The high definition transition has not exactly been a boon for free OTA commercial television. A pesky recession and a trend line that diverts advertising dollars away from OTA and toward hardwired subscription based delivery methods has resulted in a 20% loss of net overall revenue.
Meanwhile greedy cell phone companies are casting their eyes on the OTA television spectrum that has already been downsized. So they can sell ever more iphone like devices that are simply bandwidth hogs.
And I see it likely that cell phone companies will take two approaches to get more than their fair share of the wireless spectrum. (1) They will wine and dine our legislators seeking to get them to rob from OTA Paul and give it to the cell phone Peter.
(2) They may just buy up, at bargain basement prices, the OTA
broadcasters at the local level, And once they then own that local spectrum they can use it for their own purposes. Meanwhile the
national networks will starve as they lose their affilates.
Meanwhile OTA broadcasters have not been exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. Even as they gained the ability to use multicasts that double and triple their potential commercial air time, they have not only failed to attract viewers by airing cheap quality programming, they have also failed to reduce per minute advertising prices to attract more net local advertising. So should we subsidize mentally retarded dinosaurs because they think the world owes them a living?
IMHO, unless we do something, we the OTA air viewer will be the big losers if we don't band together and use our political clout. The other big loser will be small local advertiser who can no longer target their catchment areas. After all would you even consider going to Joe's Diner if you see his ad from hundreds or thousands of miles away?
