Most new technology rollouts have thankfully little to do with the daily bluster of Washington, DC. But when it comes to high-definition television and the general hype about digital TV, no one is safe from the political fallout that rains inside the Beltway.
The reasons involve such seemingly unrelated subjects as the balanced budget, the sanctity of local broadcasting, the survival of myriad cable channels, and the stock prices of countless retail chains and TV manufacturers that want to sell you billions of dollars' worth of new toys.
All these interests have powerful lobbies in Washington. The National Cable Television Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association have all been raising a cacophony for years over high-definition TV, or HDTV. But they aren't helping to make sense of this relatively new technology, even as new HDTV sets hit stores, and major television stations in the top 10 markets start lighting their digital towers.
Broadcasters have promised to spend millions to offer consumers beautiful new digital HDTV pictures in return for free digital spectrum from the government to carry it. Broadcasters will then relinquish their analog spectrum after a transition period that's supposed to end in 2006.
It's a nice arrangement for Congress: Capitol Hill budgeteers used the prospect of auctioning the returned spectrum, borrowing against the future returns of the sale to help balance the 1998 budget. Few people, however, expect the payback to happen that soon.
"It allowed us to phony up the budget," said Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and staunch critic of the spectrum deal with broadcasters, at a recent hearing on HDTV.
As usual, Congress has managed to punt most of these problems to the Federal Communications Commission, which now must decide whether to force cable companies to carry HDTV signals on their systems. Cable operators, which now have to carry all local broadcast signals under the "must-carry" law in the 1992 Cable Act, say that extending that rule to new digital broadcasts would force them to drop popular cable channels to make room.
Although it may seem cable operators had plenty of spectrum, many claim they are "channel-locked," or simply don't have any room to add a bunch of digital broadcast channels. The government hasn't given cable companies any extra bandwidth.
"This double-dose of must-carry would surely result in cable networks being dropped in many places and would once again relegate cable networks to second-class citizenship," says Decker Anstrom, president of the National Cable Television Association. "We'll never agree to that."
Other broadcasters are equally indignant. "The FCC has to send a clear message now so that broadcasters know the expense that they are shelling out here is going to be rewarded by having cable operators actually carry their signals," says Dennis Wharton, spokesman at the National Association of Broadcasters.
The big four networks really don't care about digital must-carry because they are must-haves on any cable network and aren't at risk of being denied carriage. But many of the smaller broadcasters are worried about being put out of business by cable systems that refuse to carry their signals. The broadcasters' association makes the argument that putting any broadcasters in jeopardy will hurt localism in general, lower the amount of industry diversity, and risk the future of free, over-the-air television.
Broadcasters are worried about cable carriage because the FCC has approved more than a dozen digital TV formats, all of which offer different resolutions. Some formats use a technique known as "progressive scan," which is used by computer displays. Others use "interlaced scan," which is used by current TV sets. Formats also vary in the number of lines of resolution. No one's quite sure how all those various signals will appear on TV sets hooked up to cable or whether cable operators will pass them through in full form.
"It's like an onion," laments Andy Scott, the cable association's vice president of science and technology. "The more layers you peel off, the more tears you get."
Broadcasters, television makers, and retailers are worried that all of this uncertainty will dampen initial sales of HDTV sets. Bill McCollough, president of the Circuit City retail chain and designated company rep at several Congressional hearings on HDTV, is optimistic. "It's a problem," he says of the cable-broadcast infighting. "But I believe we'll work through it. At the end of the tunnel, the customer's going to get some exciting stuff."
In July, the FCC proposed seven options ranging from requiring cable companies to carry every digital broadcast station to requiring no carriage at all. For consumers, all of this could determine whether HDTV sets fly off of shelves or linger.
The faster they sell, of course, the sooner they'll come down in price and become more widely available. And the faster the government will get its auction money. For a technology rollout, this one hinges on Washington like no other. Cross your fingers.
