The results of the first TWICE Survey are in. The question was: Should the Advanced Television Standard Committee amend the Digital Television standard to include both the 8-VSB modulation scheme and the COFDM scheme that is being championed by Sinclair Broadcasting? Respondents totaled 331, with 168, or 51%, voting yes and 163, or 49%, voting no.
The survey was conducted over a three-month span starting on Day 1 of the 2000 International CES and ending March 24. During that time, TWICE readers have been able to vote as many times as they like. It should be noted that it would have been possible to “stuff the ballot box” with votes in the TWICE Survey. So perhaps the results should not be interpreted as an accurate measure of public opinion on the issue but as a gauge of how active the proponents of the issues are on behalf of their causes.
During the last week that the COFDM poll was up on the TWICE website, it received considerably more attention than it did in previous weeks, most likely due to the announcement that the ATSC would create a new task force to evaluate the performance of the DTV RF system.
Until that time, votes against Sinclair Broadcasting’s proposal far outweighed votes in favor by almost a two-to-one margin. But with the last few days’ activity on the poll site, support for Sinclair’s position grew considerably, and when the poll was closed, support for Sinclair had grown to 49%.
