Hi-def Letterman

[Gregg Lengling]

Steve McClellan
Broadcasting & Cable
1/21/2003 11:50:00 AM
   The Late Show with David Letterman will go high-definition starting next September, CBS executives told stations at the affiliate-board meeting in New Orleans Monday.

That was the good news. The bad news was that "March Madness" will wind up eating into station's access time periods this year.

Letterman's studio is already in the process of being retrofitted for HD, CBS said.

As for the long-term future of HD broadcasting on the network, that will depend on the programmers and tech types coming to some agreement on copy protection.

Asked by one of the station executives whether Viacom Inc. president Mel Karmazin was serious about abandoning hi-def absent copy protection, CBS operations and engineering executive Bob Ross said Karmazin is "as serious as a heart attack."

The Letterman news was well received.

Less well received was word from the network that it was moving up the start times of four weekday "Road to the Final Four" NCAA basketball games to 7 p.m., pre-empting lucrative access time slots.

When affiliates asked why, CBS responded that the network "needs the money" from the additional premium ad space.

On the news front, the network made a pitch to work closely with the affiliates to create better transitions from local time into network news programming, capitalizing on that time as another cross-promotional opportunity.

Bob Lee, head of the CBS affiliate board, said that all things considered, the meeting between network and stations was "quite positive."

[mhz40]

Originally posted by blu-ray
Is this still a go?  I'd much rather watch Letterman in HD than Leno.

Ditto

[Tom Snyder]

Last I heard, they won't be making the upgrade till next Spring now, when the editing equipment they're going ot use is going to be availble.