Stations: Stop Ignoring OTA's Advantages

Why aren't television broadcasters selling the main advantage to their service -- no monthly subscription fees? Broadcasters' digital TV awareness efforts have been led by the National Association of Broadcasters and its modesty in promoting broadcasting during the transition is puzzling. Maybe the broadcasters on the NAB board now see every loss of an OTA home to cable or satellite as a gain of another $3 per year in retransmission consent fees from cable. That would make sense. Maybe the NAB simply didn't want to antagonize policymakers in Washington by turning the transition into a self-serving exercise. Or, maybe, as some broadcasters believe, the NAB is not really representing the best interests of the TV broadcasting industry these days. The TV board, the critics say, is studded with executives of companies that have significant cable interests — Disney, NBC, Cox, Post-Newsweek, Hearst-Argyle. Whatever the reason, broadcasting is diminished by the loss of each and every OTA home. The never-say-cable OTA faithful are what distinguishes broadcasting from cable. They are what distinguish NBC from USA.