CBS Makes HD Push for Election Coverage
New HD Control Room to Be Ready for Democratic, Republican National Conventions
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/11/2007 10:25:00 AM
New York -- CBS News is readying its technical plant in order to broadcast both political conventions in summer 2008 in high-definition, and it should be broadcasting CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in HD by then, too, director of bureau operations Mel Olinsky said at the SATCON/HD World show here Thursday morning.
Speaking in a panel discussion of how major networks were gearing up for their coverage of the 2008 election, Olinsky said CBS News should have a new HD control room ready for the Democratic National Convention, to be held in Denver next August, and the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in September.
That is a major step for CBS, he added, as its previous live HD news has consisted of a State of the Union address.
Speaking privately, Olinsky said Evening News should be broadcasting in HD by then, too, although he gave no hard date for a launch. He added that CBS’ internal goal is to have the new HD control room ready by May. The cameras and set for Evening News have been HD-ready for some time, but the control room at the CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street -- which is also undergoing an overhaul of its entire master-control operation as part of the multiyear project -- has been the stumbling block.
CBS has also been experimenting with using MPEG-4 compression to efficiently backhaul HD feeds, and it found a Fujitsu MPEG-4 encoder that interfaces well with its existing MPEG-2 connections, Olinsky said.
He and other distribution executives from ABC and fiber operator Level 3 Communications said transmission capacity will be strained to its limits through 2008, between the networks’ political coverage and NBC’s 17-day long broadcast of the Summer Olympic Games from Beijing. A particular challenge is the close timing of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries and the Democratic and Republican conventions, which run back-to-back.
“It’s going to be a little bit of a challenge to find that much bandwidth,” said Chris Myers, director of operations for ABC News Services, adding that he was already working with Intelsat, ABC’s primary satellite provider, and other carriers to ensure enough transmission paths for ABC, which will also be covering the conventions in HD.
“You have to plan it out very well,” he added.
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