DTT retreat due to high costs
German commercial TV broadcasters Channel 21, Bibel TV and Regionalfernsehen Oberbayern will discontinue their digital terrestrial transmission (DTT) in Bavaria because of the high costs compared with cable, satellite and IPTV, the channels told Rapid TV News.
At the beginning of this week, Bavarian media authority BLM announced that the channels will withdraw from terrestrial airwaves in Munich and Southern Bavaria as well as Nuremberg on 1 June 2013.
“DTT is a very costly transmission infrastructure,” stated home-shopping broadcaster Channel 21.” Currently, Channel 21 is distributed in large metropolitan areas with high DTT acceptance: Berlin, Hamburg, the Rhine-Main area and Bavaria. The acceptance of this distribution method will increasingly go down with the retreat of RTL group from the DTT multiplexes. Because of this development and the high cost burden, Channel 21 has decided to discontinue its DTT distribution in Bavaria. The broadcaster says that no statement can currently be made regarding its DTT transmissions in the other distribution areas as negotiations are currently taking place.
Norbert Haimerl, managing director of Regionalfernsehen Oberbayern (RFO), also points to the costs. The regional broadcaster can currently be seen each evening between 6pm and 7pm CET as a window on Channel 21’s DTT slot in Munich and Southern Bavaria. “With the retreat of Channel 21, we could take over the whole DTT channel, but we would have to pay for it completely,” explained Haimerl. This would not be financially viable for the broadcaster due to the DTT distribution costs being considerably higher than cable and satellite. “The cost-benefit calculation comes out against DTT,” said Haimerl. DTT would be “nice to have”, but wasn’t a “success story”. He also expects the terrestrial transmission infrastructure to become increasingly uninteresting due to RTL’s withdrawal.
This would be different to DTH satellite broadcasting which Haimerl considers to be a “success story”. Since 1 December 2012, RFO has been available on Astra (19.2° East) daily between 6pm CET and midnight following its previous two-hour satellite slot. Its expanded presence on Astra has been “very well” accepted by viewers, said Haimerl. The loss of the one-hour per day DTT carriage would therefore be something one could get over. He recommends that affected households move to cable or satellite as they would also get better picture quality. Mobile reception, which is possible via DTT, mainly plays a role in on-demand content in Haimerl’s view. For this purpose, RFO provides a catch-up service in addition to the live stream on its website which can also be used while on-the-go with smartphones and tablets.
Haimerl also sees good future prospects for over-the-top (OTT) distribution via HbbTV for connected TV sets hooked up to the Internet, a method also being used by RFO.
Bibel TV also refers to the costs involved, arguing that cable, satellite and IPTV would be considerably cheaper than DTT. “Bibel TV wants to reach as many people as possible with the faithful words of the Bible, but we are responsible for an economical usage of the donations made by our supporters,” stated the Christian family channel. “We therefore thoroughly evaluate whether the distribution costs are justified for each DTT region compared with the number of households actually receiving their TV channels terrestrially. For Bavaria this has unfortunately not been the case which is why Bibel TV has eventually seen itself forced to let the transmission contract run out.”
Bibel TV can continue to be received in Bavaria on cable, satellite and IPTV, reaching more than 90% of households through this way. In parallel, the channel offers a live stream of its service on the Internet.
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