lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (12/22/84)
I've had a few people ask me about FM SCA services and how they might relate to satellite netnews. I have some strong opinions on this, having dealt with SCA data services in the past. While the concept of using FM SCA for local distribution of news appears nice at first glance, there are a number of significant problems. First of all, there's a purely non-technical issue of rather significant proportions. If there aren't enough direct subscribers to satellite netnews, the service won't bring in sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the carrier, and we won't have the satellite space that we need for nationwide distribution. Therefore, if we looked at SCA as a way of doing local distribution to "bypass" the need for local subscribers to the satellite service, there won't be any satellite service (and thusly no nationwide distribution) at all. However, there are numerous technical issues as well. As I learned the hard way, the BIG problem with FM SCA is that you have to deal with separate radio stations in every city, and the owners of the vast majority of stations are extremely picky about SCA. Many refuse to run SCA at all, since it can affect fringe reception of their signal negatively. The ones who do run SCA are under almost constant pressure from very lucrative stock/commodity (and other similar) data services for the use of their SCA, or from equally lucrative backround music services. Since the baud rate of SCA services is typically 4800 bps or less, it is usually impractical to run more than one service on a single FM station when they are willing to run SCA data at all (instead of SCA music or no SCA). Most FM stations, including the college variety, are incredibly eager to turn the most bucks possible for their SCA space if they're going to run it at all, and the services that are competing for that space in most cities have BIG bucks. Most stations refuse to sign other than very short term contracts (since they want to be able to change services at the drop of a hat). Many stations demand a cut from all revenues and/or money up front. In general, dealing with lots of separate FM stations, and having to install equipment in each and every one to support SCA data, is a great deal of hassle. In my opinion, this would represent a very unstable framework from which to operate. The more separate broadcast entities which have to be negotiated with, and where equipment would have to be installed and maintained at their transmitter facilities, the more opportunities for problems (technical and political) that could affect large numbers of persons and cost a great amount of money to deal with. With the satellite project as it stands, there is only one transmitter point to worry about (the WTBS uplink) with an already friendly attitude toward the project. This greatly simplies both the technical and political scope of the project, both from a startup and ongoing standpoint. --Lauren--