Telepocalypse

Turning TV off

At the risk of exposing my ignorance of spectrum regulation, I’d like to propose a way of dealing with the hogging of UHF frequencies by the broadcast TV industry. Two simple regulatory changes with low political impact could make a difference.

TV is undergoing a fundamental shift in economics. As noted today by C|Net News.com, the mass market broadcast 30 second advert is an animal in serious decline. The replacement is Google-style personalized adverts. The Internet is a two-way medium, which makes this possible. All very Cluetrainy.

So change #1 is you insist the current spectrum can only be used for one-way TV broadcast. There is method in the madness of preventing progress. It means nobody has to change. Just keep doing what you’re doing now. No squeals of protest. Of course, you’re becoming increasingly irrelevant to your true market (advertisers).

Second, insist that you only keep the spectrum as long as you actually use it to broadcast TV at the full power allowed by your license. Sounds very reasonable. But a TV station pumps out hundreds of kilowatts of output 24 hours a day. You need a big stack of coins next to the meter to keep it going. And, as noted earlier, energy is likely to get a lot pricier over the next few years. So this eliminates the danger of squatting on unused frequencies. It simply costs too much.

The alternative to the above is to try to remove sitting spectrum tenants through force. So you can either spend a decade of campaigning and lawsuits, or a decade of waiting for the invisible hand of the market to do its stuff. I’d chose the latter.