ESSAYS AND REPORTS ON EDUCATIONAL MEDIA BY KEN FREED |
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A
discussion of production technology, by
Ken
Freed Once
a television production is "in the can" (to borrow
a film term), the fun really begins. The selection
of appropriate distribution channels for video
programming depends on the content and format. A
great programme can fail just as miserably as a
lousy programme if distributed through the wrong
channels. Understanding the technologies used for
television content distribution can help determine
the best venue for any given educational programme
or series. TERRESTRIAL
BROADCASTING OF ETV PROGRAMMES Analog
Television Terrestrial
antenna broadcasters deliver programming at no cost
to everyone within range of their antenna. For
maximum reach, an antenna tower needs to be perched
atop the highest point in the region, a mountain, a
big hill, an office skyscraper. The range of the
signal also is determined by the power of the
station, how many watts or megawatts of power the
transmitter can generate. The signal radiates out
from the antenna in all directions. Broadcast
signal airwaves tend be fairly long, so distances
from crest to trough are measured in meters to
kilometers. Very high frequency (VHF) waves vibrate
at a slower rate than ultra high frequency (UHF).
The first broadcast
stations to launch operations 50 years ago used VHF
signal channels. These were designated in the
marketplace with low numbers, BBC1-2 and Channel 4
in the UK, for instance, or channels 1 through 9 in
the USA. The UK does not yet have UHF stations, but
UHF channels in the USA and typically have higher
call numbers like Channel 20, Channel 31, Channel
59. Every nation and region has its own unique
broadcast infrastructure. The mechanics of broadcast
TV transmission are universal, however. Using a
router and switcher system, a master control center
mixes together the individual programmes with the
assorted interstitial materials (commercials,
public service announcements, broadcaster
identification spots, programme promotions), and
then sends the full signal to the transmitter
located at the antenna tower. Methods of moving the
signal from the TV station to the transmitter
include bundled telephone lines, coaxial cable,
optical fiber, microwave, and satellite. A
transmitter contains a large tube, up to three feet
across and two feet high, that pulses out the
signal at the assigned frequency. The design and
manufacturing of both VHF and UHF television
transmitters embodies a major international
business, as does producing the other equipment
used in television operations. (See Chapter 8 for
key players.) Home viewers pull the long
waves from the air with a rooftop or set-top
antenna, which is attached by wires to the back of
the TV set. This equipment is produced by consumer
electronic companies. Global ventures like Philips,
Sony, Panasonic, General Electric (Thomson), and
others produce both consumer electronics and
professional equipment, allowing them to play on
both sides of the street. Educational TV producers
have to deliver their programming to broadcasters
in a form that accounts for the technical
requirements of both the broadcasters and the
receivers. While this is common sense, too many ETV
ventures have fallen flat from lack of compliance
with technical standards. A TV station with low-end
or poorly maintained equipment might degrade the
quality of a programme's picture and sound when the
programme is broadcast, but the most advanced
station cannot improve the quality of an inferior
production. Distributing educational
TV programmes by terrestrial antenna broadcasting
has the advantage of making the learning content
available at no charge to everyone within range of
the TV station . Educational broadcasters in the
USA like to say that free TV is the most democratic
way to educate the public for responsible
citizenship. This concept still applies in the UK
although television owners must pay an annual
license fee to BBC in order to receive the "free"
programming. From a business viewpoint, the
question is, who pays for these free broadcasts?
