WWE's $20 Million To HD Not Helping Ratings, Lita, More

[Black Widow]

- This past Tuesday night’s edition of ECW on Sci-Fi did a 1.2 cable rating according to data compiled by Nielson Media Research. The ECW rating has hovered between 1.2 and 1.4 for the entire year.

- Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a new article online on Amy “Lita” Dumas and her band the Luchagors. Dumas is quoted in the article as to saying that she could have easily used the corporate backing of WWE while she was still wrestling to help promote her band but she wanted to try a completely different experience. Click here to read the article.

- The Dallas Morning News has an article online where they talk about WWE not seeing a boost in the ratings since their $20 million conversion to broadcasting in High Definition.

Programmers' slow switch to HDTV gets clearer

Benefits aren't picture perfect yet

07:32 AM CST on Thursday, March 6, 2008

By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
asmith@dallasnews.com

Martin Rogers needs only one word to describe the selection of high-definition programs he receives: pathetic.

"You pay all this money for high-def equipment, and then you find there's not that much for you to watch," said Mr. Rogers, who lives in Dallas.

Mr. Rogers and other HD lovers should see some relief soon. Cable and satellite TV providers plan to add dozens of channels now that one household in three has an HDTV.

But viewers shouldn't expect total HD anytime soon. Television executives think it will be three to five years before all new stuff and most old shows appear in HD. Worse, many classics will never appear in HD.

To folks who just spent thousands on HD sets, this seems crazy. To folks in the TV business, it makes perfect sense.

Program makers, considered collectively, have no reason to switch to HD. The transition costs them money, but unless HD gets viewers to watch more TV, it won't bring the industry an extra nickel of ad revenue.

Individual companies can use HD to woo viewers from the competition, of course, but the highly uncertain benefits may never justify the very tangible costs.

Indeed, until just last year, there was virtually no way to make money on HD because there was virtually no way to distribute it. Cable and satellite systems had no room for extra channels.

Heavy investment has just begun making room for more HD. DirecTV and Verizon's Fios can now fit almost unlimited programming, but the Dallas area's largest TV provider, Time Warner Cable, is still scrambling to upgrade the antiquated systems it took over in 2006.

"We have invested more than $100 million here in less than two years, and we're still going strong," said Gary Underwood, a Time Warner spokesman. "We'll make this a world-class network, but we can't do it overnight."

Program makers, in other words, still must risk money on HD without knowing if they'll land a spot on cable company lineups.

Risky moves

Even if they get widespread distribution, program makers often struggle to attract enough new viewers to justify the transition costs. For example, TV trade journals say that WWE has yet to see much of a ratings boost for the $20 million it spent to bring HD wrestling to TV last month.

Some earlier adopters have suffered even greater disappointments – thanks largely to the inexplicable behavior of many HDTV owners.

In theory, people who spend thousands of dollars for an HDTV should care deeply about video quality.

In reality, studies show, about 40 percent of HDTV owners cannot distinguish HD from standard programs. A similar percentage of HDTV owners have never signed up for an HD program package.

Behavior like this has done much to slow the HD transition, but all program makers do plan to switch. They're just waiting for the right moment.

Falling prices

The price of HD production equipment has fallen as fast as the price of HDTVs, and it keeps falling. A single year's delay can save a big company millions of dollars.

Delay can also open the door to competitors, though. Fox News Channel and MSNBC held up on HD last year while archrival CNN made the plunge.

"There is no safe bet," said Van Baker, a research vice president at the consultancy Gartner Inc. "Whatever move you make, it's a gamble."

CNN bet that it can make back the money it spent on HD by winning viewers who stick around even after Fox and MSNBC make the transition. The other two channels are betting that viewers will stick around while they wait for equipment prices to fall.

High-def limitations

Many programmers try to minimize risk by working the HD conversion into their regular product replacement cycles. Rather than dumping working equipment for HD models, they wait for older stuff to die before moving forward.

"We know people want everything in HD, instantly, but we can't just chuck standard-definition equipment that cost us hundreds of millions of dollars," said Andy Citos, president of engineering for the Fox Group, which runs the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel and dozens more cable stations.

As they acquire more HD equipment each year, big companies allocate it to the programs they expect to benefit most.

Generally speaking, the more popular the channel or the program, the earlier it launches in high definition. Broadcast networks began showing high-def programs before cable networks. Prime-time programs beat soap operas.

Another allocation rule: The less visuals matter to a show, the longer it takes to make the transition. Network comedies went HD long after the dramas. Talk shows started going HD long after sports and nature shows.

But nothing is written in stone.

Network reality shows such as Survivor or The Amazing Race draw huge audiences and would certainly look beautiful in high-def. Unfortunately, some of the specialty cameras that reality shows use don't come in HD models yet. Others are just hitting shelves at a huge premium.

Technology limitations also hinder high-def news broadcasts.

It's easy for them to show viewers crystal-clear images of anchors sitting placidly in the studio. It's really hard, though, to use HD where it really matters, for compelling live reports that could change how people see places like Iraq.

"It's probably going to be a few years till HD equipment provides the agility and flexibility we need to do reality shows or live news from remote places," said Dan Harrison, senior vice president of emerging networks for NBC Universal Cable.

Mr. Harrison also believes it will be several years until production companies remaster older movies and television shows for HD broadcasts.

"If it was shot on film, it has more than enough detail for HD. That means that pretty much every movie and most TV dramas will eventually make the leap," he said.

"It's just going to take a few years."

Upgrade challenges

Again, program owners will probably convert the most popular shows first and get around to secondary materials later.

The only real challenge comes from programs that were shot in the tall-and-narrow format used in traditional TV shows. Studios can either retain this original shape when they remaster the shows or they can cut the top and bottom to make it fit on widescreen televisions.

All but the newest comedies present far greater challenges. Only a few of them were shot on film. The rest were shot on low-definition tape that cannot be upgraded into anything resembling true HD.

Much left to do

Overall, thousands of movies and old TV episodes have been remastered for HD, but studios have yet to touch the vast majority of older programming.

"Like the people who make new programs, they've been holding off on spending the money, but that's changing," said Terry Denson, vice president of product marketing at Verizon's Fios.

"Now that TV service providers have some extra room for HD, they've gone from rejecting it to demanding more and more of it. That's going to speed everything up, but it's not going to make anyone forget about the bottom line."


dallasnews.com

24Wrestling.com

[JohnCenaFan28]

IMO ECW's great.

[LionDen]

It is annoying, I bought a HD set up and there are not a great amount of channels to watch in HD. Although it is cool with the new generation gaming systems lol