The influential American Television Alliance (ATA) which normally focuses its advocacy efforts on maintaining subscriber choice and arguing against channel black-outs over carriage fee disputes, has told the FCC that the transition from today’s US broadcast standard to the ‘next generation’ ATSC 3.0 would be much too expensive for at least one of its members: DirecTV.

Ina letter to the FCC, the Alliance says: “As DirecTV has previously explained, DirecTV will only be able to provide an ATSC 1.0 feed to customers for two reasons. First, DirecTV subscribers have millions of set-top boxes that are not designed to receive an ATSC 3.0 signal, and replacing all such equipment would be cost-prohibitive. Second, satellite carriers reuse frequencies many times, designing “spot beams” to deliver local broadcast signals to different markets throughout the country. Those spot beams have been allocated sufficient capacity for current carriage requirements in specific local markets and cannot be repointed. Thus, they have no capacity left for carriage of an additional ATSC 3.0 signal from each station.”

The ATA quantifies some of these costs from the broadcasters viewpoint, saying: “For a nationwide provider like DirecTV, the question of who bears such costs is critical. ATSC 3.0 receivers compatible with DirecTV’s system now cost roughly $8,000 per feed (i.e., primary and multicast feeds). Since DirecTV now carries more than 1,800 feeds nationwide, the total cost to purchase receivers would approach $15 million. Moreover, there is currently very limited supply of such receivers, so if there were a sudden spike in demand the price would only increase.”

Worse, says the ATA, there would ne no benefit for viewers. “DirecTV will only be able to provide an ATSC 1.0 feed to customers. Thus, by definition, every dollar DirecTV must spend on the ATSC 3.0 transition is a dead weight loss. Imposing such costs on DirecTV would be onerous, while spreading the cost among the nation’s nearly 1,500 broadcast stations would not only yield a much more manageable financial responsibility for each entity but also place the costs on the parties who stand to reap the benefits of the ATSC 3.0 transition.”

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Standards

Tags: ATSC, directv, dth