Commercial advertising has become the answer for
most broadcasters, but most educational TV is on
public broadcast stations, which in some nations
are wholly subsidized by the government and in
others. In the USA, viewer membership dues fund up
to 90 percent of PBS station costs and programming
acquisition. Digital
Television Now
a new challenge faces broadcasters and those
producing ETV content for the broadcasters &emdash;
called digital terrestrial television (DTT) in
Europe and simply digital television (DTV) in the
Untied States. From end to end, full
deployment of digital television requires the
replacement of almost every piece of equipment
within a broadcast operation's facility and within
a viewer's home. For equipment manufacturers,
digital TV represents an explosive business
opportunity coupled with an incentive for technical
innovation to pass the competition. For ETV content
producers, digital TV represents an opportunity to
imagine and create richer and more effective
educational programmes using the wide-screen format
of motion pictures. And what do consumer get out of
DTT? Not only do they get cleaner, brighter,
sharper pictures and sounds than ever was possible
with analog TV, they also gain access to a host of
interactive services (the Internet only hints at
the possibilities). Interactive broadcast ETV, of
course, depends on broadcasters being willing to
make use of set-top receiver boxes or else the next
generation of TV sets with built on modems for an
upstream channel. The deployment of digital
TV services will take place over the next
generation, with the major cities being the first
to receive digital service before the year 2000.
During the transition period while analog TV sets
are being replaced by digital TV sets, broadcasters
will have to simultaneously transmit both analog
and digital signals at different frequencies. The
duration for this expensive period of dual
operations will be influenced by the rate of
consumer acceptance, yet also by the rate of TV
operation's conversion, as determined by fiscal and
human resources. In the United States, for
example, there are about 1100 television stations.
Each will need to upgrade their transmitter
antennas for digital operations. An HDTV tower must
be higher than an analog NTSC antenna, which may
mean building a whole new tower complex. In the
entire nation, however, there currently are only
about eight crews with the technical knowledge and
skills needed to do the job right, the best crews
averaging about one month per tower. Working at top
speed, these crews will be lucky to upgrade 1100
stations within 10 years, appreciably longer than
the optimistic timetable fixed by the Federal
Communications Commission. In the UK with only 207
television broadcast stations, the task of
upgrading all the antenna towers is not as
daunting, but add in the 3200 signal repeaters that
ensure coverage throughout England, Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland, and other British
holdings. since each repeater must be upgraded, the
enormity of the national undertaking becomes
apparent. And stations wanting to launch DTT
services cannot just up and do it. They must go
through a rigorous licenses process from either the
BBC or the ITC (Independent Television Commission),
both charged with standards compliance. Governments generally are
in command of the rollout of digital TV services.
The allocation of electromagnetic spectrum is
controlled by national governments on the
philosophical premise that the spectrum is a
natural resource that belong to the people as a
natural right. Broadcasters are granted licenses to
use assigned frequencies in the spectrum are viewed
by their governments as being given a sacred trust.
giving broadcasters. Political realities affect
technological visions. If seeking niche
television business opportunities, whether in
educational or commercial broadcasting, notice how
a demand for qualified digital upgrade crews will
grow and hold steady for at least a decade. The
people paid to do the upgrades will make good
money, but what of those paying them to do the
work? Since upgrading a
broadcast station from analog to digital can
surpass £2 million or $3 million without much
effort, how is this expense justified for TV
operations earning appreciably less in annual
revenues? The investment is worthwhile only if the
upgrade can produce new revenue streams through
interactive digital services. For producers of
digital wide-screen programmes, their facility
upgrade expenses start at about £500,000,
which is not small change, but much easier to
recover though national and international sales of
even one quality educational product. CABLE
DISTRIBUTION OF ETV PROGRAMMES Cable
operations in the UK and Ireland are regulated by
the Programmes and Cable Division of ITC, which
Licenses cable and satellite programme services
along with monitoring their compliance with the
Programme Code. The division also works to support
high quality and diversity in national and regional
services. Cable is a relatively new
phenomenon in the United Kingdom, and penetration
hovers slightly above 20 percent. In contrast,
cable penetration in the United States recently
passed 65 percent of the 100 million households
being served by about 9,000 cable systems, most of
