in 1985. After a short simulcast period, during which I presume the remaining channel 52 viewers had their decoders swapped out, Oak sold it to Telemundo and it resumed full-time unscrambled operation with Spanish-language programming the weekend before Thanksgiving.

The problem was that, even without a large penetration, there weren't enough subscribers for two services to co-exist -- and the weaker service ended up swallowing up the bigger one -- roughly 500,000 if you total up the peak numbers for the two.

By the time SelecTV pulled the plug in March 1989, they were down from the 215,000 combined subscriber base at the time of consolidation.

In a market that had 1.5 million pay-television subscribers at the time, cable won. Big time.

If the current OTA broadcasters really think there is a pot of gold, competing against what's left of cable and the streaming services, it's going to be a very expensive repeating of history for them.

While history doesn't always repeat itself, it certainly tends to rhyme. What happens is that a lot of new people make the same mistakes as those who preceeded them did because 1) they didn't know the previous history; 2) they know the previous history but thought they could do better than the ones who tried beforehand; 3) the new people are being pressured by others (banks, stockholders) to repeat the same mistakes done in the past; and/or 4) all of the above.

 

[K.M. Richards]

While history doesn't always repeat itself, it certainly tends to rhyme. What happens is that a lot of new people make the same mistakes as those who preceeded them did because 1) they didn't know the previous history; 2) they know the previous history but thought they could do better than the ones who tried beforehand; 3) the new people are being pressured by others (banks, stockholders) to repeat the same mistakes done in the past; and/or 4) all of the above.

Judging from the way they are going about this so far, probably all of the above, Ted.

Having had a chance to revisit the past while researching the timeline and subscriber numbers for my earlier post, I am a bit less worried about the whole issue, because if the broadcasters do launch ATSC 3.0 with all means of controlling who can watch, they are likely to end up like the two players in my narrative ... which is, operating unencrypted in order to get any audience whatsoever.

A fun bit of trivia which is somewhat relevant, which I learned while researching channel 22's history for the UHF history: Kaiser had originally signed an option in February 1966 with a company which was attempting to build a nationwide network of subscription television stations using the Zenith Phonevision system. That is why, when they signed on a few months later under the call letters KMTW -- which I have been told, but cannot confirm, stood for Mt. Wilson, where the channel 52 transmitter was (and still is) -- they only operated three hours a day, running promotional travelogues provided free of charge by various travel-related organizations, in monochrome, no less. It was only after Zenith itself started making overtures to acquire channel 22 in 1970 that Kaiser upgraded to color facilities and adopted the schedule that they were most famous for (anime, Three Stooges and Little Rascals shorts, and Doctor Who in the afternoon, horse racing and old movies from the 1940s and 1950s in the evening) until Oak came knocking six years later.

 

[Mediafrog+]

When they started, the only real pay-TV service was Theta Cable's Z Channel, which had begun in 1984

Sure it was just a typo, but Z Channel began in 1974. But good overview about the LA Pay-TV scene in those days.

I remember the OTA Pay-TV efforts in DFW in the early 1980s where three services were in the game: VEU, ON-TV and Preview. Problem was that cable TV was gaining a foothold in the market at the same time, and you could get several dozen channels for the same price as one of the OTA pay options. All of the DFW OTA Pay-TV services were gone after only three years.

Z Channel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[K.M. Richards]

Sure it was just a typo, but Z Channel began in 1974.

It was indeed. Thanks for catching that. (Whose idea was it to put the "7" and "8" keys next to each other?)

 

[yeoldeschool]

I remember the OTA Pay-TV efforts in DFW in the early 1980s where three services were in the game: VEU, ON-TV and Preview. Problem was that cable TV was gaining a foothold in the market at the same time, and you could get several dozen channels for the same price as one of the OTA pay options. All of the DFW OTA Pay-TV services were gone after only three years.

I remember my grandparents switching from ONtv to cable the moment their street was wired with coax in 1984. There was simply no competition.

 

[kevtronics]

Where is the CEA on this one? They were against the DTV tuner requirement in the 2000s, saying "commodity-priced TVs will become an endangered species because adding a costly DTV tuner will price them out of the market":

FCC Advances Tuner Mandate to March 2007, Not Dec. 2006 As CE Feared

communicationsdaily.com

 

[K.M. Richards]

Where is the CEA on this one? They were against the DTV tuner requirement in the 2000s, saying "commodity-priced TVs will become an endangered species because adding a costly DTV tuner will price them out of the market":

I can see why, at first glance, it seems they have been quiet ... they changed their name in 2015 to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), ten years after the article you linked.

