1. Embrace TELEVISION as well as broadband.
I know that broadband entertainment is becoming the norm in the television industry. Both broadcast and cable outlets have created and are creating broadband channels. However, that shouldn't mean that television should be left out in the dark. You'd think with the whole pushing of the digital format that broadcasters will take full advantage of it. At the time of this writing (June 2008), no major broadcast network (by major, I mean the "big 4," not PBS, which is publicly owned, ION, and the "netlets" My Network TV and The CW) has laid the groundwork on how or if they would do such a thing. Networks owned and operated by NBC and ABC have utilized only slide-show news and weather formats for their digital subchannels but news and weather are already found in droves on broadcast and cable. Fox owned-and-operated networks aren't doing anything major right now, though in some markets where they own both like in the New York DMA, the MNT affiliates are subchannels of Fox affiliates and vice versa.
Television, not broadband, should be a primary focus in the television industry. Yes, broadband is an essential tool for the industry and does allow users to be counted as contributors and creators as well as viewers. But broadband isn't television. It's broadband. It's a reason the rules must be rewritten. Television is television. There's no real substitute.
Television is still reachable by the bulk of the masses, and they're the ones that matter. Work on keeping that audience. By telling them to go elsewhere to watch their shows, you're pretty much pushing those viewers away, especially in a time when you need them the most. Television should provide the core of American entertainment, not broadband. If broadcasters fail to realize that, then the medium will be all but dead.
2. Realize Cable Dependence Is Secondary
Broadcast television in the United States have the potential to be big in the digital era. No fees. Clearer pictures. More channels. Something viewers of regular television have often dreamed of will become a reality, and yet, cable companies are acting as if they're still going to be around forever.
The cable industry has been pretty much a monopoly, even with the introduction of entertainment services by phone companies (and yet, when cable operators launched phone services, they had no idea the phone companies would provide cable television). The cable companies have pretty much handcuffed many communities as have the FCC. The end of cable dominance should be a major priority of broadcast outlets. The main reason many people want cable television is because they want clearer broadcast signals. With digital television, you certainly have that over the airwaves. In some instances, the signal's better than with cable. Also, cable operators aren't required to put any digital subchannels on their lineups. Yeah, they'll continue to put the main channels on their lineups, but cable subscribers won't get their digital subchannels. Ironically, they'll only be seen over-the-air for the most part.
Cities around the country could even have their own digital channels to serve as an all-community affairs channel. City-ran channels could also bring together neighborhoods, and if they're availiable over the air, the citizens could have more input.
Broadcast networks should utilize these facts and create a bigger campaign for a push for digital over-the-air television, especially over cable television. But wait, you may ask yourself, what's the solution to cable's dominance? Something different.
In the UK, there's a service called Top Up TV, a subscription-based service that has the setup of a typical digital converter box. With a special card, the service provides all the over-the-air digital channels in the UK in addition to unscrambling additional subscription-based channels for a fee, meaning, theoretically, potential entrepreneurs could create a new business model. One service, USDTV, tried a similar model stateside, but they only catered to the conservative side of the viewers and, unsurprisingly, failed. Someone else could utilize the Top Up model and make it work with more well-known networks. The cable and satelite industry will have major competition real soon. It's just going to take someone with a lot of clout (and a lot of money) to dare to take the industry out.
3. Multiplexing Should Be A MAJOR Priority.
The art of multiplexing shouldn't be just limited to the theater and cable industries. Cable channels have utilized the practice to expand their reach throughout the last decade. More people have gotten to know The N, Starz, Animal Planet, Discovery Kids, and many others over the past decade. Some of these channels tend to outshine the channels they spun off from..Maybe that's why the broadcast networks are afraid to expand beyond their original channel. They could follow the example of their UK counterparts and utilize the practice of multiplexing.
On digital television, there are multiple channels of BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five, including some exclusive to the digital format. The Freeview and Freesat services, managed by the networks themselves, provide free, over-the-air digital programming, including radio stations, only for the cost of a digital converter box (not unlike the ones we have here in the States). There are at least six BBC television networks, and yet, there is only one NBC.
"Independent" subchannels that are currently availiable like RTN, MeTV, Funimation, and LATV, and in development like dot2 (which will have crystal clear DVD-quality films in primetime every night) are the only major subchannels on the air on the major networks. As mentioned before, both ION and public broadcasters are already using multiplexing to create a greater variety of programming over the air. The major broadcast channels should create subchannels with different programming around their original branding. Folks in the business world call it brand extension. For example, NBC could have a 24-hour local news/weather channel (NBC News+Weather) and a classic NBC entertainment channel in addition to their main HD feed. We could theoretically have anywhere over 18 channels in a market.
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