The Clicker: The NAB and Katrina

Every Thursday Stephen Speicher contributes
The Clicker, a weekly opinion column on entertainment and technology:

Oh, there's nothing like a good natural disaster to bring out the worst in people. For instance: Let's say you are an NFL team owner and you're not satisfied with the home town of your football franchise. Well... there's an easy solution here: just wait for the city to be destroyed and then immediately begin lobbying to become the San Antonio Saints. Disregard, of course, the fact that your football team might just become both an inspiration and a needed diversion to those who called New Orleans home.

It seems like (more so than most tragedies) Hurricane Katrina tales have come with a negative bent. Accusations of racism, incompetence, greed, corruption, looting, and rape have largely replaced the template disaster-news-reporting of "neighbor helping neighbor" and "communities pulling together."

However, in the midst of all the tragedy and devastation surrounding the New Orleans disaster, one man stepped up to the plate and really separated himself from the others. One man came forth and in both ridiculous and, to be quite redundant, political fashion exclaimed "This is exactly why my [completely unrelated] cause matters."

At this point you might be thinking to yourself, ?But this is usually a television and entertainment column; how can this possibly relate?? It?s an astute observation on your part. After all, what does television technology have to do with the loss of water, power, shelter, and, most importantly, life that is the New Orleans reality these days?

Outgoing NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) president Edward Fritts has the answer for you. You see ?
according to the NAB, the New Orleans disaster is just one more illustration as to why cable companies should be required by law to carry all the digital sub-channels for a particular station. The NAB?s logic? The sub-channels usually carry alternative local programming. This local programming would have been used to keep the public up-to-date on the latest weather conditions. Apparently it was not enough to have radio stations, newspapers, traffic jams,
weather indicators, ibises circling overhead, CNN, the Tokyo Gazette, etc. etc. all saying ?get the heck out of town.?

It would have been really helpful, according to the NAB, to be able to turn on your cable television and be assured that the advertisement-driven sub-channels were there. The notion is either repugnant, disingenuous or, truth be told,
both.

So what are sub-channels and what?s the fight about?

Unlike the traditional broadcast method of sending out one channel per signal, digital television broadcasters use their allotted frequency to send a stream of encoded data. In this stream, broadcasters can place multiple different channels. The receiver then picks out which portion of the stream that it?s looking for (i.e. which sub-channel). For instance:

In some markets, broadcasters send the HD signal on one sub-channel, an SD version on another, and a loop of their weather broadcast on yet another. Cable companies would like to be able to continue broadcasting just the main channel.
The NAB, on the other hand, is currently lobbying to have an ?all channels? requirement. The problem with this is, of course, that these channels are rarely the selfless public good that the NAB portrays them to be, and, more to the point, there is no requirement for them to be so. There is nothing to stop stations from adding a slew of shopping networks to the line-up.

It?s a business and that?s fine. However, for the NAB to trivialize the situation and to imply that their cause would have saved lives goes a step beyond. Heaven forbid that they could, gasp, interrupt an episode of Jerry Springer or use the already-in-place emergency-broadcasting-system.

There is no doubt that there are plenty of ways the frequency spectrum could have been used more efficiently. As much as it might dishearten the High-Definition crowd, it?s even quite reasonable to say that a hard deadline for the return of the analog spectrum could have put the poorest at harm in a situation like this, but to say that a multi-channel must-carry for cable is one of them is in poor taste.

It?s just one more reason to question the NAB and to dislike the political games of disaster.

If have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop me a line at theclicker@theevilempire.com.