Source: New York Times Syndicate
Satellite Dishes: Flying Off The Shelves
DVD players may have been the hottest electronics item this Christmas season, but national and area retailers say another video product was flying off their shelves nearly as fast: 18-inch satellite dishes. Small-dish satellite systems are now in more than 11 million U.S. homes, or about one in nine. And that number is growing by a quarter million a month. Once considered a luxury item for videophiles, satellite TV is making its way into all kinds of homes for a variety of reasons. It's hard to say how many are in Kansas City (the satellite industry likes to keep local sales figures close to its chest). But there could be as many as 50,000 area homes now dished up. And despite efforts by our local cable companies to keep customers from defecting to satellite, that number will probably keep growing in 2000. Three reasons why: 1. Yes, digital cable offers subscribers more channels than ever but satellite still delivers the most. To counter the threat from satellite service providers DirecTV and EchoStar, Time Warner Cable and Comcast both have started rolling out digital cable systems. Compared with regular analog cable, digital offers many more new channels to its customers. (Time Warner only offers digital cable in its ""upgraded'' zones, which should include all of Johnson County by the end of 2000.) And yet I counted at least 14 cable networks in DirecTV's $30-per-month Total Choice satellite package that aren't carried by Time Warner Cable's $37-per-month digital service, including the terrific BBC America and the computer network ZDTV. Time Warner has 12 channels DirecTV doesn't, but these include Metro Sports and four spinoffs of the Discovery channel that show only reruns. Time Warner also has a few more flavors of Music Choice audio channels, but I still give the advantage to satellite. Cable still has one biological strength over satellite: With cable, there can be three TV sets on in your house, each one tuned to a different channel. You'd need to buy three separate receivers to do that with a satellite system. But dish makers are betting that what you really want are channels, and the more the merrier. EchoStar also offers dozens of international channels through its Dish Network. And the company announced last week that it will give away its new Dish 500 system including installation to customers who sign a one-year deal at a $40 monthly rate. DirecTV also has a free-install deal going, though as with EchoStar you have to sign up for more than just the minimum number of channels. Late last year, the satellite companies began offering subscribers a new slate of commercial-free educational networks. (Not of their own free will, let it be said; Congress made them set aside part of their bandwidth for these channels.) I've already found a couple I like. One is WorldLink TV, a joint venture between InterNews and ITVS, two longtime players in the documentary field. Much of their work has not been seen widely in the U.S. WorldLink was launched so quickly that it hasn't had time to pull together a full schedule, so it's making do with a couple of news programs from England and a collection of world music videos. And I mean the whole world: ballads from Tibet and Italy, technopunk from Russia, bagpipe rock from Spain, etc. I must say that even this hodgepodge is a welcome addition to American TV fare, which typically forgets that there are other countries in the world except as backdrops for luxury travel, political unrest or disasters. Another of the new channels is PBS You, which was set up for ``distance learning'' watching classes on TV for credit. But the programs shown on the channel are so polished that I can't tell the difference between them and the usual high-quality PBS fare. The other night I got roped into a terrific program on PBS about the role of narrative in American filmmaking. They interviewed directors Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and did a fascinating analysis of the making of ``Casablanca.'' If I can watch stuff like that for credit, sign me up. 2. Local TV stations soon won't be an either/or proposition for dish owners. One of the big drawbacks to buying a dish has been the inconvenience of pulling in local stations. Say you've just gotten that new dish side-mounted on your house (and if I were you, I'd buy mine someplace where they installed it for you). Now you want to watch ""Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' on ABC. Good luck getting it on the dish: Satellite providers haven't been allowed to carry Channel 9 or any local TV stations in any city, which means their customers have had to fend for their own, either with ``lifeline'' cable service or a TV antenna. But that's about to change. Thanks to watershed legislation passed by Congress in November, satellite companies can now offer their customers network affiliates. And they will just not as many as your local cable system, and not right away and possibly on a different dish than the one you own. The ink is barely dry on all the fine print, so let's look at it more closely. First, those satellite transponders drifting high above the earth's equator only have so much room on them for TV channels. So for the time being, DirecTV and EchoStar plan to offer just four networks NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox to their local customers, plus a national PBS feed. Eventually, viewers in some cities will get their local WB, UPN and independent stations. But not everyone will get everything, because satellite makers say they don't have the space for all 1,700 TV stations. They won't come free, either. Just like the cable company, DBS services must pay for the privilege of carrying local stations. Expect an added $6//month on your satellite bill. And if you don't have the latest dish, because the old ones weren't built to pull in local stations, figure on spending another $300 or so to have one installed (unless you qualify for one of the free-dish deals). Finally, no one knows exactly when Kansas Citians will be able to see their local stations on satellite. So far, the two dish companies have been focusing on other cities, including some smaller metro areas than ours, like Nashville and Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (The Nashville area apparently has one of the country's biggest clusters of dishes.) Still, both DirecTV (www.directv.com) and EchoStar (www.dishnetwork.com) have pledged to carry local stations to at least 60 percent of the country by mid-2000, so an announcement regarding Kansas City should come soon. Check their Web sites. 3. With a dish, you can watch high-definition TV today. If you're one of the thousand or so people in the area who owns a digital TV set and you're sick of watching the same old PBS loop being played on KCPT's experimental Channel 18, Kansas City's only existing digital TV signal then satellite TV has news for you: With the right dish, you can watch HBO with a brilliant high-definition digital picture and CD-quality sound today, and soon you'll be able to get the same with Showtime. Of course, you'll need a TV set worthy of the name high definition, and even with prices plummeting, expect to pay at least $2,000 for a low-end model. The digital dish option will add another $1,000 with installation. But for some viewers, this marks the first time that high-def has been in their ballpark. Whether or not you choose satellite TV, it's undeniable that it has brought benefits to all viewers, even those with cable service. Time Warner and Comcast are now competing all-out with the dish makers (Time Warner, for example, is hoping to offer high-def HBO and Showtime in 2000 as well). When DirecTV opened shop six years ago, most Kansas Citians were stuck with 35 cable channels and the government was mulling over legislation to force TV stations into the digital age. We've come a long way since then and for that you've got to give credit to the business competition engendered BY those diminutive dishes that have sprouted in people's yards like mushrooms.