them being owned by a multiple system operator
(MSO) like Comcast, Time-Warner, Charter, and
others. Since so little of the UK has been wired
for cable, construction crews can start fresh and
lay a hybrid line of fiber and coaxial cable for TV
and phone services. For instance, as of September
30, 1997, new systems built by Comcast UK passed
more than 1,147,000 homes (72% of the homes in
their franchise areas), serving 285,000 cable
subscribers, 335,000 residential telephony
subscribers and 10,500 business telephony
subscribers. Cable penetration in the UK is
expected to increase year by year, yet the lower
numbers give UK cable operators an economic
advantage in that their new systems can be designed
and built for digital from day one. American cable operations
are not so fortunate. They must rebuild existing
plant. After the lengthy process, years earlier, of
obtaining rights-of-way to dig up the streets and
fields, to cut trenches around or through home
garden, cable crews now must go back and dig up all
of these old lines and replace them with hybrid
fiber coax (HFC) lines. In some systems, the HFC
lines are being bundled with twisted pairs of
copper telephone wires, the architecture created by
USWest for their of broadband cable TV trial in
Omaha, Nebraska. Revenues from cable
subscriptions and advertising are helping to fund
the costly upgrade to digital, but the cable
operators are counting on new revenue streams from
digital services to recover their costs and turn a
profit. Interactive education is one of the
services seen as central in the cable industry's
growth strategy . Producers of educational content,
therefore, are smart to understand the concerns of
cable operators and make sure they deliver content
in whatever video recording format a cable system
prefers (another opportunity for standards
conversion). On the technology side,
beyond the upgrade to wide-screen HDTV pictures,
improvements in the cable infrastructure can
support such interactive services as
video-on-demand and home shopping, often deemed the
twin cash cows pulling the digital wagon.
Delivering these services requires a high-capacity
digital server with a large memory buffer and
high-speed ports for incoming and outgoing traffic.
Because video is so bandwidth hungry, already using
6 megahertz for a single analog channel, the
digital video file servers at the heart of
multichannel on-demand and transaction services
must be able handle as much volume in an hour as
Internet file servers handle in a day or a
week. Digital
Compression The
magical word to solve the bandwidth problems is
compression. When TCI chairman John Malone was
misquoted in the early Nineties and all the hype
began about "500 channels," he was talking about
digital video compression. Crunching the size of
the digital datastream allows more content to be
packed into less space. At a 10:1 compression
ratio, a 50 channel cable system can have 500
channels. Video compression is
achieved, in part, by dropping redundant
information from the data stream describing each
frame of video (at 30 frames per second). In a wide
shot of a lone figure in the distance walking down
a country road, why keep sending over and over
again the data packets controlling the pixels that
make up the unchanging mountains and trees and sky?
Instead, only refresh the data packets for those
pixels that do change from frame to frame, these
few pixels near the center of the screen depicting
the walking figure. Video with more movement cannot
be compressed as much as video with little motion
because more pixels change from frame to frame in
action scenes. This is a simplification,
admittedly, because identifying data for every
pixel in every frame needs to be sent for each
frame just to keep the pixel grid in order. But now
you visualize the essence of digital compression.
You also can benefit from knowing that various
algorithms are used to predict motion from frame to
frame, so still more bits of data can be compressed
out of the transmission. Also, know that some
compression methods delete data in the process,
degrading the picture quality. The trick is finding
the right balance between compression ratio and
image resolution. The world standard for
video compression is MPEG-2, developed by the
Motion Picture Experts Group. Compression under
their previous MPEG-1 yielded too much data loss,
so they developed a second, more sophisticated
compression method. MPEG-2 actually is a set of
compression tools that sample the different levels
and profiles of video's luminance and chrominance,
brightness and colour. MPEG-2 encoders and decoders
are produced by almost every major TV equipment
manufacturer, including such European giants as
Philips and Thomson. Within the TV industry,
there's a popular paraphrase of George Orwell that
goes, "All MPEG is created equal, but some MPEG is
more equal than others." MPEG-2 at Main Level, Main
Profile is most commonly used for transmitting
video over cable, satellite and microwave systems,
whether the receiver is another television center
of a viewer's TV at home. Unfortunately, MPEG-2 at
MP/ML must be decompressed before it can be edited,
and signal degradation always occurs upon
recompression. So, Professional or Studio Profile
MPEG-2 has emerged for in-house signal processing.
