U.S. Television Industry Must Tune Back In

A new kind of television, called high-definition TV, will be on the market in the near future offering a sharper picture, a movielike rectangular screen--and a threat to U.S. leadership in communications.

Those who have seen the new system, even U.S. broadcasters who are worried about its impact, are uniformly impressed. “It’s an extremely interesting technology, with tremendous potential,” says Jeffrey Baumann, a Washington representative of the National Assn. of Broadcasters.

And it’s not that far off. This summer, Japanese HDTV cameras will record the Seoul Olympics and show the games on special new TV sets in Tokyo department stores. In 1990, Japan will transmit HDTV via satellite and begin selling the new sets to Japanese consumers.

After that, by 1992, it will put sets on sale in the United States, for which Hughes Communications already plans to put up a direct broadcast satellite, and Home Box Office, the cable service, is planning HDTV programming.

That’s right, new sets, meaning HDTV as currently envisioned would not be receivable on your present TV set. And that is only one factor of the new system that has aroused intense worry in Washington and in U.S. industry.

For HDTV, far more than a pretty picture, represents a bid by Japan to take the lead in the information age. It involves a production system akin to that of the movie industry and capabilities that could one day realize the potential of the home computer and give serious competition to newspapers and magazines.

And the near-term threat is real enough for some. If, for example, HDTV attracts customers via satellite or video cassettes, it could reduce NBC, CBS and ABC to entertainment also-rans.

U.S. Companies Gave Up

The Federal Communications Commission is organizing panels now to see where U.S. business can get a piece of the new action, for nobody doubts that it’s way behind. “Frankly,” says William Hassinger, an FCC engineer, “the Japanese technology is superior to anything we have.”

Why superior? Because they made the effort.

Japanese Broadcasting Co. worked on the technology for 17 years. Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba and other firms developed cameras and are working on the sets.

But U.S. companies made no effort. Every U.S. manufacturer--except Zenith--concluded long ago that there was no future in TV and stopped investing. RCA, the pioneer of color television, seemed to give up in the 1970s, says an engineer who worked for the firm. “Orders came from board level to cut development money,” says the engineer, who requests anonymity because he still works in the industry. “We tried to tell them about the competition, but the order was always squeeze the profit.”

RCA was later bought by General Electric, which also declined to compete and sold RCA’s TV operations to a French company.

Concentrating on losers gets us nowhere, however. The three networks, realizing the pickle they’re in, are beginning to react--pushing for an advanced TV system compatible with today’s television. Zenith, which used TV technology successfully in computers, is trying to bring high definition to conventional TV screens.

And it’s dawning on companies elsewhere that the technology represents a watershed in the information age.

Many agree that ultimately HDTV will be delivered by fiber optic cables, which in the next 10 years--via the telephone companies--will bring tremendous communications capacity into the home. And HDTV holds a lot of promise for computers, electronics and computer graphics--fields in which U.S. companies hold an edge.

So a late start need not mean a trailing finish--although the actual television sets may well be made by non-U.S. firms. And that means the benefits of engineering know-how and the further development of manufacturing technology will be lost to this country.

The executives of RCA and all the other companies that saw no future in television were wrong, but the price of indolence is high. Because they let their business go, the rest of U.S. industry now must scramble to play catch-up in a vital new technology.