Digital Dealer - May 2019 - 28

M A R K E T ING & ADVERT ISING: Tr a d itio nal A dverti si ng

By Jim Boldebook
Founder,
CBC Automotive Marketing

Broadcast
Advertising Back
to the Future!
I remember when I had
to wear a tie every day
for business. I bought a lot
of ties because every year
the fashion gurus in concert
with the manufacturers
would change the size of
the tie and who wants to
look out of step with style,
right? But an older salesperson at one of the top
men's stores cautioned me
not to throw out my old ties
because eventually, they
would come back into style.
And he was right!
Twenty years ago, the

28

M AY 2 0 1 9

traditional broadcast companies were seized with
panic. Digital and satellite
would destroy their business with just a matter of
years. This was about the
same time Al Gore told
us we wouldn't have any
ice caps by 2014. Both
predictions were wrong. In
fact, we may be going 'back
to the future' a lot faster
than many of us thought
possible.
One of the biggest reasons is the ongoing discovery by consumers that they

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

can get high quality, high
definition digital TV stations
right over the airways without paying a dime for any
connection. Without even
having an internet provider!
It's called Over-the-air TV.
Known in the industry as
OTA. Over the air was the
only way we watched TV
prior to the digital/cable
revolution. But it wasn't the
same! Signals were quality
dependent on how far you
were from the station tower,
how good your TV set was
and how well you adjusted

the 'rabbit ears' or focused
the rooftop antenna. OTA
homes aren't what they
used to be. First of all, if you
are within even 50 miles of
a broadcast tower, with just
a simple digital antenna,
pointing in the direction of
the tower, costing around
$40, you can get crystal
clear solid digital quality so
good you can't tell it from
a connection to a cable
system.
A few years ago, I sold a
vacation property to a professional couple who wanted just a weekend getaway
place without electronic
frills. I explained the OTA
option for receiving television over the air. They were
incredulous. How could this
be? Is it legal? We bought a
$39 digital antenna at WalMart, put it in the soffit of
the home, back feeding the
signal to a distribution box
through an existing cable
run in the home. We then
put that signal into a $29
'signal amplifier' and fed it
to all of the coaxes in the
home. Suddenly, they were
getting all three network
channels from local broadcasters with five additional
digital channels over the
broadcasters sub-channels.
Eight crystal clear channels
for a total cost of 'zero' a
month. And the signals
would be live even if a truck
hit a pole and took out the
cable company's wires.
How big is this market?
OTA is big and growing.
According to a May 2018
Nielsen report, there are
over 16 million OTA homes
in the U.S....just over 14%
of households. That may
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Digital Dealer - May 2019

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