Will Conventional Media Survive the 21st Century

I interviewed a young lady fresh out of a San Diego college today for a job in our news department. She told me she gets her news from all over the place including blogs, web sites, TV, and social media. Do people really think social media such as Facebook etc. provide news? Well, I suppose so since Barack Obama used Twitter to announce his Presidential bid. To me news has to be factual, balanced, and fair. A lot of web chatter is none of these. It's often opinionated, not factual, and sometimes plain, outright nasty. What gives me pause is the recent bankruptcy of Freedom Communications, which publishes the Orange County Register and the Yuma Sun, among others. Tribune Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, is also bankrupt. TV broadcasters Young Communications and Pappas Telecasting are bankrupt as well. They are all victims of the recession, too much debt and too little revenue as well as competition from new media. Gosh....the Desert Sun has 9 pages on the average Monday, and has no classifieds at all. Who will provide investigative reporting, fair, impartial, and objective coverage of local events if the conventional media goes away? Not Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or any of their like!

After the DTV Transition

DTV Transition day is now almost two months behind us, and I'm happy to report that it went well. Now both KESQ and KMIR are broadcasting only in digital, and our analog transmitters are now off the air permanently.

We had a few calls from people who couldn't find KESQ, primarily because they didn't re-scan their DTV sets or DTV converters. We had to change the channel we broadcast our DTV signal on because the old channel is "outside the core" which means it's in an area of spectrum the government removed from broadcasters and either auctioned off or gave to emergency services. If for some reason you can't find KESQ on any DTV that uses an antenna (not cable or satellite!) just re-scan and you will find us again.

KMIR didn't change frequencies, so no re-scanning was needed for their DTV signal. KPSP and all the other TV stations in the Coachella Valley are low power stations and they did not have to switch to digital. So far as I know, the only low-power digital station on the air is a shopping channel out of Victorville.

Eventually low power stations will have to switch, too, but we don't know when.

It's now too late to apply for a coupon to buy a DTV converter box. The program ended in early August. On the last day 169,000 people asked for coupons! I had a lot of trouble finding converter boxes locally, so I think retailers are pretty well sold out. I'm sure they are still available on-line and probably in Los Angeles.

Don't Forget to Scan Channels on Your DTV

By now, most over-the-air TV viewers have probably bought a digital TV or a DTV converter box. There is one feature that is very different from an analog TV. Before you can use it, you have to "scan" for channels. The reason is related to DTV technology. The "channels" you watch are virtual channels. Although they function like analog TV channels, in fact they may be transmitted on entirely different frequencies, and DTV streams can carry many embedded channels.

For instance, KESQ-DT carries multiple program sources: KESQ (ABC) KDFX (Fox) KCWQ (CW) KUNA (Telemundo) and the First Alert Weather Channel. When you scan for channels, the DTV tuner finds these program streams and assigns then channel numbers according to information we broadcast with the programming.

More and more stations are turning off their analog channels and using strictly digital channels. In some case, stations have to change frequencies. KESQ-DT is in that group, as the government has auctioned off the frequency we currently use. We will switch to KESQ-TV's current analog channel when we turn the analog signal off on June 12. On and after that date, you'll need to scan at least once to find the new location of our digital programming.

Since stations are switching at different times, you'll need to channel scan your DTV several times. I'd make a habit of doing it at least once a week.

If you are a cable or satellite subscriber scanning won't be necessary because you get all your programming through a cable box. It is possible to do a DTV channel scan if you have a DTV hooked up to cable, but the results will be unpredictable and very difficult to use.

I know it's very confusion. If you need help, please contact us at 760-773-0342 and our staff will help you with your DTV questions.

Beware the White Space Data Base

Some of you may have read about new consumer devices that are supposed to take advantage of so-called "white spaces" in TV spectrum. In other words, you'd buy a phone or a wireless internet device and operate it on an unused local TV channel. These devices are supposed to be used with spectrum sensing software or a data base that enables consumers to know if a local TV station or emergency service is using TV spectrum. If they are, then you're not allowed to use that channel.

