Dale Cripps on Why HDTV Must Stand Apart from the Computer Convergence Debate

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Dale E. Cripps, Publisher

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00"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

Why did you enter the HDTV business?
I was convinced that a new and exciting era was dawning for both technical and program quality and that the resistance to that could endanger it from happening. I decided to encourage with publishing until HDTV is understood enough to move forward with a life of its own or, sadly, is declared a failure for my generation.

How can HDTV be a reality in the consumer marketplace?
First, HDTV is a high-end item. That means it needs to define itself clearly as the highest-end product of television by declaring all of its visual and audio benefits, then target just those people who appreciate and can afford those benefits. While that appears obvious, I am not sure that policy makers in government and industry are clear as to who the first customer is. People like Nicholas Negroponte (of the Media Lab, MIT) have made very sure that the marketplace remains very confused about what HDTV is, and why it is beneficial. Ask ten people you meet anywhere what HDTV is--what it means to the viewing experience--and you will get ten answers. The future of commerce is based on the experience that is sold. Standard television is understood for what it is. It remains to me a perfectly good system for most of our society. It does not need major overhauling or fixing for what it does. But it is not a great experience.

Now comes the computer, which outsold television in the last few years. Why? The experience of it. But the computer has a rapidly changing character. It is just becoming a television set now--a higher-definition one at that. While convergence of the computer, television, and telephone is all the talk, the computer will continue to morph as ever-increasing processor speeds at ever-lowering costs encourage and allow it. I think it is now accepted that the computer industry will leave the stodgy field of television as soon as it tires of TV's inherent product stability. The best minds in computers will move on into ever-more involved and embedded applications--the seamless audio/visual telephone interactive management for everything in business and home. That world can all change faster than can the television. Television has one main function, even if it buys some other functions from the computer. In short, the HDTV set, along with its richly satisfying programming, will emerge out of this convergence confusion looking and standing very much on its own. It is whole product that serves a specific activity--liesure recreational viewing. If that ever goes away, you can say good-bye to television. But the play has been with us since we began communicating. It will continue to be with us as long as there are stories to tell and story tellers and performers to tell them. To me the merging of television with the computer is like mating a gazelle in flight with a turtle. You might get one pregnancy, but that's about it. The screen may be the same for both for a long time. Well, it is today. The way that part goes is not so important. What is important are programs which are produced to end up on that high grade big screen "terminal". Moving pictures and sound, dominated by linear story telling...artistic performances and sporting events...has a life span beyond our calculation. How many special effects movies (where so much of it is now computer generated) will have as long a historical value as Citizen Kane? A production of artistic genius is...well...you are left with a lasting memory of that for life. Faddish things come. They are as inevitable as another fashion show. But a memorable motion picture reflects life with birth, growth, and death-beginning, middle and end. Would Citizen Kane be better made as a special effects movie with you choosing the ending and all the camera angles? I have no intention of throwing television or good story telling out of my life, and I am using computers 10 hours a day. I love them. But my DSS dish is just as valuable. There is plenty of good SDTV programming from it. I have no intention of tossing that out. What I am working for is the next option--tuning in to at least one or more truly premium channels in HDTV. I am eager to buy an HDTV receiver, even if for only one premium program source.

Why isn't standard television satisfactory for you?
Standard television is not, nor can it affordably be a right thing for presenting the visual refinements and refreshments of the arts. (I include motion pictures in this term). That means we have no real video access to these arts. We have, at best, a sadly compromised video representation of them. That cannot excite or inspire us to higher degrees of appreciation of things. Yet that is the fundamental aim of art--deliver a new experience to give renewed hope or new-found joy or some other darker emotions. The viewing of standard television is like reading Chekov with every other word removed. You might get the story, but not the sweat on a brow or the subtle velvet of a rose. We have all lived with this limitation for years, but time for a change in our dynamic range has come...at least for a large enough audience to make a very attractive business.