Studio MPEG's higher sampling rate and structure
allow editing on-the-fly, such as inserting a
station ID into the lead-in for a programme, or
perhaps dubbing in another language or inserting
translated text at the bottom. Educational television
content producers, like other video producers, are
learning to plan for compression during production.
Awareness of the compression method expected to be
used may influence shot composition and scene
lighting. Also, more and more cable systems are
asking producers to deliver their programming
content already compressed, perhaps bounced of a
satellite to the cable headend. Cable
Advantages In
addition to the digital compression, the cable
industry is investing tremendous resources in the
deployment of the cable modem, which will support
high speed data services. The standard
configuration will be one cable line coming into
the home or office or classroom which then enters a
splitter with one line going to the TV and another
line going to a cable modem attached to the
computer. As the TV and PC converge, the cable
modem may become obsolete, but that's more than
decade away. Meanwhile, cable services are counting
on the fees for cable modem rentals and data access
services to help pay for their rollout of
video-on-demand and interactive transaction
services like home shopping and remote banking. The
moneys from these services will subsidize cable's
growing educational activities. The primary technical
advantage of cable services over broadcast,
satellite or microwave services is the cable
itself. Only a cable inherently supports
symmetrical two-way communication, as much content
going upstream as coming downstream. This is not an
issue now, when the only upstream traffic is short
bursts of data commands on what to send downstream.
But as video telephony services begin (making
today's teleconferencing look crude in comparison),
cable companies may be in the best position to
compete head to head with the telephone companies
for telecommunications customers. In response, many
of the telephone companies (such as USWest and Bell
Atlantic in the USA, British Telecom in the UK,
France Telecom and Deutche Telecom on the
continent) have prepared to offer digital video
services over their own copper or fiber telephone
lines. One day, the now stark divisions between
different types communication companies may blur
into nothingness when all network operators offer
video, data and voice services. Until then,
recognizing the distinctions is important to any
savvy investor. Education is one area
where the distinctions become apparent.. The cable
industry, at least in the United States, is
investing hundreds of millions of dollars into
educational cable services targeting both the TV
and PC platforms. In part, the industry is
attempting to win friends and influence people in
communities where they have lost favor due to
arrogant customer service attitudes (a product of
monopoly franchises with local governments). But
this thinking is subsumed by the leading voices
within the cable industry who share a genuine
commitment to education, such as William Samuels at
ACTV, such as Bernie Luskin while at Jones (he's
now at Fielding Graduate Institute), such as Carol
Vernon at Cable in the Classroom, and the list is
growing. Along with public broadcasters,
cablecasters are the educators' best friend in the
television business. SATELLITE
DISTRIBUTION OF ETV PROGRAMMES While
satellite television service has more market
penetration than cable in the UK (the opposite of
the situation in Europe and the USA), the stronger
satellite position does little to benefit
educational TV programmers. Multichannel satellite
services do not allot as much of their capacity to
educational content as the cable operators.
