CBS Exec Cites Economics of High-Definition TV Process

The high-definition TV process with which CBS’ “The Littlest Victim” was taped last year probably will become commonplace in the next decade, says the CBS engineering executive involved in the taping.

The principal reason, said Joseph Flaherty, is the savings in time that translates to lower costs in making a program: “It’s one of few things we can do to help (fight) escalating production costs.”

The taping of the movie, which stars Tim Matheson as a pediatrician who helped pioneer research on AIDs in children, wasn’t done to test the Japanese-built Sony high-definition TV gear used for the project.

“We knew that worked,” said Flaherty, CBS’ vice president and general manager for engineering and development. “We did this really to check out our assumptions on productivity and cost and time-savings, and things that would make us favor electronic production.”

Although most TV sitcoms now are taped, virtually all one-hour shows, TV movies and miniseries are done on 35-millimeter film.

The “Littlest Victim” test, done with a crew that “never had done television at all,” was a success, he said, coming in on time and within budget. (Viewers won’t notice a difference, however, since HDTV signals can neither be broadcast nor received yet. CBS will be transferring the HDTV version to conventional broadcast tape for airing on the network.)

Asked if he thinks the high-definition production process will become widely used in the making of shows now done on film, Flaherty said, “Yes, I do.”

“It’s not going to happen overnight, because there’s a lot of equipment to be bought, crews to be trained, and so on,” he noted. “But I think it’s an evolutionary change, and will certainly take over in, say, five to seven years.”