I just checked one such on-line database and boy was it wrong. It showed that channel 42 is available in Palm Springs. Wrong! That's KESQ-TV's over-the-air analog channel, and it will be our DTV channel after June 12th. Whoever created this database operates it with reckless disregard for the truth. Another example of why you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

There is a big legal fight brewing over this technology because proponents of it tested the devices and the tests showed their spectrum sensing technology (which is supposed to detect local signals) doesn't work. The FCC approved it anyway. This is going to be a long, expensive fight, and consumers will be the losers if they buy these devices and then find out they don't work because they either cause interference or receive interference from licensed users. By the way, how'd you like to have the people who dispatch police and fire to your house in an emeregency unable to do so because someone was jamming their radios with a cordless phone or internet router? Yes...first responders and broadcasters already share spectrum!

Closed Captioning of Our Local News

Some people have asked us why closed captioning of our local news doesn't include captions of live field reports, breaking news, etc. The reason is rooted in our very small market size. Palm Springs is market 144, and small-market stations are not required to provide real-time captioning of their local newscasts. We do provide newsroom captioning, which translates the scripts from our broadcasts into closed captions. Since live shots are unscripted, our captioning system can't translate what's said into captions. The very largest markets such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, are required to completely caption their news broadcasts. They have the financial resources to hire the highly trained staff needed to do this, or they are paying an outside contractor to do it for them. Small market stations are exempt because they can't afford to pay the considerable expense of live news captioning.

Virtually all other forms of our programming, such as syndicated and network shows, are now captioned. There is an exception for foreign language programming, but that exception will sunset in a few years. Our Telemundo affiliate, KUNA-TV, offers the same news captioning as KESQ and KDFX, and the network provides closed captions for all other programming except news.

And finally, all emergency information including EAS alerts are provided in a form recognizable by the hearing impraired. Usually it's a and on-screen crawl or a graphic, displayed either full-screen or on a screen behind a weather or news person.

DirecTV Picture Quality

I received an e-mail from a viewer complaining about poor picture quality of the KDFX signal on DirecTV's satellite service. I took a look at the signal and indeed it often broke into pixels, an indication of some kind of technical problem.

The issue is not KDFX's signal. It's the same signal we put out over the air on analog and digital TV, and which we send to the cable company. Actually the problem occurs in the DirecTV receive facility itself. DirecTV installed some very new equipment designed to capture local signals, turn them into digital signals, and then send them over fiber optic cables to their satellite uplink facility. They have had many problems getting all this high-tech gear to work right.

Now DirecTV is removing this troublesome equipment and installing new. It should be in operation well before the first of the year. When this happens DirecTV plans to offer local signals in High Definition once it concludes agreements with the local stations allowing them to do this. Meanwhile viewers who watch in SD should see fewer artifacts on their DirecTV screens.

Coachella Valley Economy Struggles

Last week experts gave the Coachella Valley economy a grade of D+, which is not much better than an "F." We were an early indicator of the direction the rest of the world would go. Because our economy was so dependent upon new home building, when things went bad, our economy soured earlier than much of the rest of the U.S.

The Hispanic community has been especially hard hit, because the majority of the skilled and unskilled workers who built all those houses were Hispanic. Those tradesmen are now out of work. The situation isn't much better for the businesses that cater to people moving into new homes including furniture stores, flooring and carpet dealers, and home improvement businesses. Local auto dealers are having a tough time, and my heart goes out to all who depend upon that business everywhere in our country. Even if a willing buyer wants to purchase a car, credit is difficult to get.

Businesses who cater to snowbirds are wondering what kind of vacation season we'll see this year. My best guess there is that our Canadian guests will return in force. Canada's resource-driven economy seems to be weathering the economic storm better than most countries, and the Canadian dollar, or "Looney" is still worth more than a U.S. Dollar.

Part-time residents are already returning to our neighborhood, and it's encouraging to see the lights on their homes on at night and the bustle at some of the local restaurants.

We local broadcasters depend upon local retailers and service providers for advertising dollars. The advertising business has been hit, too, by declining budgets. Local businesses just don't have as much money as they once had to advertise. Take a look at the Desert Sun. It's narrow and the copy has been reduced to six columns. They changed the size of the roll of paper used to print the newspaper. In the newspaper business it's called the "web." I find that ironic, since it's the WEB (Internet) which is eating into all media businesses. Newsprint is one of the most expensive items used to create a newspaper. Newsprint prices have been rising and advertising revenues have been declining. That is a recipe for economic trouble.

Like everyone else, all we can do is hunker down and push straight ahead until the storm dies down.