Satellite system operators see entertainment as
their core business, and since they do not have to
overcome any negative stereotypes like "the cable
guy," delivering educational content is just a nice
way for the satcasters to score some public
relations points. There are exceptions in the
industry, but they are few. One possible reason for
the focus on entertainment in the satellite
industry may be the penetrating influence of Rupert
Murdoch. Entertainment not education is his highest
priority. The only educational content carried on
BSkyB is the overnight Learning Zone programming on
BBC2 and the "edutainment" programmes on such
American cable services as Discovery. Instead,
BSkyB is banking on the popularity of MTV and an
endless stream of sports, such as Premier League
Soccer, for which Murdoch paid $1 billion to obtain
exclusive broadcast rights. No such investment
exist in educational content on BSkyB, as of this
writing. The other direct to home (DTH) service
providers in Europe may be more favorably disposed
toward education, but the revenue stream from
entertainment still takes precedence. For the educational
content producer trying to deal with the situation,
much of the technical knowledge gained about
terrestrial broadcasting and cablecasting can be
applied to satcasting. The video production factors
are the same, and many of distribution factors are
the same, including the compression methods and
many of the set-top box capabilities. Also, both
broadcast and cable systems operators use
satellites to send and receive programs from one
production center to the next. The key difference
here is that the DTH services use satellites to
deliver content directly to their customers. This
factor makes all the difference in the
world. Satellite
Technology Rather than the signals
being radiated from antenna towers or transmitted
down cable/fiber lines with a pulsing laser, the
digital signals are shipped skyward from giant
transmitter dishes to bounce off satellites in
geostationary orbits. Each broadcast satellite
features several transponders that are tasked to
redirect 14 to 17 channels each from a specific
ground source into a signal cone covering a wide
geographic area, the "footprint," which can
encompass thousands of square kilometers. While the
BSkyB operating license only pertains to Great
Britain, the footprint for BSkyB satellite signals
cover the whole of Europe. BSkyB's most outstanding
competitor on the continent, Canal+, while only
serving 1.5 million subscribers in France,
nevertheless enjoys a pan-European footprint.
In the USA, the reason why
Denver has become the capital for American DTH
services DirecTV and EchoStar is that the city
rests along the spine of Rocky Mountains on the
105th meridian, which means the satellites directly
overhead have a footprint that covers all of the
United States and major portions of both Canada and
Mexico. This broadcast system means that DTH
services (also called DBS services, for direct
broadcast satellite) do not have the huge expense
of constructing cable plants in every location they
service. Instead, the DTH provider merely needs to
find outlets to rent, lease, or sell their
satellite dishes to local customers. And now that
the receiving dishes are barely a meter across, not
giant bowls up to ten meters across, dish sales are
much easier to make. The chief difference is
that satellite broadcasting is not two way,
severely limiting DTH to such low-level
"interactive" functions as an electronic program
guide or the one-way forms of ACTV, Wink and
related technologies. The only way DTH services can
offer video-on-demand is to pack the datastream
with all of the content from which the viewers may
choose a programme "on-demand." This is totally
different from cable, where the subscriber's
command is relayed to a video file server that
sends the exact content requested back to that
specific viewer. DTH is a broadcast service that
cannot differentiate among individual viewers. This
lack of true interactivity makes DTH unsuitable for
most distance learning applications, with the
exception of broadcasting old-fashioned static
telecourses. Satellite
Limitations When
the limitation of one-way service are pointed out
to DTH executives, they tend to become defensive
and insist that two way services are not really
needed. And they speak about how satellite services
have been providing digital clarity for years while
the cable guys are only now switching over from
analog to digital. The same kinds of thinks are
encountered when satellite executives are
challenged about the lack of local content among
the programming bounced off of satellites from some
remote location. People don't really want or expect
to get local content from their satellite service,
they argue, asserting that local customers don't
mind having to use the terrestrial antenna on their
rooftop to receive local stations. Still, a few DTH companies
talk of modifying their set-top boxes to
accommodate a phoneline return path, but the
infrastructure of satellite broadcasting makes the
implementation difficult, at best. DTH services
cover too wide an area to make a phoneline linkage
fiscally or physically feasible. DTH revenues
hardly justify the expense of setting up telephone
relay networks over a wide geographic area, and the
costs for 1-800 numbers proscribe that option. And
even if a message from the viewer could be routed
to DTH operators, as just discussed, the operators
lack the capability to bounce a single program off
the satellite for that viewer alone. Even if the
