Conversation with Ch 10 General Manager

[ReesR]

Yesterday I spoke with Ellis Bromberg, General Manager of MPTV (Ch 10/36).  We exchanged a ton of info over the hour conversation we had.  I won't bore people here on the entirety of it but will say that after our discussion there were at least some rays of hope on a few different fronts as well as some real areas of concern.

On the positive side:

• He appeared to agree that the PBS loop could be aired more often.  Especially at night when educational/kid programs would not be appropriate for adult programming.  Did you know, for example, that the Tracks Ahead program in high definition was produced in Milwaukee at Channel 10/36 and is now being shared nationally on the PBS Loop?
• He actually was happy to hear from someone.  He noted that he does not receive much feedback from listeners.
• He indicated that one area they are seriously looking into is devoting one of their stations at full time high definition when channel 36 goes digital.  That way they will have the best of both worlds of high definition as well as multicasting.

On the negative side:

• He noted that Time Warner carries the digital programming of channel 10.  What I learned from him, however, is that on cable the digital programming is "separate" standard definition channels.  You don't even need a HD box to receive those channels.  At first I didn't understand why my gut was reacting negatively.  But then I understood and shared with him that this has the potential of really confusing the marketplace.  
• What if, for example, channel 4 goes multicasting.  Would cable then carry these all on separate channels confusing the marketplace even more by touting the virtues of "Digital Cable" without the need for HD set top boxes while letting the consumer think he has reached the high def world.  Channel 58 appears as if they are already doing this which further confuses the line between high definition and digital on cable.  Please correct me if I am wrong on this.
• Ellis indicated to me that while he feels the digital feed is important he currently feels the priority is to cable because he is able to reach more people via cable.  I then asked why he doesn't just feed those standard definition channels to cable via fiber and leave the digital OTA channel to high definition.  He stated that Channel 10 is already feeding Time Warner with a fiber feed instead of receiving them over the air.  He noted that his contract with Time Warner is to feed cable with OTA programming which prevents him from separating the programming.  But, as I think about this, does this give the right to cable to separate the multicasting into individual channels?  The multicasting experience of the over the air digital  programming has been separated into separate standard definition channels on Time Warner which I maintained will confuse the heck the poor consumer trying to figure out how all this works.  He then understood my point.  But currently, that is how things are and will need to be during the contract period.

Obviously, this digital environment is going to skew things in ways unexpectedly.  But, because of the interests of the consumer, the broadcaster, the networks, and the entities creating programming all work to sustain their individual concepts of what is best for themselves there will be both pluses and minuses we need to be aware of and continue to inform through this medium while hopefully creating a place for ourselves to lobby our collective interests to work toward a digital world we can all live with.  This technology has more promise of doing good than much that has come in many decades.  Let's be on the proactive instead of reactive side of this.  We will, I believe, benefit more because of it.

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Rees Roberts
Racine, WI
reesr@wi.net

HDTV Receiver:  Sony KD-34XBR2
Bi-directional Yagi Antenna at 30 feet

[This message has been edited by ReesR (edited 09-14-2002).]