SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP
“ You won ' t have to be sitting in your house to watch us . You ' ll be able to watch us everywhere you are ”
DAVID SMITH EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN , SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP
David Smith and began manufacturing television transmitters . Those were the old analog days when people just had a square box monitor in their living rooms to watch a linear TV programme . The world changed in 1995 when the United States began converting from analog to digital broadcasting - the so-called ATSC 1.0 standard . Suddenly , we had the promise and flexibility of a digital standard . But how best to exploit it ?
“ It made great HD pictures , but there ' s more than pictures in the minds of entrepreneurs and what you can do with the spectrum ,” says Aitken . “ We were already thinking about - how do we get into these small devices ? How do we address a population of devices besides the TV set in the living room ? Cell phones were around , people were now communicating , holding conversations and beginning on a personal level to communicate and flinging data to one another .”
After several years of trying to get the US to accept the European digital standard as an alternative to the more limited US version , Sinclair saw its attempts fail due to political factors , industry alignment , and a lack of vision .
“ The vision of TV broadcasters was always about better TV , better pictures , better
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