It’s “disgraceful” that the NAB “is paying people” like former Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft to write letters to regulatory agencies urging that the XM-Sirius merger be rejected, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin told the Lehman Bros. Worldwide Wireless Conference in N.Y. Thurs. “But it’s what goes on and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Karmazin said. If it were up to him, “there shouldn’t be anybody speaking out about the merger because I think the regulatory agencies are the ones who should be dealing with it,” Karmazin said: “That’s what the FCC is for. That’s what the DoJ is for.” Satellite radio’s 14 million subscribers are “the biggest supporters” of the merger, he said. But in the face of the NAB’s aggressive opposition, “you've not heard us” take to the air urging subscribers to write their congressmen to say the merger’s a good idea, Karmazin said: “You could fault us for not doing that, for not marshaling our subscribers, and you should assume that something like that is something that could happen in the future.” NAB couldn’t be reached for comment at our deadline Thurs.
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.
Sirius shares’ low price “is saying 2 things” about Wall Street perception of the company: Analysts don’t have “as good a sense of the future of Sirius” as the company does, and they believe a merger with XM “is not going to happen,” Sirius CEO Karmazin told shareholders last week. In his most pessimistic appraisal yet, Karmazin said the merger faces an “uphill battle” gaining govt. approval.
The Commerce Dept. rejected our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for copies of companies’ proposals to NOAA for NTIA’s DTV coupon contract. An FOIA exemption bars agencies from releasing any proposal in a competitive bidding from a vendor unless incorporated by reference in a contract already in effect between that vendor and the agency, Commerce said. The exemption also bars releasing names of unsuccessful contract bidders, the agency said.
Few stores complied the first day with an FCC order to post warnings near analog TVs, VCRs and DVD recorders that they won’t work after the 2009 DTV deadline, according to our spot check in the N.Y. area Fri. The Commission won’t say for the record how it plans to enforce the requirement (CED April 26 p1).
CEA won’t push for an FCC rule requiring broadcasters to pass “active format description” data to keep “postage stamp"-format video images off widescreen DTV sets (CED May 22 p6), a spokesman told us. CEA thinks “the voluntary industry activity” promoting AFD’s wider use “should be permitted to continue unfettered by any government mandate at this time,” he said. AFD and bar data “are still in their formative stages and work to complete standardization is still under way,” he said: “It is premature to mandate AFD transmission until the industry has some experience with the technology and determines whether it should be widely adopted. Consumers demand the best possible quality television experience, and broadcasters and manufacturers are motivated to provide the optimum picture, which AFD intends to achieve. Cooperative testing and market forces should rule for now.” NAB declined comment.
LONG BEACH, Cal. -- The Blu-ray/HD DVD format war not only is damaging to next-gen packaged movies, but “was avoidable,” Jerry Pierce, former senior vp-technology, Universal Pictures, told the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in a Tues. keynote here. “We didn’t learn from VHS vs. Beta,” said Pierce, who this year left HD DVD backer Universal and is now an entertainment industry consultant: “We didn’t learn from SACD vs. DVD-Audio.” The absence of a format war in DVD “made it a very successful product,” he said.
