Won't Get Fooled Again?

I own lots of vinyl LP's. Hundreds and hundreds of them. From time to time I actually even fire up the ol' turntable and listen to some of them. I know that this doesn't make me unusual; indeed I know folks whose record collections make my aggregation of black vinyl flapjacks look positively meager by comparison (see Pipes, Rusty).

During my prime record-buying days (and let's put aside for a few moments how inexcusably old having these records makes me, okay?), I would buy LP's at a rate of three to five per week, and this was before I got a job in a huge record store, with of course an employee discount on the things.

Then one day way back in the 80's, everything changed. Compact Discs were suddenly on the market. I had heard about digital recording, and even had some vinyl records that were recorded digitally. They sounded great and I couldn't wait for this technology to get firmly in place so I would be able to listen to music with an exciting new degree of clarity.

The trouble was, though, that all that vinyl that I'd invested in was now obsolete. By around 1990, most record stores gave up devoting shelf space to the big, cumbersome records and stocked CD's almost entirely. Early re-releases of material that had originally been released on vinyl sounded positively abysmal, but people bought them anyway so they could scrap their scratchy-sounding records and get those ugly turntables off their stereo shelves.

And wouldn't you just know that after millions of units of those vinyl releases on CD had been sold, along came exciting new digital re-masters of those very same albums. And now they're selling big! Recently, only a couple of years after the digitally-re-mastered re-release of Steely Dan's entire catalogue in a boxed set, a new series of 24-bit re-releases of all of their albums went on the market with, as an added incentive to buy, new liner notes from Walter Becker and Donald Fagen themselves! How many times can the music industry go to the well and assume that I'm a smiling, credit card-waving sucker??

(This, by the way, is the reason that I have few qualms about downloading .mp3's and turning them into CD's for my own personal use. I'm now listening to CD's that I've made of albums and/or artists in whom I've already invested considerable amounts of money. In some cases, I've already bought an album three times. How many times do I have to buy a copy of The Royal Scam to prove that I support an artist?)

Now there's another change on the horizon, and it could once again suck large wads of cash out of your pocket and into corporate coffers. DVD Audio and Super Audio CD are just beginning to duke it out for the next level of your music investment. This battle is a little slower to take hold than the sea change that brought CD's to your record shelf, but you should take interest anyway. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who are supposed to be watching out for you, are staying out of it, which is pretty much their habit.

For a little perspective, let's travel back in time. In the 1950's a new-fangled bit of technology was capturing the minds and imaginations of people all over the country. A way had been found to transmit television pictures through the air in color! People couldn't wait to see how deep a redhead Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke was, or how colorful Dinah Shore's clothes were. The big stumbling block was that there were two systems of color television that had been developed. Only one could be the standard, or else broadcasting would be thrown into chaos.

NBC, and its parent company the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), developed a system of what was referred to as "compatible color." What that meant was that anyone who had a black-and-white tv could watch those color broadcasts and be able to see them. Rival CBS had developed a color television system that was "incompatible," that is that people with already-in-use tv's would not be able to watch any broadcasts in the CBS color format.

At this point, the FCC stepped in and did what its charter said it should do--it set a standard. I'm told that CBS's system was supposed to have looked slightly better in quality than the NBC "compatible color," but the FCC did the right thing and stood up for consumers by making NBC's system the standard. Imagine if you'd been told that you'd have to scrap your tv in order to be able to watch any programming at all. What's that you say? The government just told you that a couple of years ago? Well, we'll come back to that.

To the best of my knowledge, that time in the 50's was just about the last time that the FCC did much of anything worthwhile. Recording and broadcasting technology, at least on a level that affected consumers, moved pretty slowly over the next twenty-five years or so, anyway.

Right after Ronald Reagan took office and "deregulation" became the mantra of our great land (this, remember, was when we began lionizing and/or bestowing sainthood upon CEO's, and you can draw pretty much a straight line from that point to some of our present corporate scandals--but, boyohboy, is that another topic for another column!), the Video Cassette Recorder came along, giving the FCC its first big chance to stand on the sidelines and do nothing.

There were two systems, recall. Sony had developed the Beta system, and JVC (Japanese Victor Corporation, a former subsidiary of RCA) had developed the Video Home System (VHS). There were significant differences between these two systems, and the FCC determined that, rather than live up to their charter and set a national standard, they would "Let The Market Determine" a standard.

Sony, cocky as they could be, did little to further their own cause. After all, they were Sony, for Pete's sake, a brand that everyone knew stood for high quality. (They had just recently abandoned one of my all-time favorite ad slogans: "It's a Sony. No Baloney.") Their Beta system was noticeably superior to the quality available on VHS, and the tapes were also smaller, and so easier to store. Also, Sony allowed very little "franchising" of their format, i.e., selling the right to build machines in this format to other companies. When a grateful public started snatching up Betamaxes right and left, Sony wanted to be in line for as much of the profits as possible.

JVC, on the other hand, franchised to anybody that wanted to build a VCR. In fact, they even stopped building the machines themselves. The reason that the differences among the brands of VHS VCR's were almost entirely cosmetic was that nearly all of them were built in Japan by the Matsushita company. And, oh yes, by the way, VHS tapes have a longer recording time. Everyone marketing VHS VCR's touted the longer recording time over Beta, and gradually people started buying more and more of the VHS format.

Almost before it began, the competition was over. Beta copies of movies began to disappear from video rental stores. By the mid-80's, it was getting pretty hard to even find blank Beta tapes in stores.

Sony lost, and the FCC did absolutely nothing to step in and set a standard. They pointed to this as a triumph, saying that indeed, the market had decided the issue without government interference. There was much capitalistic rejoicing, and few people seemed to notice that the market had made the wrong choice.

