Technology360

TV broadcasters should follow Cord Cutters

Om Malik’s video site, NewTeeVee, has a new online video series called Cord Cutters – news and tips for people who are learning to live without cable or satellite – off air and internet TV only.  You can find it at the link above or follow it on Twitter at @cordcutters or @newteevee.  Cable and satellite subs are down just a bit for the first time so maybe this trend is gaining some weight.  --Dennis

HDTV production tools evolving and more accessible

We learned this month that the Coen Brothers used what’s historically been Apple’s consumer video editing software – Final Cut Pro – to edit True Grit.  The make of DSLR camera that I use, Canon’s “prosumer” EOS 5D Mark II, has been used for shooting professional 1080p HD (see Luminère example as well as at least three television seasons of Fox’s House, BBC Two’s Shelfstackers and BBC Four’s Road to Coronation Street).  A new version of Final Cut Pro is expected this Spring with major enhancements (link: TechCrunch).

Production capital and human costs for television are arguably making the industry non-competitive, as Michael Rosenblum has evangelized,  so this can’t help being a healthy trend.  Of course, in the end, it’s about both costs and culture.  --Dennis

TV broadcasters to face new fees for #spectrum?

Doug Lung found the following in the FCC’s FY 2012 budget proposal, seemingly aimed at television broadcasters that do not “voluntarily” give up spectrum for wireless broadband:

…the Administration proposes to provide the FCC with new authority to use other economic mechanisms, such as fees, as a spectrum management tool. FCC would be authorized to set user fees on unauctioned spectrum licenses and could be used in instances where incentive auctions are not appropriate. …

Link: TV Technology.  --Dennis

Keillor’s will be big (red) shoes to fill | #pubmedia

Garrison Keillor was born 107 years after Mark Twain and now, 100 years after Twain’s death, GK has used his first guest host on APHC.  Will Rogers overlapped Twain about 30 years, but it’s hard to name someone else in the company of these three.  It’s hard, too, to believe APHC will survive the retirement of its creator.  It’s about the writing, not the music.  --Dennis

Digital Audio Broadcasting in UK vs. Norway

It’s been interesting to watch Digital Audio Broadcasting’s progress in Europe (along with sibling DAB+ and DMB standards).  While at NPR until recently, I included it in an overview of radio innovation. 

With a very different radio environment than exists in Europe, Canada began dismantling its rather limited (geographically) DAB efforts in 2010, but until recently, DAB in Europe has been gaining ground.  However, the latest audience figures show something of a stall, at least in the UK [link: The Telegraph].  Still, in the U.S., our IBOC digital standard has quite a ways to go before matching the 15+% of listening it’s been achieving in the UK and even higher elsewhere.

A report in the last couple of weeks (sorry, lost the link) stated that UK interests are advising that analogue shut down there could take until 2031, largely due to the need to convert mobile radios.  On the other hand, the Norwegian Ministry of Culture just published a plan to turn off analog FM in January 2017.  DAB leader Gunnar Garfors [@garfors] has details.  --Dennis