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LOCAL EFFORTS: Broadcasters Give Viewers A Push Toward TV Purchase Novmeber 18, 1998 A problem plagues the deployment of the unprecedented picture and sound quality of high definition television: nobody has the set to enjoy the technological breakthrough. The solution? Broadcasters and high-end electronics retailers nationwide are launching promotional campaigns to persuade John and Jane Q. Public to spring for expensive new sets so that the Cadillac of digital signals will not be broadcast in vain. The Oct. 29 broadcast of the Space Shuttle launch carrying Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) demonstrates the dilemma: 24 network affiliates around the country broadcast the historic liftoff live in high definition, but very few American living rooms were equipped with the new sets to get the souped-up signal. Although the wonders of HDTV are by now familiar to trade reporters and bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission, network affiliates in small and medium-sized broadcasting markets and local retailers are spreading the HDTV gospel with demonstrations at malls and state fairs. The driving force behind all the hoopla, of course, is to see if people will actually fork over $8,000 for the sets. Capitol Broadcasting Co.’s WRAL-Raleigh, N.C., a CBS affiliate and one of the first stations in the United States to broadcast digital signals, has launched an aggressive education campaign to enlighten the public. Capitol Broadcasting also owns local TV on Satellite, a company planning to offer all network affiliates via one DBS satellite. WRAL Marketing Director John Greene is working full-time to coordinate HDTV broadcasting events like the Space Shuttle launch and the Nov. 8 Buffalo Bills/New York Jets National Football League game with NOW! Audio/Video stores in malls in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. Greene has also helped set up HDTV broadcasts for stations as far away as Mexico. Making sure that other stations progress with their own conversion to digital technology can only benefit pioneers like WRAL, Greene said. “The worst thing to happen to a station is to get stuck in the middle of a technology transition,” he said. “We’re pushing the technology so that it will become prevalent in broadcasting.” WKOW-Madison, Wis., an ABC affiliate owned by Shockley Communications Corp., is airing a 13-minute “Madison pictorial” in HDTV. A van equipped with an HDTV screen and six speakers will tour the area, and local American TV and Appliance showrooms will feature Sony and Panasonic HDTV models. KXAS-Dallas-Fort Worth, an NBC affiliate in the seventh-largest market in the United States, will show a short promotional piece about the station’s 50th anniversary at the Fort Worth Stock Show, which opens in January. Back in Raleigh, the HDTV campaign is transcending mere “come-one, come-all” sales pitches; it has become an intellectual pursuit. Connie Book, a communications professor at North Carolina State University and Meredith University in Raleigh, secured a $5,700 grant from the National Association of Broadcasters to study HDTV’s impact on consumers. Her efforts began Oct. 15 through 26 at the North Carolina State Fair, where she polled 660 people after they emerged from an HDTV screening tent. “I noticed a shift in [prospective buyers of HDTV] from what I thought they would be, going into the study,” she said. “The people who came out immediately saying, ‘Where can I buy one?’ were NASCAR and football fans. More than those with big pockets and technophiles, it’s those who are really into TV who reacted most strongly to it.” But HDTV retailers should not start licking their chops just yet. Book also said most of those polled said they would pay $800 to $1,000 at most for one of the new sets. That is a far cry from the $7,000 to $8,000 most sets list for now. Book also found that those interviewed showed a surprisingly high level of sophistication when it comes to understanding competition and regulatory issues surrounding digital broadcasting and HDTV. Most of those questioned said they would simply switch to an satellite dish service offering HDTV if cable companies do not enable cable boxes to pass HDTV signals to the TVs. Book will also interview 12 Raleigh-area families Nov. 22 after they watch 20 hours of network HDTV broadcasts with Panasonic sets in their own homes. The test subjects, who will be paid $300 for their participation, were chosen from a NOW! Audio/Video customer database of likely HDTV buyers--those who had recently shelled out $1,500 or more for a digital versatile disc player or an elaborate home theater system. With its giant screen and video and audio quality, HDTV will assert a dominant presence in the American home for the tube, after having become almost an appliance or background distraction, Book predicts. “People struggle to describe what it’s like after they see it,” Book recalls of some of the State Fair subjects. “They don’t know what to say because they have never seen anything like it. And I think that’s going to make the presence of TV much more serious. There won’t be little HDTV sets on the kitchen table.” —Dan Egbert OTHER DIGITAL TV BEATS HBO HDTV GETS READY: Titles Coming Up On HBO HDTV March 10, 1999 THE DATA HORIZON: PBS Tackles the Bandwidth Usage Question February 24, 1999 RESEARCH: The Reports Are in, But the Conclusions Are Confusing February 10, 1999   NEW FEES: There Is No Such Thing as Free Spectrum January 27, 1999 CES TV TALK: More Buzz than the Sequins on an Elvis Jacket January 13, 1999   CES: Bright Lights, Big Pictures to Hit Vegas December 16, 1998   FIRSTS: Digital TV Broadcasts Hit the Airwaves November 4, 1998   THOMSON'S DBS BRAIN: Channels ARE Plentiful in New Digital TV World October 21, 1998   DECISIONS, DECISIONS: Taking the Plunge into Digital TV October 7, 1998   FIREWIRE: So the Blender Says to the Toaster, He Says... September 23, 1998 They're Here... September 9, 1998   GOT AN IDEA? E-mail it to: general.mail @satbiznews.com WANT TO SPONSOR DIGITAL TV BEAT? 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