INTERVIEW...Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group---October 22, 1999

00Mr. Aitken has been at the heart of the Sinclair Broadcast Group's recent transmission demonstrations. He was formerly Vice-President of Comark Engineering and came to Sinclair at the behest Nat Ostroff. At that time he was still skeptical about COFDM, believing, as most did, that the 8-VSB system was the right choice for America. After preliminary demonstrations of 8-VSB receivers at Sinclair's Philadelphia facility, and seeing demonstrations of COFDM , Mr. Aitken concluded that there was more to the story of terrestrial transmission in the United States than was meeting the eye. He joined Sinclair and devised much of the famous "tests" done in Baltimore that led Sinclair to submitting a Petition to the FCC two weeks ago asking that COFDM be included in the FCC DTV standard. I talked to Mr. Aitken on the 22nd of October.

 

HDTV NEWS You are now in the second week of the Sinclair petition filed with the FCC. What feed back are you getting?

We are getting a tremendous amount of support from interested groups. We are at a commitment level of four hundred stations at this point, moving quickly towards five hundred. We have stations represented on both an individual basis and through group affiliation.

People are supporting us for a variety of reasons. There are, interestingly enough, groups not supporting us for reasons totally unrelated to what we are doing. Those stations have various pending actions with the FCC which they wish not to have muddled by their siding with Sinclair.

There have been people acting out of very strange interest in certain regards. There is leadership in some groups that also are members of organizations, such as board member in the NAB or other such organizations. Even though they strongly support what we are doing, they have a difficult time being a public voice for the "broadcaster's petition" because of a concern that it would indicate a partial alignment within the organizations that have not come out on either side of the issue.

HDTV NEWS You mentioned that there are a variety of reason for joining with you. Have you identified those reasons?

First, there is a very broad interest generally. Those signing on do believe they deserve the right for flexibility. Many of them view the flexibility we are asking for in the modulation in the same way as they view flexibility given by the Commission with respect to display formats.

Then, there is a whole variety of other reasons they support it. Some feel very strongly that their business model requires the flexibility and some of the options that COFDM may give them. Some believe that in the future it may provide a means to resolve some of the spectrum crowding issues through single frequency networks. There are people who feel that some of the attributes will help support a minimization of transponders, repeaters, transposers, etc., by offering the ability to do gap filling in geographically challenged areas.

It was pointed out in the FCC report that there are sections of the United States which certainly will not come close to achieving a replication of (NTSC) service because of the challenge of terrain based upon 8-VSB modulation.

HDTV NEWS Are there any among your own 59 stations that would benefit from 8-VSB for any of that system's stated advantage?

We have looked across the multiple stations we own. Because of what we have witnessed and published with respect to the coverage of COFDM vs. 8-VSB--not seeing any meaningful difference between the two--we see nothing but advantages for using COFDM modulation as the dominant one for our stations.

HDTV NEWS Considering you do have a variety of geographic conditions 8-VSB does not measure up to the performance of COFDM anywhere?

As I said, the work that we did during the test we performed showed no meaningful difference between the reception capability between COFDM and 8-VSB in the far field. We think that those differences have been drastically overstated, and certainly reflect some numbers in a purest theoretical world, but don't prove themselves in real world conditions.

HDTV NEWS Mark, this petition, and what has led up to it, seems to have created a wedge between a group of broadcasters and CEMA. This is an unusual war occurring between what have been in the past codependent partners. Do you see any resolution to that conflict?