We have to remember that OTA broadcasts are financed by, gasp, annoying television commercials. And the more multicasts a local station can offer, the more commercials per channel they can sell.
And the larger the viewing percentage a local multicast or HD broadcast can attract, the more per minute they can charge for a given commercial. And from my standpoint, I prize wider broadcast content variety far more than a super high definition broadcast, with even a SD picture in digital being far better than I ever got in analog.
Newton Minnow was basically correct in stating television is a vast wasteland, and other than news and weather, I seldom find anything worth watching on major network television. I mostly watch PBS, I get only two of them at my location, but when one offers 3 choices and the other two, its the equivalent of 5 analog PBS stations.
But this whole multicast thing is going to send stations scrambling to find more and different content to attract viewers, meaning smaller niche tastes will be served is the way I look at it.
And if more subscription based users of cable, satellite, and fiber optic based delivery methods decide to lose their monthly bills by canceling the subscription based service, and jumping on the OTA bandwagon, the better financed OTA broadcasters will become. Meaning more groups will want to start their own new OTA stations.
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High definition is not the definition of my life.
But knowledge is power and HD does have some potential to increase content variety and choices.
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