ABC to Join CBS With HDTV Push

ABC and CBS announced plans Friday to broadcast all of this season’s prime-time dramas and comedies in high-definition television, a nascent format that only a sliver of the audience can experience.

The announcement--a significant expansion for ABC, a small one for CBS--means that the amount of HDTV on the air will almost double this fall. That’s a much-needed boost for a new, digital generation of TV that consumers have yet to embrace.

Although the move opens a wide gap between the two networks and rivals NBC and Fox, which have little or no HDTV in their lineups, it’s unlikely to affect ratings. That’s because well under half a million homes are capable of tuning in to an HDTV broadcast, according to industry estimates.

Instead, the main beneficiaries are likely to be TV manufacturers, which have limited their digital TV lines to costly large-screen models. The move also will help the technology-hungry consumers who have spent upward of $3,000 buying a digital monitor and receiver.

The television industry’s transition from analog to digital began in 1997, when the federal government gave each commercial station up to five years to launch a digital channel. Regulators let the stations choose whether to broadcast in HDTV, a wide-screen format that offers finely detailed pictures and cinema-quality sound, or in lower-resolution formats.

The transition has proceeded fitfully. A little more than 200 of the 1,600 U.S. stations have started broadcasting in digital, despite a deadline of May 2002 for all commercial outlets. And almost none of these digital stations are carried by the cable and satellite operators.

Not coincidentally, sales of fully functional digital TV sets have been extremely slow. Instead, most buyers have taken only half of the package, picking up a monitor that can display better pictures but not the digital receiver needed to tune in to the new channels.

Given the minute audience, broadcasters have been reluctant to invest in the equipment needed to produce shows in HDTV. The main exception has been CBS, which began airing much of its prime-time lineup in high definition two years ago.

On Friday, CBS announced it will transmit all of its scripted prime-time shows this season in HDTV. It also plans HDTV broadcasts of 12 college football games, other national sports broadcasts, selected movies and one soap opera, “The Young and the Restless.”

Taking a larger leap, ABC announced that all of its scripted prime-time shows will be in HDTV too--up from just one, “NYPD Blue,” last season.

The main difference between the two networks is the format: CBS uses a variation of the approach used in analog TV, and ABC employs the more compact version that’s also used by computer monitors. ABC also plans to transmit the shows’ audio in Dolby Digital, providing six separate channels of sound for cinematic effects.

Alex Wallau, president of ABC Television Network, said the shift to an all-HDTV lineup wasn’t justified by the audience, which is too small. Instead, he said, “One of the things that convinced us that this year was the right year to do it was the fact that we have two new action dramas, in ‘Alias’ and ‘Thieves,’ that particularly lend themselves to high definition.”

The expanded lineup of HDTV shows could provide the spark needed to drive down the price of digital sets, said analyst Larry Gerbrandt, chief content officer for Kagan World Media.

“People weren’t going to buy [digital] TV sets until there was content out there. And without some people buying the sets, you can’t create scale, which allows prices to come down,” Gerbrandt said. “This is definitely one way of making that issue moot.”

NBC hasn’t announced plans for any prime-time HDTV programs, although it broadcasts the late-night “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” in HDTV. Fox network transmits its entire prime-time line-up in a digital format that offers sharper pictures than analog TV but less than half the detail of an HDTV broadcast.