The Vision Thing: HDTV Needs Stalwart Leadership to Succeed

by Dale E. Cripps
Tuesday, November 2, 1999

Make no mistake...
HDTV is a fine, fine piece of work. It is a breathtaking leap forward in transmitted image and sound. Those appreciating the finer things of home life will treasure the addition. But it may fail to come to our homes. Why? It is a major threat to the status quo.

No signal, no takers. It will take stalwart leadership. The mission of that leadership is to orchestrate and conduct the commercial beginnings of the higher quality television industry. It must be a followable plan where all prosper in the process. The leadership must inspire governments, investors, television and computer manufacturers, talent, program producers, transmission operators, retailing & service organizations, and the consumer so as to leave no doubt that a new era has dawned.

Each communication technology has required a powerful and far reaching vision and visionary to carry it forward. The vision had to be full of public benefit so as to lift it above mere crass commercialism. Often the visionaries suffered personal sacrifice, but new strength resulted which enabled them to move the ball onward. It took not only a vision, but deep pockets of the pioneers to realize television. Each technology of note face immeasurable odds, economic adversities, and deliberate obstructions until a critical mass was finally reached.

To have HDTV we need to draw from the lessons of communications history and integrate those messages with today's circumstances. The stake is no less than the general up-grading of all of our future standards of living. If for any reason such an appealing development as HD fails to find a way, how can we hope to raise the standards for other things with even more distant and less immediate payoffs?

Excerpted from a Widescreen Magazine article published in 1994 by Dale E. Cripps

For Full article see http://web-star.com/hdtv/editorials/080995.html