CEA Cuts DTV Sales Forecasts; Blames FCC, Broadcasters

Consumer Electronics head Gary Shapiro in a letter to Congressman Joe Barton today expressed strong support for a hard analog cut-off date, citing among other factors the low percentage of Americans who rely on over-the-air broadcast signals for their primary TV viewing. Here's just a tidbit of what Shapiro said; you can read the rest here:

"Of the nearly 110 million American homes with at least one TV, 68% receive a cable signal and 22% receive a DBS signal. Our research shows that roughly 3% receive both cable and DBS. In total, 87% of American homes will have access to cable or satellite (and thus network and local feeds). This means that if the cut off occurred today, less than 13% of the population of 110 million TV households would not have access to a broadcast signal through cable or satellite (though they could certainly start subscribing)."

Interestingly, Shapiro managed to get in swipes at both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the nation's broadcasters, blaming both for the slow transition from analog to digital TV. As such, the CEA has actually cut its DTV/HDTV sales forecasts, now estimating that 14.8 million DTV sets will be sold in '05, slightly more than double the 7.1 million that were sold last year. According to Shapiro, "we had based those [earlier] projections on early FCC action on the tuner mandate petition and extensive promotion of cablecards, neither of which came to pass." Slow moving bureaucrats!

CEA's newly downward-revised sales projections are based on three factors, one of which is that "National Groups for Local Broadcasters Will Continue to Do Little or Nothing to Promote Free Over the Air Digital Television." Take that, NAB!

I encourage those of you with any interest in the politics and policy of DTV and HDTV to read the full letter. It is obviously biased towards the interests of the nation's electronics manufacturers that the CEA represents, as is anything the CEA, NAB or NCTA sends to a lawmaker or regulatory body. Remember that you have to take it with a large grain of salt and once in awhile you can actually learn something -- about the attitudes of the debate's biggest stakeholders, if nothing else.