You think HDTV is for the masses?
I think it will reach the masses, but only after considerable time. That makes all the preparatory work with the broadcast and cable people ultimately worthwhile. But consider this: AT&T enjoys reminding people that there are 3 billion people living today who have neither made nor received a telephone call! One could say that the telephone is not yet a mass item, but rather a large niche product. As with this telephone story, it is not an evil to believe that HDTV is destined for a select niche market--a natural selection at that--and for a long time to come. Perhaps, when that 3 billion get a telephone number, they will be looking then for where to locate their new HDTV sets. This business of mass communications is still becoming mass. Industrialized nations certainly have greater penetration, but the fact remains that the world is still on the communications runway, and not even yet at full throttle. NTSC, PAL, and SECAM may look like training wheels to those living 50 years from now. I don't think in my lifetime we will see HDTV more than just beginning to become a mass medium.

That means to me that anyone who proclaims that HDTV is a bottom up item is wrong. The telephone, the radio, the television, the computer--they all share the same history--they were top down marketing solutions. They are still reaching downward from their aristocratic birthplaces for ever-greater users. HDTV will do the same. Cost determines the rate of assimilation. Nothing is free. The rate of diffusion is pre-calculable. Since entering this business I have advised my clients that to construct a rational plan and policy that provides local bottom-up HD services for every person 'suddenly' is misdirected. And, no rational plans have surfaced to prove that council wrong. It's like saying that all transportation must be by luxury means even if you want to ride a bicycle. You can understand the need for general preparation for it, but any artificial forcing of the marketplace is doomed.

What we must do is create a business vision that focuses upon the people who will spend the amount of money required to support it. Certainly Hughes' DirecTV and Hubbard did just that in calculating their DBS entry. No way does Hubbard think he is going to sweep up every household in the US to his services. But the subscribers he has calculated to come aboard do pay all the bills and earn his family a tidy profit. As will be with HDTV, Hughes DirecTV and Stan Hubbard's USSB have a nearly unlimited upside. Their growth is dependent upon their ability to attract new subscribers and keep the one's they have. Their downside is also performance regulated, i.e., can he deliver sufficiently competitive programs so enough people continue to subscribe? We in HDTV ought to focus our plan unashamedly to where the money is, and be very sure we stay to it by delivering highly attractive goods. We have no choice but to commit to sending consistently high-quality programming to our subscriber base. Not every program needs to hit a home run, but under no circumstances should we employ little league players and succumb to mediocrity.

Some people will charge that you are promoting haves and have nots.
The television industry tries to be egalitarian-an instrument of national and regional unification. Advertisers drive this view. They need mass communication methods and systems. The idea of egalitarian societies lost most of its luster. Communism wound up with haves and those with nothing. A society that encourages its gifted to grow does better than ones that don't. A society that fails its people is destined to rule them with walls and barbed wire. HDTV is not a necessity. Our needs for mass communication are met with standard television, perhaps even radio. HDTV is more like a special reward. To me that makes HDTV a very strong item--a highly prized premium reward for having done well, or doing well in life. I used to call HDTV the "vision of success", trying to illustrate its standing and status.

"I also see HDTV positioned in the very middle of society"

I also see HDTV positioned in the very middle of society--affordable enough for the large (successful) middle, and high enough to satisfy those where money is no object. Whether the very poor shall have HDTV, or for that matter a theatrical movie, is problematic. But public access to viewing it is likely (perhaps in public libraries). Whether the poor shall ultimately benefit from it is not problematic. As one part of society is elevated, the whole is finally benefited. The great Austrian conductor, Von Karjian, seized upon high-quality technology to speed the diffusion of culture-in his case it was classic music via the high quality compact discs. He rightly saw a means for transmitting the emotional richness and meaning of music to those who might not have direct exposure to its source. Urged from his baton, the fidelity from the musicians could be transmitted to millions of people affordably. The act of producing an emotional experience for the audience must be the goal of any serious artist working in the 21st century. It will take a medium like HDTV to capture and distribute the richness that the 21st century promises.

Part Two

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