Get Ready for ATSC 3.0

[ChrisW6ATV]

I am highly skeptical of the whole plan for over-the-air TV, long term. The biggest problem I see is that most people have already got used to paying for TV "service", independent of whether it has commercials or not. Many younger people (maybe even most of them, scarily) are not even aware of the concept of "free TV", I am afraid.

Even now, the mobile-friendly add-on to our existing digital TV system (ATSC M/H) already includes provision for, and approval of, encrypting those mobile-only channels and requiring payment to watch them. (Here, in the San Francisco area, one or more of my TV tuners comes up with some channels with names like ESPN that I cannot receive; I am guessing that there is already some pay-only service on the air or being tested here.)

With so many people already using cell phones or other Internet-connected devices to watch video (and paying for all of it as they do so, of course, and accepting that as reasonable), I have to wonder how any over-the-air broadcasters would have a plan to counteract that with some flashy, multichannel, mobile-friendly service that was only ad-supported. It just seems unlikely.

MUCH more likely, I fear, is the use of ATSC 3.0 to gradually turn the vast majority of the existing over-the-air channels, bands, and stations into mobile-friendly but full-fledged pay-TV systems, in other words, "cable TV without the cable, but at the same prices", more or less. That is my worst possible nightmare for television.