TV Nets Face Struggle to Stay Viable

There it is, right on the front page of the 2/28/09 edition of The New York Times, a column 1 article warning that the nets must change or die. One possible scenario – become cable nets themselves – perhaps leaving their affiliates out in the cold.

(And check out the comments here.)

Local TV Next To Fall ?

"We’ve been wringing hands over newspapers and magazines but TV and
radio aren’t far behind. Broadcast is next." says
Jeff Jarvis in his Buzz Machine blog.

Retroactive: Four Days Notice

This Too Is Past

Broadcast Engineering Editorial Director Brad Dick waxes positive about
the future of local television stations in his January ‘09 editorial "This
too shall pass".

While those of us who toil at the network or station group level mourn
the thinning of our ranks over the past two months – to see your
future, just look at the local radio business today. Enough said.

Splice Is In, Switch Is Out

Years after I saw the first Master Control program stream splicer at NAB
years ago in the A.F. Associates booth comes this pearl of wisdom from
John Luff in the January ‘09 issue of Broadcast
Engineering: "One might argue that a splicer is not a master control
system, but to be perfectly honest, it isn’t far from one."

Just think of how much better the picture quality would be if we used
2-pass MPEG-2 encoding on our primetime shows. (Or even better, how many
more digital program streams we could stat-mux if our main program had a
lower bitrate.)

DTV Transition Delayed

With the countdown at T-minus 13, Congress has reset the clock to June
12th. The nations electric companies are the only sure winners – some
UHF stations face five figure monthly bills for keeping their analog
transmitters on. Paula Kerger, CEO of the Public Broadcasting System, said
that the total figure for all the PBS stations was $22 million for the
four months.

See the AP article here
and the Reuters article here.