Digital Transition Mania and Demographics

The President urged congress to postpone the digital TV transition, again. I understand the President has more important things to do right now, like fixing everything the last administration broke during the last 8 years, but the main argument against the transition appears to be that 6.5 million people will not be prepared at all for the transition.

This number surprises me considering it came from the Neilsen Company, in my opinion, the largest most powerful marketing entity in the world of television. Neilsen collects information and makes guides that tell advertisers which area will be most effective for their ads to control buying habits of a “target audience”, namely women 18-24, because it is thought that these are the most easily accessible. From MTV to Lifetime, Oprah and so on, these are the audiences that make decisions in the households of America. Hence the selling of dish detergent soap and laundry products during the cheapest programming available on day-time TV. Soap operas. And the new technology you must have, as advertised on MTV. Neilsen has about as much information as the government has, about where you live, how you watch TV, trends in income, and purchases in your town. It’s all in a book, or printed online for certain individuals, with ads and a lot of money, to see. They are able to make decisions about what kind of ads will most likely make you purchase products, services, robots, etc.

A quick digression explains target audience in more detail. The Superbowl brings together the entire country of sports fans. But an important demographic, and the hardest to reach, are males, 18-34. This is why football, basketball, baseball, and all the other sports, yes, hockey, are important for broadcast and other networks. They must find a way to reach this audience with ads. This is why you must carry sports as a large network. The smartest providers, in my opinion, will carry some form of mixed martial arts, like the UFC, because these generally gain a hard to find demographic, for a long period of time. The Superbowl ads, as everyone knows, cost a ton of money, and this is a large part of that reason, along with the widespread viewership among other demographics.

Of course, Neilsen has a way to make it look as if there is a problem with the digital transition, and based on the past, it’s not that hard to persuade people that there is a problem. Neilsen numbers are the Bible of TV ratings and information, I would go so far as to say, everything in TV lives and dies by these publications, which exist solely as a marketing tool for advertisers. I would bloat the number of people that are not prepared as well, if I thought even a fraction (5%) of homes in the U.S. had no way to see the advertisements, that I get paid (a ton of money) to present. But it is clear that no attention is paid to the audiences’ well-being.

The largest amount of people without any way to get a converter box happen to be in minorities, low income areas, and the elderly. This is a large population of people that I care about, but I don’t think we should be protecting advertisers’ rights to sell you things between your favorite basic channels. Yes, there are a limited amount of channels you will not be able to get on broadcast TV, including ABC, NBC, and CBS. But the only way you will lose these channels, is if you use terrestrial broadcast antenna only, on an analog TV. If you have a newer digital TV, not necessarily High Definition, and any service that you pay for, like cable, satellite or anything else, your TV is fine.

I think the manner in which the coupons for set-top converters were distributed was poorly organized. Coupons were probably given to people that were misinformed as to what exactly this transition was designed to accomplish. The website for distributing coupons has a form based on availability and accessibility. But coupons were allowed to be distributed up to two per household.

Converter Box

Analog stations, after the transition, will be allotted for emergency broadcast purposes. This is important. Not only is this important, but our most important broadcasters will lose money because of any legislation which delays the transition. The PBS Chief Executive stated that public broadcasters would lose $22 million due to the delay. Will the government cover these costs? Of course not. They don’t care about your right to public broadcasting, one of your most important rights in broadcast media. With all of the give and take within corporate lobbying, there is no way that public broadcasting will have enough pull to dissuade the FCC to keep the transition for the economy’s sake. Most broadcasters will have to double their energy costs to operate analog and digital transmitters combined.

I don’t generally like John McCain in campaign mode, but this is a quote with which I agree. This excerpt from the Washington Post explains my sentiment:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said in a letter yesterday [January 15] that upholding the Feb. 17 date was necessary to ensure that public safety agencies, who were promised a portion of the airwaves to be vacated by broadcasters, could use them to build interoperable communications networks.

“While our first-responders have been told year after year that this spectrum to be available, its availability has continued to be delayed largely to, in my view, to a well-funded lobby of special interests.”

When I worked in Home Theater at Best Buy in 2005-2007, I would tell people about the digital transition, which was scheduled in 2006! Then, we pushed it back to 2009. Each analog TV I sold at Best Buy was required to carry a sticker informing consumers that a transition would occur, and this TV would not be able to receive antenna broadcasts in February 2009, but the overwhelming sentiment was, “It’s fine, I’m not worried about it”, “I will take care of it with a converter box”, or “I pay for a cable/satellite”. Consumers can buy converter boxes for approx. $50 in stores, or buy a cheap digital TV, or buy a service. Options are available. And now, we may push the transition back again. The answer, folks, is that if we keep pushing this thing back, our economy is only going to get worse. With public broadcasters losing all of this money, and no one to cover the expenses, more jobs will be lost. The Senate wanted to delay the transition, the House voted the opposite way.  Politics as usual.

-Post by Jeff Webb