No Signal, No Sale: Why HDTV Needs a David Sarnoff to Succeed

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 leadership is to orchestrate and conduct the commercial beginnings of a 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 leaving no doubt that a new era has dawned.

The first working device for producing electrical signals for transmission was a mechanical scanning system built by Paul Nipko in 1884. Later Vladimer Zworykin immigrated to the United States from Russia to develop an all-electronic television system. Neither of the engineers had the skill nor the capital to create a business or an industry. It was only after a technical paper given by Zworykin in 1929 that another Russian immigrant and then Vice-President of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), David Sarnoff, was inspired enough to do that. He provided Zworykin with the laboratory resources to realize the dream and then in 1939 announced to the world at the New York World's fair that the beginnings of a new era-an era where moving images and sound would be in every home-was at hand. It was Sarnoff who controlled both the manufacturing of television sets through RCA and the transmission of television signals via NBC. It was Sarnoff who most clearly understood that only with a combination in the marketplace of consumer TV sets and TV signals could the industry be born.

Without the leadership from Sarnoff, television--the most remarkable communications scheme ever developed--may well have been abandoned as an impossible scheme. The same can be said for radio. The telephone was scoffed at by Andrew Carnegie, himself preferring investments in telegraph.

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 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 faces immeasurable odds, economic adversities, and deliberate obstructions until a critical mass is 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?

There are no giants like David Sarnoff saying at this time, "Here is the future and we are all going to get there this way". Rather, we have digital hardware and software saying, "I am not only replacing everything that was analog, but I am leading and you are following me into all manner of potential.... human, and not so human." Technology spends a great deal of its resource pushing from behind as engineers seek to get their latest inventions into the mainstream. But with the digital revolution, it has pushed through the usuals wall of resistance, and, by dent of new discovery, is leading everyone to little individual branches and nirvanas. Where will it lead us ultimately? If we look out 20 years we start to get a handle on the vision. It will, at minimum, lead us into a new world as different as is the industrial age is to the age of bronze.

What It Means...

HDTV has been a symbol for many things--competitiveness, technical prowess, ingenuity. But mostly it is the symbol of the future. It is the cleansed window upon which all the future will be seen. Never has an opportunity come at a better time. The sights, the sounds, the subtleties, textures--beauty in fact--of the rich and diverse cultures in the "new world order" are being offered LIVE! for your pleasure. Conversely, the terror of war, hunger and treachery will be all the easier seen. It is a development that enriches enjoyment and drastically increases involvement. There are millions of words already written about its supremacy in education--distance learning and medical. Of course, it is not a messiah. It is either, as Edward R. Murrow said about television, a box with "lights and wires" or it is the greatest new instrument for good ever developed.

The Persistence of Existing Standards.

Few will argue that radio didn't suffer from the development of television. Any new standard produces fear and reaction. Often attempts at suppression arise by those earning their living from the old standard. The older standard tries to adopt the new as its own to squash any potential of competition. But this causes further confusion since employing a new standard depresses the value of the old without equal or greater appreciation from the new. You can lose audiences faster than you can build them. The new standards get shelved and...

Only when the decrease of value on one side is off-set by an increase value on the other are new technological standards viable to existing institutions. Without that condition a preservation strategy arises ad hoc from those who recognize a threat is at hand. Max Berry, said at the SMPTE conference in San Francisco in 1988. "NTSC (today's U.S. standard) is the greatest asset of the American broadcaster" and that HDTV should not be "imposed upon us".

What Does It Take To Start H/DTV in the U.S.A?

To have a new standard up and running in the U.S. marketplace there has to be a combination of things. First, there must be a solid standard in which the public has no reason to doubt. Sets need to receive the old standard as well as the new. The public will not fret over the standard, just that it works as advertised and won't change into something else before they get their money's worth. It has to be market driven. The public will not support with taxation an underwriting of this signal since the first buyers will be the wealthy. Program delivery must be appealing to early adopters. If the first deliverer of HD signals is successful, the other signal providers will follow in their own time when own green lights go on.

What About a Maverick Like Ted Turner?

