In a DTV World, Stations Must Think Mobile

Nat Ostroff in one of TV broadcasting's true believers.

As vice president of new technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group and CEO of Acrodyne Industries, a transmitter manufacturer in which Sinclair holds an 82 percent stake, Ostroff believes that broadcasting is much more than a means for delivering a station's programming to a cable headend.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck, Ostroff talks about broadcasting, not as a business or programming service, but as a technology that may be just the right one for reaching today's mobile generation of cell phone, PDA, iPod and laptop users.

And given that potential, Ostroff says, broadcasters may be making a "fatal mistake" in not building full redundancy into their new digital transmission systems. Other topics: the possibility of a delay in the DTV transition, single frequency networks and his hopes for 8-VSB.

An edited transcript:

Let's start with the top DTV story of the day. The incoming Obama administration wants to delay the analog cut off. What do you think?      

It's a bad idea. It just encourages more confusion in both the industry's and the public's minds. There's an enormous amount of promotion going on right now by broadcasters alerting the public to the transition. A delay would simply create additional doubting Thomases. You can make the argument that people who don't know about it by February of '09 aren't going to know about it six months later either.               

Would a delay cause a lot of pain and expense to broadcasters?

Economically, it's painful because you're still incurring the cost of running two stations and many broadcasters have stretched their analog transmitters' tube life to make it to February. Some folks will be glad to shut those old clunkers off in February and not have to run them any longer.

I understand that one of the downsides of the DTV transition is that many stations will be operating without backup transmitters. Why can't stations just use their old transmitters like they have in the past?

You're correct. There will be a very large number of stations -- I don't know if it's a majority -- that will be operating their digital facilities with minimum transmission equipment. After the transition, they won't have a backup transmitter ready to go.

A lot of it has to do with the digital channel assignments. If their permanent digital channel is the same as their old analog channel, then using their existing analog transmitter as a digital transmitter for back up is very straightforward.

For example, if a station is on channel 20 in analog and on channel 42 in digital now, but it's elected to operate on channel 20 after the transition, they have a very simple problem. For $50,000, they're done. They're operating in digital.

The $50,000 is for a new exciter.

For a new exciter and probably a digital filter. Otherwise, they're in good shape. To me, that cost is de minimis.

The real problem comes in when you are changing channels, going from one UHF channel to another.

In that case, the existing UHF transmitter would need to be modified and the RF plant -- that is, the combiners and filters and the transmission line and the antenna itself -- would all have to be changed. You may have to rebuild your entire RF plant. That represents significant money and time

What if you're changing bands, going from VHF to UHF?

If you're going from V to U, you're building a whole brand new station. You won't be able to use your old transmitter for backup.

That's also true if you're going from U to V, right?

Frankly, the only reason to go from U back to V is because you have no other viable alternative.

But some stations are doing that, aren't they?

Yeah, I know. I don't think they understand the physics involved in the new digital world.

 You don't think VHF in the digital world is a good idea.

It's a terrible idea.

Why is that?

Well, first of all, low-band VHF is very hostile to digital because of all the man-made noise that exists now. Second, VHF receivers require big antennas. So if we're going to be in a wireless world of cell phones or iPods or whatever, the digital appliance is going to have a physically small antenna. So VHF is going to be a much more difficult signal to receive than the UHF signal because of the antenna size in the portable devices.

That's a big switch. Since the beginning of TV time, it was always better to be in the VHF band.

It's the world turned upside down. VHF is not where you want to be in this digital world because the marketplace has changed. In the old days, mom and pop were sitting 40 miles away in their farmhouse and they had an antenna on their flagpole and VHF was what they got. But that's not the market. The market today is the kids, the 20- and 30-year-olds, with their portable digital devices and their little notebook computers and all the little things that they carry around in their pockets. That's who you're going to end up talking to.