When you search for "CTA ATSC 3.0" here are three of the more recent articles about them weighing in on this proposal (the first one is dated two days ago):

CTA Fighting Plan For Mandatory NEXTGEN TV Tuners | Radio & Television Business Report

The Carr Commission is considering a mandate that would require all sellers of televisions in the U.S to include a NEXTGEN TV-compatible receiver. The lobbying group that's responsible for the annual CES conference, led by an individual trying to kill the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act,"...

rbr.com

CTA Tells FCC: Don't Mandate ATSC 3.0 Tuners

Filing calls NAB’s petition to require 3.0 tuners a ‘heavy-handed and risky government intervention’

www.tvtechnology.com

ATSC 3.0 Update: The CTA Opposes Broadcasters' Request for Tuner Mandate - Lon Seidman & Lon.TV Blog

I’ve been following the rough rollout of ATSC 3.0—also known as NextGenTV—for a while now, and this week the transition hit another bump in the road. A dispute over tuner mandates has surfaced between two key players in the process: the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which represents...

blog.lon.tv

 

[K.M. Richards]

It appears that the Commission is still meeting even with the government shutdown; they issued a press release this morning about the Notice of Potential Rulemaking, Docket #16-142 and inviting comment.

Press release:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-415133A1.pdf

Docket details via ECFS:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/docket-detail/16-142

Comments received thus far via ECFS:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(proceedings.name:(%2216-142%22))

All FCC documentation on Docket #16-142:

https://www.fcc.gov/edocs/search-results?t=quick&dockets=16-142

 

[yeoldeschool]

Where is the CEA on this one? They were against the DTV tuner requirement in the 2000s, saying "commodity-priced TVs will become an endangered species because adding a costly DTV tuner will price them out of the market":

FCC Advances Tuner Mandate to March 2007, Not Dec. 2006 As CE Feared

communicationsdaily.com

The reason they don't defend affordability anymore is because they no longer have to. The entire economic landscape of television manufacturing has changed to one where the hardware is sold at extreme loss lead prices as a sort of fish hook that's meant to reel in the manufacturers' actual sources of revenue: their customers being egregiously data mined in perpetuity. I say egregious because the data mining being done by modern smart TVs has reached Orwellian proportions, no longer involving just the tracking of user actions and clicks, but the continuous hashing and even screenshotting of everything shown on-screen and heard through the speakers, even when the media being played is coming from external inputs like auxiliary input jacks, or screencasting. Lon Seidman just did a video about the latter aspect, but the practice (ACR) has in fact been ongoing for years:

Anyone with any self-respect should only buy displays and monitors from the professional (broadcast/studio/production) equipment market today. Professional equipment lacks all of the consumer gimmicks and surveillance smart TVs come loaded with.

Check out the first review on this unit I was considering a few years ago, for example. While unfortunately no longer in stock, the description says it all -- quality beyond anything you can find at your nearest electronics store, and most importantly, "being a "pro" monitor, it doesn't have any annoying "smart TV" features. Turn it on and whatever is at the input is immediately displayed. There's also no need to go through a ton of menus to disable all the junk that plagues consumer TVs -- stuff like noise reduction, motion interpolation (which creates the hideous "soap opera" effect), and the like. It just looks RIGHT, without all that sleaze. Since this monitor is intended to present "the truth" to content creators, that is as it should be."

 

[Anton P]

Most notably, the FCC proposes to end the requirement that Next Gen TV
stations simulcast their signal in 1.0 while also providing more rule flexibility to those who wish to
continue to do so.

Does this hint at removal of 1.0 sunset requirement? Making 3.0 voluntary would break NABs business plan. They want FCC to force everyone into 3.0 so there will be no viewer loss to legacy 1.0 signals.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Does this hint at removal of 1.0 sunset requirement? Making 3.0 voluntary would break NABs business plan. They want FCC to force everyone into 3.0 so there will be no viewer loss to legacy 1.0 signals.

Yes, that is what we have been discussing.

 

[davideduardo]

While history doesn't always repeat itself, it certainly tends to rhyme. What happens is that a lot of new people make the same mistakes as those who preceeded them did because 1) they didn't know the previous history; 2) they know the previous history but thought they could do better than the ones who tried beforehand; 3) the new people are being pressured by others (banks, stockholders) to repeat the same mistakes done in the past; and/or 4) all of the above.

You have just listed the main reasons why I do WorldRadioHistory. In particular, there are so many cases of people who fall under the #1 reason and just don't know that their bad idea has been tried over and over and always failed.

I started the collection so that I could illustrate reality to people I supervised at the HBC and, later, Univision, group who came up with bad ideas that had been proven to be bad. Rather than arguing "my opinion" against theirs, I showed them on my laptop examples of their idea failing quite disastrously in the past. In that manner, I could prevent disasters while preserving relationships.

 

[K.M. Richards]

You have just listed the main reasons why I do WorldRadioHistory.