technological problems can be solved, the costs
make the effort unworkable, leaving educational TV
programmers having to treat DTH like plain old
TV. While satellite systems
suffer the disadvantage of not being able to
individuate subscribers, satellite systems enjoy an
advantage in being able to grant conditional access
to selected groups of subscribers. Many
corporations have established private satellite
networks carrying encrypted communication channels
that often are employed for staff training and
development. A sales training session telling the
international marketing team about the hush-hush
plans for a product launch can be made even more
secure by keeping secret the exact identity of the
satellite transponder being used for the training
programme. A more commercial yet still educational
application of the private network concept is The
People's Channel in the United States. Promoted
through multilevel network marketing, the service
offers a 24-hour channel of instructional and
inspirational speakers for about $1 a day. The slow
growth of the venture may be explained by the fact
a subscription to a cable or satellite service
delivers dozens and now hundreds of channels at the
same price. Predictably, the pyramid marketing
mentality balks at this truth. Standards
Conflicts Satellite
television transmission also offers a penultimate
example of the do-or-die conflict between open and
closed technical standards. On one side is the DVB
(digital video broadcast) open-architecture
transmission system used by BSkyB, Canal+ and the
other major satellite broadcasters in Europe along
with America's third largest satellite service, the
Dish Network (owned by EchoStar). DVB also is being
used by European cable companies. On the opposing
side is the DSS (digital satellite service)
proprietary transmission system chosen by the North
American satcasting services PrimeStar (owned by
TCI) and DirecTV (owned by Hughes). Consumers with a DSS dish
and receiver cannot access any programming satcast
from a DVB service, and vise verse, but any person
with a DVB dish and receiver can change from one
DVB service to another without having to trade in
the home equipment. When a subscriber changes
services, of couse, encryuption and conditional
access adjustments must be made, but there is no
need to swap out the receiver. This is why DVB
subscription services (in the USA, at least) ask
their customers to buy the dish and receiver,
telling them they can still use these home products
if they change satellite companies. The DSS
services instead can only rent their dishes and
set-top receivers (the cable TV model) since their
customers don't want to be stuck with useless
hardware if they ever cancel their DSS
subscriptions. Observing this situation,
an educational content producers may be wise to
affiliate themselves with DVB services over DSS
services. An exclusive contract with a DSS
satellite company means real limitations on one's
global reach. Why would any educator be willing to
make the DVB services "off limits" when open
systems are fast becoming the preferred world
standard? Educators who feel enthusiasm for
television and the new media generally feel excited
because they can imagine themselves using the
medium to reach the masses. They want to teach the
most number of people they can possibly teach, that
is, with any measurable degree of effectiveness. If
they think otherwise, they likely are being driven
by ego instead of vision, and intelligent investors
stay away from such "education" schemes. WIRELESS
CABLE DISTRIBUTION OF ETV PROGRAMMES Beyond
broadcast, cable and satellite services, another
venue opening for the distribution of educational
content is the microwave television industry, the
ten-year old brainchild of US cable television
pioneer Robert Schmidt, who dubbed the technology
as "wireless cable." Called MMDS (multipoint
multichannel distribution system), the wireless
cable architecture is modeled on the architecture
of a cellular telephone service. Microwave antennas
on towers and rooftops provide line-of-sight
coverage anywhere within the service area, which
can be as large as a major metropolitan city and
suburbs. To receive the MDS signal, the subscriber
needs a small flat antenna, as small as 16 inches
square, which feeds into an addressable set-top box
identical to a cable set-top box. The nature of
microwave systems permit wireless cable services to
offer the same digital quality as any DTH service,
giving them a leg up over the landline cable
operators. And the MDS services have an advantage
over the DTH services in that they can cluster
their cells for two-way interactivity with minimal
additional expense. The Wireless
Gamble Like
the landline cable operators, wireless cable
operators are betting their future on the
deployment "wireless cable modems" that receive
broadband downstream signal by microwave and then
use a phoneline or cellphone link to send upstream
the narowband data burst on what to send
downstream. Although wireless cable modems are
being marketed for high-speed Internet access by
companies in the USA like Schmidt's own National
Digital Network, the long-term strategy is to
incorporate the modem into their digital set-tops
for the delivery of interactive TV services as the
market matures enough to repay the full cost of
deployment. Robert Schmidt also is
notable here because he has voiced a strong
commitment to education, acting on that promise by
equipping schools in his service areas with
wireless cable modems for student Internet access.
