Some Good HDTV Programming News
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 9/16/2002
While we all wait and see if the slowing sales of consumer electronics in national chains during the summer was a momentary speed bump or a roadblock going into the fourth quarter, there was some good news from an unlikely place: HDTV.
As some of you may remember, the last time we visited the subject in this space, yours truly was ranting about the FCC decision to mandate digital tuners in all sets by 2007. I was also raging about the fact that there was little watchable and demonstrable HDTV programming being provided by broadcasters.
While the FCC hasn't rescinded its decision, on the programming front things have changed. First, Zenith kicked off a $30 million fall HDTV advertising campaign on Sept. 1 (TWICE, Sept. 2, p. 6). It will be sponsoring the majority of CBS' HDTV prime-time programs and all of ABC's prime-time HDTV lineup.
CBS will broadcast nearly 27 hours of HD programming per week starting this fall, which it claims is the most of any other broadcast network. 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.
Zenith will sponsor ABC's lineup of new and returning prime-time programs in HDTV. The shows, being broadcast in 720p including 5.1-channel surround sound, will give ABC 13 hours a week of prime-time HDTV programming. (Did I mention that at Zenith.com consumers can log on, punch in their zip code and see a listing of all HDTV programming in their area?)
A week later Samsung, Sears and CBS announced a partnership that will provide broadcasts of 15 college football games in HDTV this fall. Sears will receive in-store broadcasts of the games via EchoStar Communications, who will provide CBS's HDTV signal exclusively to a Samsung HDTV unit in every Sears location.
And what about Sears? As you may recall from our last issue, Sears announced it is revamping its consumer electronics departments to add LCD and plasma TV sections to more than 650 stores nationwide (TWICE, Sept. 2, p. 1).
Sears' electronics business general manager Ray Brown aggressively said when he made the announcement, "The industry is coming and it's coming hard, and we are not going to be playing catch-up to anybody."
Well good for Ray and good for Sears. More retailers, manufacturers and broadcasters should have that attitude. And kudos to Zenith and Samsung for priming the programming pump and getting more HDTV shows onto CBS and ABC.
As they say about lotteries, "You've got to be in it to win it." In this case, you have to have the hardware, the programming and the merchandising savvy to get HDTV off the ground and sell it.
Yours truly doesn't have to tell you that in order to effectively sell HDTV sets, you have to have the programming displayed on the TVs in your stores. How many stores have you visited in the last year or two, maybe even your own, that have HDTVs on display with either no programming or just analog programming being used for demos? And you wonder why the sales in those stores aren't as strong as they should be?
If the strategies of Zenith, Samsung and Sears at least provide retailers across the country with programming to demo HDTVs in stores, the industry will be all better off for their efforts. And P.S., let's hope we all get surprised again in the next couple of weeks and see more HDTV sponsorships being announced. The more the merrier.
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