Of New York’s 28-member U.S. House delegation, only two, both of them Republicans, voted against the DTV Delay Act. But any New York lawmaker likely would catch an earful from irate constituents if the new June 12 analog cutoff date doesn’t go smoothly. That’s because on the afternoon of June 13, the first full day of digital-only broadcasts, the New York Yankees are scheduled to host the New York Mets in the second game of the fierce intra-city rivalry to be played in the new Yankee Stadium. Fox is scheduled to broadcast the 4:10 p.m. game nationally.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
The CEA was “generally correct” last week at the FCC when it estimated there’s about 3 to 6 million coupon- eligible DTV converter boxes in the retail pipeline (CED Feb 6 p1), LG spokesman John Taylor told us Monday. But he declined comment on whether LG was among the manufacturers that the CEA said ceased producing converter boxes about a month ago. “We're working with our retailers” to forecast converter- box demand in light of the DTV delay to June 12, said Taylor, whose company markets its own Zenith-brand boxes and supplies Insignia-brand boxes to Best Buy. “That process has been under way for some time.” Predicting demand for a “one-time product” like converter boxes has long been a crapshoot, because no one knows for sure how many antenna-only analog sets are out there, Taylor said. The DTV Delay Act has made forecasting demand “that much more difficult” because it allows consumers whose coupons expired to reapply for replacements, he said. Still, LG, breaking with the CEA, supported the DTV Delay Act, Taylor said. “With sufficient funding, this extension makes sense,” because it gives new opportunity to consumers “who might opt now for a converter box,” he said. It also gives the CE industry more time to promote HDTV sets, which “especially during difficult economic times, represents a tremendous consumer value,” Taylor said.
With the analog cutoff now delayed to June 12, the CEA has “even less certainty whether demand and supply for boxes will match,” CEA President Gary Shapiro said. He was explaining why his group called on Congress and the Obama administration Wednesday to take the “necessary steps” to assure a steady supply of converter boxes (CED Feb 5 p1). The CEA recently urged Congress to allow consumers to use their coupons other ways -- including toward purchases of DTV sets -- if the government determined there was a shortage of boxes. Shapiro said Republicans noted on the House floor Wednesday “that the lack of any hearing on the change in dates means that many unintended consequences could not be discussed. This is one we thought of - - I am sure there will be others.”
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- The major studios have told Hastings Entertainment that the chain accounts for the highest percentage of Blu-ray sales of any of their customers, CEO John Marmaduke said in a Future of Packaged Media conference keynote Wednesday. This shows what can happen “when you get behind the product,” even for a retailer like Hastings, which operates 153 stores, mostly in medium- sized markets not known for having many early-adopter customers, he said.
Contrary to critics who say the DTV coupon program has been “grossly mismanaged” under the NTIA, the agency’s former acting administrator, Meredith Baker, said in an interview Tuesday that she thinks the program has been “a great success.” The NTIA’s “primary target” has always been protecting over-the-air households that would lose service on Feb. 17, Baker said. “And I think we've done a good job of trying to get the coupons to those folks.”
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- The physical DVD’s portability is its biggest advantage over a digitally downloaded movie file, and studios risk hurting the cash cow if they keep packing too many ads and trailers on new releases, Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, said at the Future of Packaged Media conference Tuesday.
In a stark indicator of the damage that the global economic crisis has caused CE companies, Toshiba announced Wednesday it expects to swing to a 280-billion-yen loss for the fiscal year ending March 31 from a 127.4-billion-yen profit a year earlier. As recently as Sept. 19, Toshiba said it was on track to post a 70-billion-yen profit.
Warren Lieberfarb denies MOD Systems allegations that he used his stint as its consultant to spill the digital downloads service supplier’s trade secrets to a venture capital firm in hopes of taking control of the company or becoming a competitor. The denial by attorneys for the former Warner Home Video president appeared in court papers filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
DTV coupons on the NTIA’s waiting list now exceed 3 million, according to agency data released Wednesday. The 3.21 million coupon requests on hold marked a 25 percent increase from a week earlier. Average daily orders for the week ended Tuesday were 154,000, more than the 152,000 the previous week, but far below the peak of 500,000 in early January, the NTIA said. Coupons are expiring much more slowly than orders are coming in, the data show. Only 312,000 coupons expired in the week ended Tuesday, versus the 1.05 million new coupons ordered, making more than the 50 million total orders for the program. The overall redemption rate for the 13-month-old program rose slightly to 53.6 percent from 53.3 a week earlier. But for coupons issued in late October and expiring late January, the redemption rate -
Sony is too cost-laden and slow to market with new products to compete during today’s “massive” global economic downturn, a somber CEO Howard Stringer told a Tokyo news conference Thursday. Sony hastily called the conference and webcast to say it’s downgrading its fiscal-year forecast for the second time in four months (CED Oct 24 p6) and imposing austerity measures to cut “groupwide” costs 250 billion yen before April 2010.