The FCC wants comment on whether to require broadcasters to pass “active format description” (AFD) data to keep “postage-stamp"-format video images off widescreen DTV sets, according to its 3rd DTV periodic review rulemaking adopted April 25 and released Fri. AFD is a signal code that broadcasters can transmit with pictures by MPEG video stream, enabling optimal presentation by 4:3 or 16:9 DTV sets of content sent in either format. Postage-stamp video -- named for a small, black-bordered image floating at midscreen -- can occur when 4:3 content is mixed with widescreen HDTV, producing a “pillar-boxed image” that’s also letterboxed, the rulemaking said. In its 2nd DTV report and order, the FCC said it feared that postage-stamp video would become more prevalent as consumers bought widescreen DTV sets. Still, the FCC made AFD use optional for broadcasters, with stations sending AFD data required to follow the ATSC standard, it said in the latest rulemaking: “At the time, the Commission believed that broadcasters would want to make their programming attractive to viewers as they begin to adopt DTV.” ATSC specs -- since updated through A/53 Revision E -- improved AFD “by revising and clarifying the relevant standards,” it said. Last July a “coordinated effort” at ATSC, CEA and SMPTE endorsing use of AFD encouraged CEA to publish a “recommended practice” (CEA-CEB16) for putting AFD aspect-ratio signaling capability in DTV sets and other receiver devices, it said. For various transmitted display formats, CEA-CEB16 makes individual recommendations on “output signaling and display appearance, taking into account possible decoder capabilities, scaling options and user preferences regarding display format,” the CEA website says. SMPTE also has developed a “2016-1” standard for AFD, the rulemaking said: “We thus seek comment on whether these voluntary, industry-driven efforts are sufficient, or if, instead, we should require broadcasters to provide AFD and bar data.” The FCC wants to know, if it requires AFD: (1) Should AFD data streaming be required for all broadcast programming, no matter what its source? (2) Should AFD data be required of sports and other live programming that may involved a combination of SD and HD gear? (3) How would the requirement affect small broadcasters? Comments are due 30 days after the rulemaking notice appears in the Federal Register, replies 15 days later.
We were awaiting FCC comment at our Thurs. deadline whether the Commission had yet gotten OMB approval of its order requiring retailers to post analog cutoff warnings at the point of sale near legacy analog-only TVs and VCRs still being sold (CED April 26 p1). The Commission requested emergency OMB approval of the order, asking that a decision be handed down by May 18 (today). The order takes effect May 25, assuming OMB has approved it by then. Under the normal OMB review schedule, “the rule may not take effect until October or November, by which time many more analog-only televisions will have been sold to unaware consumers,” the Commission wrote OMB May 7, asking for expedited approval. “The label requirement is the result of a rulemaking in which interested parties had an opportunity to comment,” the FCC said. CEA “proposed voluntary language to its members, but few if any adopted it,” the Commission said. The FCC estimates 10,000 retailers will label or display disclosures for 10 analog-only TVs each that are displayed on the sales floor or via direct mail, in a catalog, online or other electronic means,” it told OMB. The Commission estimates 2.5 million analog-only TV sets will be sold or rented, but only 10 per retailer (100,000 sets total) are expected to be displayed on the sales floor or via direct mail or other electronic means, and therefore require the “consumer alert disclosure,” it said: “We estimate this activity will require 0.25 hours for each TV set or other type of TV broadcast receiver that is displayed.” The Commission assumes each retailer will comply with the labeling requirement using staff paid $8 an hour for a total annual “in-house” cost of $200,000, it said.
PS3 production delays have been resolved, but not before Sony fell about 500,000 units short of its plan to ship 6 million PS3s in the fiscal year ended March 31, the company said Wed. Sony is forecasting 11 million PS3 production shipments for the current fiscal year, it said. Analysts said the forecast is in line with their expectations, but PS3 hardware adoption continues to be hampered by high console prices and a software portfolio that lacks oomph.
Every consumer who wants to buy a coupon-eligible DTV converter box under NTIA’s program “will have access to a range of retail options,” CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro assured NAB Pres. David Rehr in a reply letter Tues. A day earlier, Rehr had written CEA and the CE Retailers Coalition, saying it’s “critical” to the DTV transition’s success that converter boxes be for sale in all stores by Jan. 1 (CED May 15 p5) OR (CD May 15 p9). Shapiro wrote back to say at least 3 CEA member companies -- LG, Samsung and Thomson -- have announced they will produce coupon-eligible boxes. “And the nation’s consumer electronics retailers will ensure that all Americans have ready access -- via retail stores, online, and telephone -- to these devices,” Shapiro said. He cautioned Rehr that “certain boutique, custom installation and high-end stores may choose not to sell the coupon-eligible boxes.” Still, he told Rehr to “rest assured any American who wants to purchase a coupon-eligible box will have a wide variety of convenient retail sources from which to choose.” Though NTIA’s coupon program won’t launch to consumers until 2008, “we will continue to promote the upcoming availability of converter boxes and would welcome the initiation of broadcaster support for the CEA programs promoting free, over-the-air broadcasting,” Shapiro said.