November fast approaches and the first terrestrial broadcasts of DTV are scheduled to begin; from my observations of station preparedness they will begin on time. As we go through the supposed 9 years of conversion allowed for by the FCC, I would expect to see the top market stations going across cleanly -- perhaps down to the level of the Top 50. But those are the stations that are making money from TV broadcasting.

Once you get below the Top 50 markets the old adage of "Having a license to print money" is far from being the case, and when you get below the Top 100 there simply is no money to spend. So what's going to happen?

The top markets, including PBS, will find the conversion costs to do a good job of originating DTV programming, probably mostly in 480P, with occasional splurges up to 720I or P, or up to 1080I, depending on the politics of the network they are affiliated with.

Some of the remainder of the Top 100 will find some of the $300,000 estimated for conversion and do some part conversion work, probably still originating most of their local material in 525 component and upconverting for transmission; they will spend most of their money on the new transmission equipment for their newly, freely-acquired (mostly) UHF license.

And below the Top 100? They will plead and beg with the FCC for extensions beyond the 9 years -- and will get them, the FCC having shown they have absolutely no stomach for any kind of fight -- and then they will sell out. Just as we have seen massive consolidations in the radio industry -- and now consolidations of the consolidators -- we will see the same thing in TV. My local TV station (yes, there's just one!) does not make money; it has no staff to speak of; it cannot afford a new UHF transmitter or any of the equipment associated with it. But it has requested and been given a new UHF license with their solemn promise that they will use it. Eventually Mr. Big will come along and take the problem off their hands. He will install a satellite receiver for the DTV signal from his consolidation system and will convert the few local commercials (from Bill's Best Buys on Wheels) probably just from NTSC with a cheap converter.

But why does Mr. Big want to be involved at all? That I believe is where we are all being scammed by DTV. A good example of the basics of where the Mr. Bigs are going to make their money can be seen from my satellite provider. It is one of the majors, of course, and they have problems and they have scams. The problems include lousy analog engineering in their plant such that the majority of the channels have quite intense amounts of impulse noise visible. My guess is that to get enough material through their transponders they are transmitting most of the programming with between 2 and 3 Mbit/s (picture quality certainly looks that way.) They have decoder problems with grayscales all over the place and a total lack of lip sync. But it's all still better than analog NTSC over the local cable provider and I do appreciate the gigantic improvement in the audio.

So what's the scam for terrestrial broadcasters? I wish I knew. They seem to know something because they are all so keen to get into DTV. Obviously they are hoping to do the 2-3 Mbit/s routine for your favorite shows and sell the rest of their 6-MHz gift from the FCC to someone for some service; but I have not been able to figure out "what" and "to whom" and it is driving me nuts. Stock Market information? Pagers? One-way Internet content? "Follow the money," they always say: I don't see any money in those services.

The enthusiasm being exhibited for this conversion -- by the industry, not by the viewers -- has to have a rational explanation. The viewers, and the stories in the press, still confuse DTV with HDTV leaving them even further up in the "air" as to understanding what is coming. If a reader has figured it all out could you please let me out of my pain?

By: Paul McGoldrick
Sr. Technology Editor, EDTN

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