Slashdot Mirror
Putting the TV Broadcast Spectrum to Better Use?
KoshClassic asks: "Recently, on the NPR show All Things Considered, an interview was broadcast with Thomas Hazlett, formerly the chief economist of the FCC. Although short on details, Mr. Hazlett raises the point that, with the high penetration rate of cable / satellite TV into American homes, broadcasting television over the air has (or soon will) become superfulous and that this portion of the radio spectrum could be better utilized for other purposes. What do Slashdot readers think of this idea and, for those who agree, what alternative uses of the broadcast spectrum would you like to see?"
what do the people who can't afford cable do then? For quite a lot of people who work on minumum wage/on welfare, etc., the minimum package cost of satellite or cable is still too expensive.
The group that gets hit the hardest are those that just don't watch that much TV. The cost of cable is prohibitive when you watch only an hour or so a month
As for the uneducated lazy asses on welfare who watch 500 or so hours of TV a month...they have cable. I suspect that the group that is least likely to have cable is the young professional working 80 hours a week, or students struggling to pay tuition, and who watch only a few hours a month.
Go down to the local trail park...yep...most have a satellite dish pointed to the great teet in the sky.
Sell it all to ClearChannel
Maybe, but if the FCC dude is right about the future of TV program distribution, ClearChannel won't want it. It might be great if some goes to Hams and other bits to commercial radio and unlicensed (low-power) data transmission (upper UHF freqs).
There are a couple of problems with it his idea/prediction, the most important is the shear momentum of the number of TV broadcasters and receivers using this part of the spectrum. Sure, over time the broadcasters could stop transmitting and broadcast only via cable, but that will take some time... and leave rural viewers out in the cold.
Second, with today's technology and demands for data transmission, there are some limitations to this part of the RF spectrum that might make it unattractive. With the longer wavelength (especially VHF as compared to new cell/mobile phones, 802.11x, etc in the GHz range), efficient transmitter/receiver antennae would probably be too large for most modern applications. Granted, in the upper UHF region, it gets better, but modern, high bandwidth data transmit/receive devices aren't using 1GHz and up just because of frequency allocation... there's beau-coup bandwidth to be had up there, without a lot of the terrestrial source interference issues that bug over-the-air TV viewing.
Let's be honest, neither you nor I can figure out the all of the wonderful ways that this spectrum might be used and then decide among them what is the best way it should be used.
Rather than setup a command economy for spectrum, let's put it out there as a common that people can use for various ideas with relatively low barriers to entry. For example, we have for the last several years been discussing how intelligent tuning, spreadspectrum, etc., make a myth of spectrum shortages. If this is the case, then let's put it to the test.
I propose that we let any "service provider" use this spectrum for a small registration fee and a small monthly rental payment (say on the order of 5% of revenues, which could be used for a number of purposes, including giving poor people cable if we decided that is the best way to spend it) for use of the spectrum, as long as they use a technology that 1) doesn't interfer with any other use of the spectrum using "intelligent tuning" technologies and 2) that doesn't demand exclusive use of the specturm in question.
What would this achieve? Well, it would give us a commons (where multiple service providers might exist) for creative us of this spectrum at the same that the people get to share in the benefits. By running multiple different applications of the spectrum, we would be able to determine what is the best use - in terms of demand - without looking out other miniority uses of the spectrum. Another cool thing about this plan, is that it could be rolled out over time. We could start by taking channels 3 and 4 off the air across the country (moving existing broadcasters to open holes that are no longer needed due to the improvments in transmission equipment since the advent of TV), see how it works. If over-the-air TV continues to be less and less important, then we could roll up more and more of the spectrum available for the "spectrum commons".
Since technology (spread-spectrum, digital) now makes broadcasts of many more channels on these frequencies possible, and since broadcast TV is still the best way to get a consistent message out to a mass audience, and since we'd all like to keep elections from being decided by amount of airtime bought, I think it's time to reslice the pie.
Either chop up and sell the licences in smaller pieces for shorter terms, or sell them to broadcast "utilities" that themselves sell the ability to broadcast, but can not create or edit programming. (I'm sure such utilities would quickly discover how many channels they can slice their limited frequencies into!)
Toss in some regulations about not owning too many channels in one spot, and some about providing free air to public-interest programming, political candidates, private citizens, etc. and you've created a more diverse, more accessible, free version of cable.
Why would this matter to politics? Well, this could be a great chance to reform the rules as a whole new game is created. Maybe you could ban selling political ads, and give politicians free air time instead. Maybe you could even give parties their own little channels. Maybe, if you dealt with the ownership/licensing rules correctly, there would be a natural diversity and competition of ideas and viewpoints, and less political influence wielded by any particular media company.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.