February 2009

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.