The world pivots on commitments made at key times. When things are ripe, one person taking a stand can bring about major change. Clinton may personify this view for many. He came from what most would call "nowhere" to the Presidency of the United States. His was the more appealing message of the hour...and he won. Without a commitment from at least one person to provide high-quality HDTV program signals, HDTV will miss its window and fall dormant for 20 years or more.

But why would anyone make that commitment? Who is going to make money with such a commitment? Even after some signals are in the air (wire or fiber) there is a slow market penetration predicted of no more than 1% within five years. The pioneer could go broke with those numbers. True, the first signal provider is likely to be losing money for a long time. Being second is much safer position since one enters when it looks good. The pioneer will be one who takes a stake in all HDTV related businesses to finance the one which drives them all.

Not since Chuck Dolan started HBO with 200 subscribers has there been any solid pioneering work of this kind done in television. Mention starting HDTV with a universe of 200 subscribers and the subject changes immediately. Not until someone with ability understands that just such a start may be required is there much hope for an important HDTV signal service launching. Today with the Direct Broadcast Satellite (or even C and Ku Band), an enterprising entrepreneur can start a service with one antenna located 22,300 miles in space and reach all of North America. This was not the case in early television, but this "antenna" will cost upwards of $130 thousand a month (DBS. Far less in C Band). One idea has it that it will start as a neighborhood franchise theater. This 'McDonalds style' mom & pop franchise could sell tickets and food in cushy little HDTV theaters, which receive their programing direct from the studios or other events programmers by way of fiber optic cable or satellite. They could record on the spot for more flexible show schedules. During the day these same theaters could offer business or medical conferences--even intra-city electronic games could be played on the big screens. How about a play-off championship to whip interest in attending the neighborhood theaters? These "tele-theaters" could show not only the first runs of motion picture releases, but be the first marketing outlets for the home HDTV sets and programming-the same programming feeding the theaters.

Fil'er-up With Star Power
Once a form of the HDTV business is rolling, the stars will follow. Stars shine brightest when involved with rising things, not those in decline. Their agents will insist. The public will respond.

At a point in time, when everything moves forward together with increasing velocity, the great HDTV vision will dawn on even the most unbending of the status quo groups. They too will switch allegiances from the old standards and invest heavily in the new, adding fuel to the rocket. Any HDTV signal business is going to then look very, very good indeed, especially on a global basis operated by the global media giants of the time. Every strength on the programming side the world-over will seek exposure on these fantastic global networks.

As we move towards the end of the century with its Fin De Ciecle drive and spontaneity, the programming spectaculars that will occur can only be fully appreciated by this new widescreen, clear imaged surround sound medium. That will rally most anyone left fiddling around in the old and obsolete systems. Black and white television scared the hell out of the motion picture studios. But this time television is going to do a lot for the motion picture industry. Not only will it enable motion picture delivery to ticket buying customers all over the world instantly, but the means of collection will be electronically controlled in these new HDTV theaters. Having learned their lessons that television has been good, not bad, for their industry the film businesses the world over-will get fully behind the HDTV movement, and do for it what they will never did for the older standard.

Manufacturing Gets Giddy
At a point in all of this growth, set makers around the world will have a hard time keeping up with the demand. All of the competitive infighting of the 90s will look foolish. It will make this era's television industry look quaint and primitive in comparison as demand strengthens in newly emerging and recently liberated nations. In the Pacific Rim there are well over one billion households marching into the 21st century with a new economy and a new vision for life. Hundreds of millions of households make up the newly freed regions in Eastern Europe-the former USSR. Demand, demand and more demand will cause one of the most unexpected renaissances ever in the history of manufactured electronics...and the price of it will come plummeting down to where it becomes affordable for everyone.

David Sarnoff was a techno/social prophet with the means to realize his dreams. He was not the father of the broadcasting technology- but he recognized what the emerging technology would or could do for humanity (not to mention his business). The spirit of David Sarnoff is needed again. The scale of things are different then in his era and no one person today manages resources enough to orchestrate the whole business around the world with his or her own checkbook. Only a person with a vision and the respect for that vision can catalyze the whole thing. That leader needs to understand the business and march to the drum of a new era. One with this vision and courage will do what Sarnoff did for television with one exception--it will be much more profitable to everyone.

Dale E. Cripps
Originally prepared in 1994 with revisions made May 30, 1999