I was researching Nicholas Negroponte's "tell me more" idea for the Skip Pizzi post immediately below this one and came across a 1994 interview that Dale Cripps of the HDTV Newsletter made with Nicholas Negroponte at the dawn of the Internet age (and DTV age, for that matter). Very interesting reading. Negroponte gives this as part of his response to Cripps' request to "paint a vision of the world in ten years."
... The FCC is reviewing 20 Mb/s solutions right now. Let's say they select one and give you as a broadcaster a 20 Mb/s license. What are you going to do with that license? You are not going to broadcast HDTV. You are going to broadcast 3 or 4 channels of NTSC. Then if you are clever you are going to broadcast 3 channels of NTSC, one radio program, two pagers, digital newspaper and some other unknown data broadcast service. Then all of a sudden on a Saturday afternoon in your local area there is an important college football game you might devote 8 Mb/s to the football game, discontinue one of your NTSC channels (may be not run the newspaper). Then in the middle of the night you might be broadcasting 6 or 7 newspapers. In other words all of a sudden you with your 20 Mb/s space be your own micro FCC allocating your spectrum as you see fit. From the broadcaster's point of view that is really very, very interesting business opportunities. ...
Link: HDTV Magazine. NB: Negroponte's name is misspelled in the article. --Dennis
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