HD...its 2005 already! Get it together ABC and NBC

[thebin]

ABC likes to pretend they do High Def programming. They even have a channel called, wait for it.... ABCHD. But their heart really isn't in it. First it was this year's Indy500- which is tailor-made for high def. Now its Notre Dame-Michigan in the year 2005- not 1995, I swear. ...NOT in HD. Really ABC? STOP buying the rights to sports that should have been if HD YEARS AGO if you are too damn cheap to do it.

I am so sick of this crap. Absoltely EVERYTHING was supposed to be in HD by 2004 before the FCC backpeddled on it because everyone was adjusting so slowly if I recall- and we still don't have ND- Michigan games in it yet because ABC and NBC are too cheap. Well, I say its time for a popular movement to demand that big time sports TV rights are not sold to ty, cheap, European-technology-time-table networks like ABC and NBC. Whose with me? Let me guess...everyone with HD tvs and NOBODY without one?

[nychoya3]

It's even worse than you think, thebin. The bargain with HD was that Congress gave broadcasters a new piece of digital spectrum in 1996 for free, despite the fact that it was worth billions. The deal was that they would switch to digital signals, and then give back the old spectrum to the government in 2007. Well, if they were to do that, everyone without a sattelite dish or cable, and a new television, would suddenly not have TV anymore. Take a wild guess one whether that's actually going to happen. Instead, the industry will continue to sit on these signals, breaking them up into crappy shopping channels and the like, rather than pump out bandwidth intensive HD programs. And since the whole thing was botched to begin with, HD is complicated with many different technological standards, and of course, very, very expensive.

Anyway, it's a really great political economy case study of what happens when a powerful industry comes up against a bunch of politicians who a) want campaign contributions and b) are too dumb to understand the issues at stake. The upshot being the industry gets subsidized to the tune of tens of billions of dollars and consumers get screwed.

Anyway, if you're feeling ambitious, here's a good brief on the subject from the New American Foundation.

newamerica.net/Download_Docs/pdfs/Doc_File_2389_1.pdf

[thebin]

I think I will print that out and read it Sunday. Thanks. I have an economist friend that shares your sentiments exactly on a professional level (he does bandwith auction consulting.) TV is pretty slimey industry on all levels. I would like to firebomb Cablevision personally. The monopolies and ensuing garbage in cable industry is staggering.

[CTHoya08]

And the Dolans are killing the Knicks and Rangers...