Grand Theft Digital: How Corporate Broadcasters Will Hijack Digital TV

On Feb. 17, 2009, a massive but so far little-noted corporate theft of the public airwaves will be consummated as U.S. analog TV stations switch to digital TV (DTV) broadcasting. Digital broadcast technology enables three, four and sometimes more separate channels to be compressed into the space formerly occupied by a single old-fashioned analog TV channel. So when the transition from analog to digital TV occurs nationwide, each of the nation's more than 1,700 broadcast TV license holders will suddenly have two, three or more additional channels, a gift from the taxpayers worth an estimated $70 billion.

Back in the mid-1990s, the owners of TV stations promised Congress that the advent of DTV would bring with it a wide selection of new programming, educational and children's shows, frequently updated local newscasts and interactive content, all free, over the new digital broadcast airwaves. Of course, they lied.

"Broadcasters have no idea how they will fill the extra channels they'll get," Communications Workers of America's Carrie Biggs-Adams told Black Agenda Report (BAR). "They don't have the content, and they don't have a clue. There are only so many reruns, reality shows and home shopping networks."

An article by David Hatch in the June 7 National Journal confirms this:

With the February 17 shift to digital broadcasting just over eight months away, broadcasters are finding that the business model for multiple channels is not panning out. An often-repeated refrain is that there's no money in it. "You're not creating any new advertisers, and you're not creating any new viewers," said Shaun Sheehan, vice president of the Tribune Co., which carried an all-music channel called The Tube on some of its secondary digital stations before the network folded in October.

"It's just a pure business decision," said James McQuivey, a media analyst with Boston-based Forrester Research. "Do I run the risk of rolling out new channels that will dilute my audience base?"

The National Association of Broadcasters cited statistics from BIA Financial, a Chantilly, Va.-based research firm, indicating that 351 television stations are multicasting.

But that figure includes public broadcasters, which have invested heavily in extra stations and account for a large chunk of the ones available -- compared with their commercial counterparts.

When commercial outlets do multicast, it is often to transmit redundant weather maps, which involves minimal investment and little or no on-air talent. These radar scopes are so widespread that they've saturated the airwaves in some markets, including Washington, where viewers have three to choose from. Commercial broadcasters "can say that they do have some content on there," the FCC source said derisively.

Although the airwaves are public property under U.S. law, and broadcasters receive their licenses from the FCC only on the condition that they serve the public interest, neither Congress nor the FCC have attached any public service or public interest requirement to the thousands of new DTV channels that current broadcasters will receive. And current broadcasters, according to the deal worked out by Congress and the FCC back in the 1990s, are the only ones upon whom the new stations made possible by DTV will be bestowed. They're in. Congress and the FCC, in their wisdom, didn't think local governments, schools, colleges, libraries, unions, community organizations, local churches, blacks, Latinos or females deserved a shot at any of the thousands of new DTV channels. They're out. That's it and that's all.

The DTV transition has been engineered at every level to shield broadcasters from public scrutiny or accountability. You'd think four times as many TV stations would mean the FCC would have to issue four times as many broadcast licenses. But the issuance of new licenses would make public debate about who gets them and under what conditions unavoidable. So the new stations will be brought online under existing licenses.