A few years later, the FCC had another chance to justify its existence when the phenomenon of AM Stereo Radio began to sweep the country. There were several different ways to implement the broadcasting of a high-quality stereo signal on the Amplitude Modulation band of the radio, and once again the FCC made the non-decision to "Let The (ho-hum) Market Determine" the standard. The problem was, virtually no consumers knew a damn thing about which of the several differing AM stereo systems was better. People bought new sound systems for their cars promising AM stereo, but if the station was broadcasting in a different format than your car's system was receiving, then you wouldn't be able to hear the high-quality sound. Consumers were largely apathetic--after all, wasn't AM the place where all you could listen to was people talking or screaming about one thing or another?--and the Commission's "plan" to allow the market to determine a standard resulted in the very quick death of AM Stereo.

In the 90's, the FCC continued its laissez-faire policies, abetted now by the Democratic Clinton Administration. It was determined that restricting the number of media outlets in a particular market owned by one corporation was, well, inordinately restrictive. As a result, in my town we now have eight radio stations and one major network affiliate television station that are wholly owned by Clear Channel. During this same time, the television station at which I work was sold to Gannett, which also owns one of the newspapers in town. Gannett was told that within the year of its acquisition of our station, it would have to sell off the station. This would give too much influence, the FCC believes, to one point of view in our city. That's right, folks, we can't have too much homogenized, same-as-in-all-other-towns points of view, now can we? Though I had no burning desire to work for Gannett, I couldn't help but shake my head at a government commission that thought nine was fewer than two. I'm sure that the situation isn't all that different in your town, either.

Then, of course, a couple of years ago, it was determined by Federal mandate that all television stations in the country would have to be broadcasting digitally by the year 2007. Let me see if I can shed a little light on this mishmash for you.

First of all, and most importantly, DIGITAL BROADCASTING IS NOT THE SAME AS HIGH-DEFINITION BROADCASTING. Don't ever forget that. All that digital broadcasting means is that your local television station will broadcast an over-the-air digital signal. If you want to watch that digital signal, you'll have to either buy a digital tv (and a digital antenna) or at least buy a converter that will receive the digital signal and convert it to something that your analog tv can display. There is no "compatible" digital, sorry. With digital broadcasting, you can broadcast a high-definition signal, but you can also broadcast several low-definition signals at once, which is what has the sales folks at your local stations really salivating. Imagine being able to sell time on four separate signals, and having all that revenue come back to one broadcaster! This could happen in your town. This is the tip of a very thorny iceberg that should probably have a column of its own. (And if you're keeping count, that's two future columns now that have been generated by this idiotic morass.)

Incidentally, two of my co-workers have bet each other a pitcher of beer over whether or not the country will meet the 2007 deadline. The guy who bet that the deadline will be met told me that he knows he doesn't have a chance of winning, but at least he'll share some of the pitcher of beer.

And now we come to high definition (hi-def) tv. Once again, there are several possibilities for a standard in this field, and you owe it to yourself to become at least a little informed about them, since the kinds of transmitters that stations will buy and, by extension, the kind of tv's you will buy depends to a great degree on how much you know about this. To simplify things as much as I can, here's a thumbnail sketch of how it works:

The various systems are all based on how many scan lines are on the screen, and whether those scan lines are displayed in a progressive scan or an interlaced scan. Televisions up until now have always worked with an interlaced scan, which means that for every one of the thirty frames of video that you see every second, there are two fields, which are the odd-numbered lines and then the even-numbered lines being scanned on your screen separately. Your eyes make the two fields link together. Progressive scan is how your computer monitor works. There are no fields; every line is scanned onto the screen in succession--progressively.

When you see a hi-def tv advertised as 1080i, what that means is that the screen is capable of displaying one thousand eighty lines, but in an interlaced fashion, five hundred forty lines at a time. This would effectively double the resolution of your tv, which would be lovely.

Other possible systems have far fewer scan lines, but would be progressive scans. This would also increase the resolution of your tv monitor, and would be less likely to flicker as well. Still others would actually reduce the frames-per-second rate to give video a more film-like quality.

All of these systems are out there, and they're competing for the right to suck money out of your pockets. And the FCC is doing nothing to resolve the confusion.

What I really want to know is--How can I get a job with the FCC????? I could make, I'm sure, lots more money than I make now, and wouldn't have to do a bloody thing!

Which brings me back to those CD's. Though there isn't a huge groundswell for either DVD Audio or Super Audio CD at the moment, don't think that it can't happen. These two different formats are out there, lying in wait for you, the unsuspecting consumer. The sound quality in both is comparable. Both will require you to buy a new piece of equipment in order to hear the new, higher quality CD's. It may be that DVD Audio, since it will be able to play DVD's and CD's as well as DVD Audio discs, will win the day because it will simply do more. The Super Audio CD player will play your old CD's along with the SACD's only, and Sony, having seemingly learned nothing from the Betamax debacle, is sitting back and waiting for people to come to them again. At least both systems will play "old" CD's. Someday, though, you can almost bet that some revolutionary new audio reproduction format will come along and all of those pretty silvery discs that we own will be just more junk cluttering up our houses.

I would suggest that it might just be a good idea to contact your elected representatives in Washington and let them know that you're tired of being a pawn in FCC experiments in market determination, and that you'd like them to exert a little pressure on the FCC to actually do what they were created to do.

Maybe you could even try to get in touch with the FCC. I suppose it's possible that they have someone there who at least opens the mail.

(C) 2002 - Karl Cable