Wait and see TV

When the new Legislature convenes next month, Maine Public Broadcasting will be there, asking for a $9.4 million bond issue, half of what is needed to convert to digital. The conversion is not an option, it is a federal order. It must be under way by 2002 and completed by 2006 or MPB will lose its broadcast license.

The Legislature must take this request seriously. MPB is too valuable an educational and cultural resource to lose. But at the same time, lawmakers should inform themselves of developments nationally and proceed with caution. The forced conversion to digital is too much a boondoggle to go unchecked.

This is the part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in which Congress blindly bought the blue-sky promises of the television industry: Give us a free channel to make the conversion to digital and we will offer the public super-sharp pictures, crystal-clear sound, a flood of new programming and a torrent of information services. When done, we’ll give our old analog channel back to be auctioned off to other communications providers.

The auction will fetch a good $50 billion to help balance the federal budget. The returned channels will create opportunities for the next generation of wireless communications. Electronics manufacturers get to make a fortune selling the new digital TVs or at least the converter boxes so old TVs will still work. And since each digital channel can carry at least four separate programs — many more as the technology improves — terrestrial broadcasters (the tower-to-rooftop-antenna crowd) get to be just like cable and satellite providers. Everybody wins.

Everybody except the public and, to a considerable degree, medium and small-market broadcasters.

First, the auction. The rules are written so that broadcasters only have to give back their analog channel if they really want to. Even if they do, the $50-billion figure is a dream. The last two FCC auctions have not raised anything close to the estimates; several winning bidders have defaulted in wireless’s saturated market. A year ago, $30 billion was the operative number. Today, some are saying the Treasury will be lucky to see $15 billion.

The first digital TVs are in select stores this holiday season. At $7,000 a pop. Of course, the price will come down in time. Experts say within a decade they’ll be within $500 or so of today’s large-screen, rear-projection sets. In other words, a mere $2,500 to $3,000.

So watch your old TV. All you have to do is buy a converter box so it receives the digital signal and converts it into the same old picture and same old sound that’s now free. In 1996, Congress was told the boxes would be $150. Now, $300 is being batted around. Assume it’s $200. Multiply that by the 235 million sets in American homes and you get $47 billion. That’s the tax Americans will pay to keep using the TVs they already own.

Local broadcasters will have to spend an average of $10 million on new studio equipment and towers — it’s double that for MPB because it has to build enough towers to reach an entire state, not just a metropolitan area and its fringe. There are 1,700 TV stations in this country, so there’s another $17 billion. Bottom line — an unfunded mandate of $64 billion to grow the Treasury by $15 billion.

Public TV has to go to the public for the money — that’s a lot of bond issues, coffee mugs and tote bags. Commercial TV goes to its advertisers. Won’t advertisers be happy when they pay higher ad rates to reach the same audience (after all, there is no vast untapped pool of non-viewers out there waiting to be lured into TV Land). Especially when that audience is pretty grumpy about having to buy all those converter boxes.

About those towers. They have to be very tall (1,500 feet or so) and very numerous. The digital signal is finicky, it can be blocked by a hill, a tree, neighbor’s garage; it either comes in perfectly clear or not at all. Rural folks — Maine has a few — who get a fuzzy picture today will get a blank screen tomorrow. And if your local zoning ordinance prohibits 1,500-foot structures, fear not. The FCC is preparing rules that will make your ordinance null and void. At no extra charge.

If this were just a question of a rather modest bond issue and MPB’s ability to match it through donations, the Legislature should have no trouble approving it. The problem is that the entire digital scheme could be scrapped once Congress starts to listen to a public that will be outraged shortly. State lawmakers must find a way to make the money available if necessary, but only if necessary — preparing for the worst while anticipating a sudden outbreak of congressional common sense. After all, if the national average applies here, Maine has roughly 1 million TV sets. And they vote.