Such contributions to learning have not yet become
policy at the larger wireless cable companies, such
as CAI Wireless and People's Choice TV, which view
edutainment cable programming as a safer route to
profitability. In a few isolated community systems,
however, the schools are being accorded a channel
for transmitting content they have
produced. The arrangements are
similar to cable company franchise deals where the
system operator agrees to provide community service
in exchange for a local monopoly. To help inspire
more participation, the Wireless Cable Association
offered an award to honor excellence in wireless
educational programming. The promise of
industry-wide profitability is further bolstered by
the interest in wireless cable technology from the
major telephone companies, such as Qwest and SBC,
who can leverage their existing cellular telephony
infrastructure for entry into video services.
Penetration remains low, however, at 1 percent in
the USA with 1 million subscribers. There now are 5
million subscribers worldwide, mostly in Latin
America and Eastern Europe where cellular phone
systems are being built in developing nations in
preference to more expensive hardwire phone
architectures. As of this writing, according to the
Wireless Cable Association, Ireland has a small MDS
system but the United Kingdom has none. None of
these other nations is using MMDS for education
with the vigor of the United States. Wireless Past and
Future The
reason why educators and educational content
producers can take heart involves knowing a bit of
industry history. Before multichannel wireless
cable services began, the industry was called
simply MDS for Multipoint Distribution Service,
which began in the mid-Seventies with FCC
allocation of two 6 MHz channels (2,150 to 2,162
MHz) for entertainment programming. One early MDS
channel was Home Box Office (HBO), which in 1975
changed the TV business forever by moving to
satellite and becoming the first premium movie
channel. To compete in the emerging
multichannel environment, MDS operators sought to
use an additional 31 channels (2,500 to 2,686 MHz),
the same channels originally assigned to
educational institutions for Instructional
Television Fixed Services (ITFS). In the early
eighties, the FCC allocated eight of these channels
for use by wireless cable under the official name
of MMDS. Wireless cable operators could lease the
remaining 23 ITFS channels from the educational
license-holders, said the FCC, providing the
wireless cable operators broadcast up to 40 hours
of educational programming per week on those
channels, allowing every MMDS operator to deliver
as many as 33 channels of analog television
programming. To avoid signal
interference from neighboring stations, each MMDS
licensee was granted by the FCC a "Protected
Service Area" of 15 miles. This was extended to 35
miles in 1996 when the FCC defined "Basic Trading
Areas" for auctioning off the MMDS spectrum in 493
markets in the entire USA. Incumbent licensees
could continue to operate as before, but most
purchased the surrounding BTA to expand their
service area or protect themselves from other
license holders. A1996 FCC declaratory
ruling gave MMDS operators permission to begin
digital operations, which means digital compression
and an exponential growth in the number of
available channels. While most of the digital
channels are being used for entertainment, a goodly
portion are being set aside for high-speed wireless
Internet access, and schools often are the
beneficiaries. This fact is good news for
educators, yet the 40 percent rule for the ITFS
channels was dropped. Now these channels must carry
about 20 hours per week of educational content. The
mandate is interpreted loosely in some locales,
however, so any children's programming, including
the "action" cartoon shows, seems to qualify. Other
wireless operators take the rule more seriously and
have donated television production equipment to the
school districts in their service areas. For the
many supporters of educational TV programmes
targeting American students, here is a basis for
hope. Therefore, while wireless
cable still shows a small market share, the ground
floor opportunities in this industry are hard to
ignore by anyone in the ETV business. The American
commitment to educational MMDS is lacking in
Europe, but the hope of this changing seems strong.
As Internet access increasingly becomes an
influence in the deployment of interactive wireless
cable services worldwide, one can reasonably expect
educational television to receive a boost in the
process. INTERNET
DISTRIBUTION OF ETV CONTENT As
if broadcast, cable, satellite, and microwave
methods of delivering educational TV content were
not enough delivery options (don't forget tapes or
disks) one more method exists for distributing
educational materials to a television set.
