FCC Pledges Help on Move to Digital TV : Technology: Chairman says broadcasters should determine services of new channels. Industry applauds position.

The TV industry probably knows best how to make the most of the coming digital revolution, the nation’s top television regulator said Tuesday.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt told broadcasters at their convention that he wants to help them make the historic transition from their current world of analog television to digital technology. The shift will dramatically expand viewer choice and significantly improve picture and sound quality.

One of the ways he is helping is by suggesting that broadcasters--not the government--decide what services may be carried on new channels that stations are to receive in the next few years.

“I am wary of the wisdom of the government mandating how you should take advantage of the business opportunities that the digital revolution creates,” he said. “I suspect you know better than government what to send.”

In 1992, the FCC decided to give TV stations another channel to deliver what was then believed to be the next generation of television, called high-definition, a digital system that would provide movie-quality pictures and CD-quality sound.

But the TV industry no longer sees a big business in high-definition television, and broadcasters are lobbying both the FCC and Congress to win the right to do whatever they want with a new channel.

Many want to use this second slice to provide an array of digital services--from home shopping to packages of entertainment and news programs. Viewers who want them could be charged a fee.

“We applaud the chairman’s view,” said Eddie Fritts, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters.

The industry’s switch to digital technology, which converts broadcast signals to the language of computers, may be the most important change in the business since its birth. In the new digital broadcasting world, there would be no scarcity of airwaves because one slice could carry multiple programs and services.

That could mean the deregulation of television, Hundt said.

“An overwhelming majority of our rules should be rewritten or junked when we get firmly into the digital age,” he said in an interview.

But it will take years and millions of dollars for TV broadcasters to get there.

Hundt said he hasn’t decided whether TV stations should have to acquire the valuable second channel by bidding in an auction, which could generate tens of billions of dollars for the Treasury, or whether they should have to comply with additional public-interest obligations.