Okun: Set Hard Date for Cable Analog Cut-Off
By Glen Dickson & John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/15/2006 12:41:00 PM
NBC's top Washington lobbyist, Bob Okun, told a group of tech types Wednesday that, since there is a hard date for the cut-off of analog broadcast service--Feb. 17, 2009--there should be a similar cut-off for cable analog service.
The cable industry wants to be able to downconvert digital signals for its analog customers, and such a provision was included in a version of the DTV hard-date bill before it was stripped of everything but a date and an analog-to-digital tuner subsidy to square with parliamentary rules.
Okun said that if it comes to the point where cable is downconverting to some people, they might start charging a premium for passing through an HD signal to others. If so, he said, broadcasters should share in that premium.
Broadcasters in general say that it defeats the purpose to deliver high-resolution signals only to have them converted by cable back to analog. At one point, the FCC was arguing for counting cable subscribers whose digital signals were converted to analog as digital households so that it could more swifly reach the trigger for the switch to digital, but that effort was mooted by Congress' adoption of a hard date. The previous trigger depended on reaching 85% digital broadcast penetration in a market before the analog spectrum could be reclaimed for auction. Okun was speaking on a panel at a Consumer Electronics Association summit in Washington Wednesday (it is co-sponsored by B&C).