The Internet is now
accessible on the television through such services
as WebTV and a handful of lesser competitors.
Market penetration remains meager. Only 75,000
WebTV units priced near $250 each have sold in the
USA by the third quarter of sales since the product
launch in early 1997. Penetration approaching 20
percent of all TV household is being anticipated by
2002, according to Jupiter Communications in New
York. This projection is good news to Sony and
Philips, the only world media companies so far with
licenses to produces the WebTV consumer units, but
this is still far short of the critical mass needed
to turn the TV into a primary vehicle for Internet
access. Only mass production of the new digital
television sets might achieve a convergence of the
PC and TV (see next chapter). WebTV uses a "push"
technology that bundles a collection of popular
websites under the banner of "The WebTV Network,"
positioned as an online service like Compuserve,
and transmits those websites by phoneline into the
home. The sites are selected on the basis of
consumer interest along with how well the text and
graphics translate to the television screen. A
two-way 33.6k modem is built into the WebTV box, so
users can surf the World Wide Web with the unit,
but a TV screen breaks up computer-based text and
graphics because of core differences in pixel
scanning methods, making this function
aesthetically disagreeable. To be considered for
inclusion in the WebTV lineup, developers must pay
a $750 fee to WebTV to join their developer's
group, a fee that effectively excludes most of the
low-end website creators. Developers also must
agree to modify their text and graphics for display
on a TV screen. Since WebTV does not support Java,
JavaScript, ActiveX, Shockwave, and other animation
MIME types, the sites on the service tend to be
rather static. Further, WebTV does not support
MPEG-1 video, which effectively excludes
educational TV producers who might imagine using
the service to as a means of adding interactivity
to their video content. PROFITABILITY
ISSUES IN ETV DISTRIBUTION What
questions must be asked and answered by the reader
seeking a fair return on any investment in a
company involved in distributing educational TV
content?The same as when evaluating the content
production ventures, first determine if the quality
of justifies the total costs of delivering content
by that method. Also determine if the number of
learners being reached by that method justifies the
expense of reaching them through that venue.
Answers here are seldom
cut and dried. For example, cable, satellite and
wireless services deliver higher quality video and
audio for very little cost per programme. But to
reach the point of being ready for programme
carriage, millions of pounds or dollars must be
spent in creating the delivery infrastructure.
Recovering those costs rides on multiple revenue
streams, most of them flowing from consumers, who
may not be sanguine about paying one company for
TV, Internet, and telephone access when presented
with the total monthly bill for all three services.
Subscription TV operators may try to deflect this
concern with separate credit card or smart card
charges for each activity, perhaps isolating every
video-on- demand purchase with a pay-per-view
billing system, but consumers aren't fools, or at
least they won't be fooled for long. Therefore, a
wise investor needs to think through these
considerations and reach reasonable conclusions
about the probable consumer acceptance of the
delivery venue targeted for investment. Related issues apply if
the reader is a content producer attempting to
determine which mode of delivery is best. Going
with one venue may restrict access to other venues.
For instance, the cable industry has been accused
of warning programme suppliers that their
programming will not be purchased if the producers
also sell their content to the wireless cable
companies. Pending proof of this accusation in a
court of law, one hesitates to state beyond
reasonable doubt that cable operators are guilty of
antitrust infringement, but the smart producer
reads between the lines in their contracts and
consults a reliable solicitor before signing away
any rights. In general, check the
record of content distributors before investing or
before signing a distribution contract. Ascertain
if the distributor either pays or charges any
hidden fees that may effect content carriage. Take
nothing for granted. A smile and a handshake may be
enough in the village marketplace, but not in the
television business. (c)
1999
by
Ken
Freed.
Based upon the book, Financial
Opportunities in Educational
Television, by Judah Ken Freed. . New
in the CASTING
THE NET OVER GLOBAL
LEARNING An
comprehensive overview of critical advances in k-12
and higher education along with corporate training
and lifelong learning.
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