Consensus at Lawyerpoint: CBS to offer most prime-time shows in HD

August 30, 2002

[News]
CBS to offer most prime-time shows in HD

Audiorevolution.com reports that CBS will offer the majority of its prime time schedule in high-definition.

The 2002/2003 television season marks the fourth consecutive year CBS has broadcast the majority of its primetime schedule in HD, and the second season that it has offered all of its scripted entertainment series in the HD digital format.

Eighty-three of CBS' owned and affiliated stations are currently broadcasting in digital, covering reportedly 72 percent of the nation. By the end of 2002, CBS expects to be transmitting digital programming across more than 100 owned and affiliated stations, reaching over 83 percent of the country.

And all without a broadcast flag mandate!

Posted by Seth Schoen at 03:20 PM

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What is the BPDG?

In the year 2006 all over-the-air television will be digital. This is pretty hot stuff: crystal-clear pictures, ear-popping audio and interactive features for days. But as the technologists give, the studios take away.

The Broadcast Protection Discussion Group is an obscure group of Hollywood studios and technology companies that are negotiating a "consensus" for any gadget or code that can touch the studios' product. Once they're done, they want to go to Washington and ask Congress and/or the FCC to give their "standard" the force of law.

So what? Well, this is a radical departure from the way it's usually done. Usually, bright nerds invent something cool and the entertainment industry has a nervous breakdown and runs around telling everyone that the sky is falling (Marconi got sued over the radio, Sony got sued over the VCR, and it took a near miracle to get movies out of the studios' vaults and onto television). People pick up on the tech and all the interesting ways that it can be used as a creative tool, and gradually the entertainment industry realizes that a new day has dawned and gets its act together, starts shipping product for the new media, and takes home yet another squillion dollars.

This time around, the entertainment industry wants to take away all that sloppy, inefficient fooling around where technology companies try out lots of different approaches, where garage inventors go from obscurity to posterity under a hail of customers, where you and I get to invent amazing new uses for our stuff that a bunch of engineers in a board-room never would've thought of in a million years. This time around, everything not forbidden is mandatory. MORE...