America's
First New All-Digital
Station Offers Hope for DTV
Rocky Mountain
PBS to convert KRMU-TV into the first all-digital TV
station constructed in the United States.
by Ken Freed,
"America Watch" columnist in
Euromedia.
As
analogue terrestrial TV stations in the U.S. crunch to
meet the federal deadline for conversion to digital
broadcasting, the first all-digital TV station to be
built from scratch has been approved by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). The news is historic and
the implications are worth considering.
Instead of being
converted from an existing analogue operation, KRMU-TV
(Channel 20) in Colorado will be the first digital TV
station constructed in the United States. The FCC in
October granted a construction permit to Rocky Mountain
PBS (RMPBS.org), which now operates three public
broadcasting stations in Colorado. Operations at the new
station in the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) are
slated to begin in September 2004.
According to FCC
spokesperson Michelle Russo, the FCC previously granted
its first all-digital license to WHDT-TV (Channel 59) in
West Palm Beach, Florida. However, because WHDT only
broadcasts HDTV and was converted from an analog UHF
station at channel 44, this means KRMU hold the
distinction as the nation's first DTV station constructed
completely from the ground up.
The new station
RMPBS station is in Durango near the "four corners area,"
where the borders of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New
Mexico meet. Durango has been expanding in recent years
from a mining, agricultural center and winter tourism
destination into a year-round community with nearly
45,000 inhabitants.
Once KRMU begins
broadcasting, said James Morgese, president and general
manager of Denver-based RMPBS, the new digital station
will begin broadcasting from a 6 kilowatts (kW)
transmitter and antenna atop Smelter Mountain, elevated
about 2,000 feet above the surrounding landscape.
KRMU initially will
rebroadcast national PBS programming along with regional
content transmitted from sister PBS station KRMJ-TV in
Grand Junction on the western edge of Colorado, Morgese
said. "Hopefully, we will create partnerships in the
community that enable us to produce original programming.
It's too early to tell if this will happen, but all it
takes is money."
RMPBS already has a
grant application pending before the PBS Digital
Distribution Fund, which aims to ensure digital
broadcasts have the same coverage as analogue broadcasts,
as required under the 1996 Telecommunications Act
mandating the conversion to digital TV.
Once the requested
$550,000 is secured, KRMU intends to place equipment
orders in March 2004. Construction will start in June
2004 with on-air testing in September 2004.
Once the KRMU
system is up, he said, the station may run four Standard
DTV channels during the day with a single HDTV channel on
weeknights, Monday through Friday, and perhaps
weekends.
"Widescreen
programming on KRMU really depends on how much HD is out
there, and the demand in our service area for HD
programming," Morgese said. "I'm not sure how much of an
uptake there's been locally for HD receivers, but I doubt
it's very much since there's not yet been any digital
terrestrial in the area before. However, cable operators
are now pushing digital services, and the popularity of
DVD is growing. We may just have to wait for it to catch
on."
And here is where
we get a glimpse of the implications for this new
station. American broadcasters largely have been dragged
kicking and screaming to digital TV. Along with objecting
to the costs of conversion to digital, including new
transmitters and new antennas, stations have complained
that the existing analogue receiver sets will be made
obsolete.
The baseline fear
is that free-to-the-public local broadcasting, supported
only by advertising, will perish. Already more than 70
percent of the U.S. households subscribe to pay cable and
satellite services. While local cable systems must carry
the local broadcast stations, the nationwide satellite
services carry only selected local stations as means of
providing the programming from the national broadcast
networks.
If cable and
satellite were allowed to carry the national broadcast
networks as just another channel, bypassing local
stations, they would do so in an eyeblink. This would
especially endanger the public broadcasting stations,
supported largely by local viewer donations. Therefore,
the new PBS station in Colorado is an expression of faith
in the future of broadcasting in genera and public
broadcasting in particular, .
The comment from
Morgese about HDTV receivers also is significant. The
U.S. consumer electronics manufacturing industry has
resisted digital TV, too. The CE industry fought attempts
to get the FCC to allow local stations to use the DVB
broadcast modulation scheme, thereby reducing costs for
manufacturing plant assembly lines. As a consequence,
however, products made for the American market have scant
market elsewhere in the world,
Further, the CE
industry so far has managed to produce widescreen
monitors without being required by the federal government
to incorporate tuners able to receive the digital
signals. An agreement between broadcasters and the cable
industry for "plug and play" cable set-top boxes able to
receive digital signals will solve part of this problem.
But because digital broadcasting set-top boxes are not
yet in production in any significant way, consumers who
do not subscribe to digital pay TV services are still
left with few options for receiving DTV
Therefore, the fact
that the new PBS station in Colorado is going to be all
digital from the start is a real testament to faith in
the future of digital broadcasting in America. If this
one little local station can find enough viewers with
digital receivers to become viable, there is hope for the
entire digital broadcasting effort nationwide. Time alone
will tell the tale. 
.