Don't forget that WRH has been a great resource for debunking urban legends, David.

 

[yeoldeschool]

But you're describing a hobby which has no impact on the enjoyment of television by ordinary consumers, and a hobby which has limited to no lobbying power before the FCC. The grandmas who used their VCR to time-shift "The Young and the Restless" a couple hours later so they could go to their aerobics class at 1pm provided the political pressure to make that hobby legal, and they basically don't exist anymore.

Remember that the Sony Betamax SCOTUS decision happened in 1984 when the total households with VCRs was somewhere less than 14% (exactly 14% by 1985 according to Nielsen). Then consider that only a minority of that minority would have represented the political pressure behind the court's pro-recording decision, considering that most VCR owners then, as later, bought their decks chiefly for watching prerecorded stuff.

Around here (i.e. in the radio business), everyone gets in the groove of thinking in consensus percentage terms before seeing things as having any kind of green light. It must be acknowledged that in the legal world, where rights are concerned, the rights of minorities are always recognized and enforced despite coming nowhere near consensus percentages. Whatever minority percentage of linear TV archivists and time-shifters remains today, it's easily likely it's no smaller than the minority that existed way back in the sub-14% days of 1984. That alone should translate in the FCC's mind to there being as great a need for protecting recording rights now as the SCOTUS saw during the formative years of VCR ownership.

(I would even point out that the technical challenges haven't changed. Folks with blinking 12:00 displays in 1984 are today's CapDVHS and streaming gateway illiterates. Thankfully, with the on-screen menu-driven DVRs and PVRs of today, many more are likely to successfully time-shift things now than probably could manage it in 1984.)

I actually have one of these "generic" DVRs. I'd dispute both points, really. The one I bought was from Big Lots. When I got it set up, it wouldn't play its own recordings, and there was basically no troubleshooting info in the manual, so it hasn't been used.

I would put that down to a defective individual unit and not count it against generic DVRs as a whole. But that said:

There is another model listed in stock at my nearby Walmart store (Core Innovations CTCB105). Its rating on Walmart.com is 3.4 stars out of 5, which is firmly in the "DO NOT BUY" range for me. A product class with one representative with very poor reviews in a big box store doesn't seem all that widely available.

You can find reviews of these things all over Youtube including on Antenna Man's, Northcoast Hobby's, and Lon Seidman's channels. In all of the reviews I've seen, each of the drawbacks noted were usually minor annoyance issues rather than fatal flaws. People would take off points for stuff like small remote buttons, no-frills menus, and automatic MPEG file naming formats they disliked. But as far as these devices' abilities to make quality timer and on-the-fly recordings to portable storage media, they all basically got the job done.

The one actually curious thing I've noticed about these things while watching their reviews is that many appear to use variations of the same basic on-screen menu firmware. It's almost like there's one Chinese outfit supplying customized versions of one firmware suite to multiple PVR manufacturers on a license basis, similar to the way VxWorks got historically chosen as the common underpinnings of many computerized western products -- from Linksys routers to Motorola digital cable STBs.

In any case, have a look through these videos if you're so inclined. None of their reviewers are particularly negative toward any of the devices shown in them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju_oDqvEhQ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9KUAjjcDww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHtZQncpRcs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4IUDi83r0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lJQvc1icCs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhJDN438oM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiLpcCRVRp0

Personally, I would probably opt for the first model, though if I were going to go after something a little more expensive and branded, the Tablo 4 looks decent.

 

[K.M. Richards]

And now, for those of you who would like the headache resulting from reading the entire text opening the public comment period (which includes some of the "sunset" language regarding ATSC 1.0), here is a link to all 73 pages:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-72A1.pdf

Comments from individual Commissioners:

Chairman Brendan Carr:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-72A2.pdf

Commissioner Anna Gomez:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-72A3.pdf

Comissioner Olivia Trusty:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-72A4.pdf

 

[yeoldeschool]

Let me see if I have this straight:

* The FCC is stating it will let broadcasters shut down their ATSC 1.0 signals whenever (as soon as) they individually please ... YET:
* The FCC is also stating there will be no mandate forcing broadcasters to shut down their ATSC 1.0 broadcasts by any specific deadline?
* The FCC is further stating there will be no mandate forcing manufacturers to include ATSC 3.0 in new tuners or television sets?

If that is so, then ATSC 3.0 just became the next HD Radio.

 

[w00t]

Last I heard around 20% of the audience (including me) enjoy FREE tv. Also I don't have to worry about on of the big programmers getting into a carriage dispute with Google, Direct etc. Its better than paying the cable company. I do stream Netflix but that is instead of going to theater and paying $8 for a bag of popcorn and a Sprite.

20% of an audience for linear TV that is shrinking daily.