Deep dish TV Sharper images and expanded choices give satellites a future to beam about

Curt Patterson doesn't own a home theater. He's not addicted to television. He isn't really into sports, either. But he does own a satellite dish. Patterson, who doesn't match any of the extreme-viewer types featured in satellite-TV ads, walked into his local Brandsmart two years ago and picked up an 18-inch dish. He signed up with DirecTV for cable channels, then added a USSB subscription for movies. Patterson took one look at the brilliant, unsullied digital picture pulled in by his dish and was transported. "I'm a real fanatic on picture quality," the Mission Hills resident said. "My wife and I go to see basically every movie that comes out. And some of them I want to see again. But the quality, in my opinion, is better on the movie channels than in the movie theater." For all kinds of reasons, satellite dishes are now finding their way into the American mainstream and helping to shape the future of television. They're sprouting like oversized mushrooms in yards and on rooftops throughout Kansas City. In the red-hot local real estate market, developers are pre-installing them as a way to lure new tenants. The number of American homes served by the four major direct-satellite companies leaped 43 percent last year. When the old-fashioned "big dishes" are included, the satellite industry now serves nearly 11 million homes, compared with 67 million for cable. And while some of the credit for that belongs to the industry's sustained advertising campaign and deep cuts in the price of dishes, it's also in part due to the enthusiastic word of mouth of customers like Patterson. "At one time satellites were a rural phenomenon," said Michael Hopkins, editor of the satellite industry newsletter SkyReport. "Now it's getting to be more suburban than urban, as people are looking for alternatives to cable." What's more remarkable is that this is happening even though there are two obvious reasons why it should not: Unlike cable systems, the consumer incurs the full cost of the dish and its installation. Even with discounts, that can easily top $ 500 for a two-receiver system. (Each TV set needs its own dedicated satellite receiver for independent programming choices, although a $ 7 splitter can be used to send the same program to more than one set.) Satellite dishes don't pull in local stations. Although Congress and the two leading satellite companies are working to change that, if you want broadcast channels you'll have to go retro with a TV antenna (added cost: $ 50-$ 125) or else get a basic cable subscription. But the dishes do pull in channels, lots of them, far more channels than on the typical local cable system. DirecTV's $ 30-per-month Total Choice package, for instance, has 14 cable networks not found on the lineup of Time Warner Cable's newly upgraded Kansas City system. Some of those merely add choices to existing cable genres: CNNfn and Bloomberg, for instance, are alternatives to CNBC. But several - including America's Health Network, CNN International, Discovery People, Game Show Network, Trinity Broadcasting and Toon Disney - occupy distinctive niches. EchoStar's Dish Network also has networks not found on local cable systems. There are also premium goodies: sports, movies and a smorgasbord of pay-per-view options that can be ordered with the remote control. The result: Cable customers who switch to dish systems are three times more likely to buy pay-per-view, according to a satellite-industry group. That's a load of business not going to Time Warner Cable. And then there's the "Q" word. For customers like Patterson, the enhanced picture and CD-quality sound from a satellite system are reason enough to own one. Patterson recently learned his dish subscription comes with 31 music channels as well. Did he know his local cable provider, Time Warner Cable, has those same music channels? He did not. In the areas served by Time Warner, only about 9,200 homes had satellite systems. But that's up 20 percent from a year ago. Time Warner publicly welcomes the challenge. "I think competition is good for us as long as we're growing," said Carol Rothwell, vice president and director of community relations for Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable's customer base grew by 2 percent last year, to 308,000. Nationally, surveys show that satellite customers are much happier with their service than cable customers. But Rothwell says 80 percent of Time Warner customers surveyed in Kansas City said their service was either excellent or very good, a result she attributes to the system's recent fiber-optic upgrade. Now Time Warner is pushing hard to improve the cable of its newly acquired customers in Johnson County, where customer-satisfaction levels are the lowest - and satellite dealers are legion. The future of satellite The TV industry, by and large, still is trying to catch up to the digital revolution. Although the government has mandated that all TV stations start broadcasting in digital by the year 2006, experts now say the transition will take longer than that. Small-dish satellite systems, meanwhile, have been telecasting in digital since day one. And unlike cable systems or broadcast towers, dishes can be swapped out like PCs whenever technology changes. RCA, for example, will unveil a new dish this spring that allows customers to view high-definition TV signals sent by HBO and other networks. Other dish companies are supplying ultra-high-speed Internet access. But the more profound impact of satellite TV may be that at the close of the 20th century - a century in which free, over-the-air broadcasting was the dominant medium - we are on the verge of becoming a cable nation. Each month tens of thousands of people sign up for satellite service who had not subscribed to cable in years, if ever. As a result, the number of Americans without any access to cable channels, whether by wire or by dish, is shrinking fast. In 1995 about 30 percent of homes had no cable service; by 2005 that will drop below 10 percent, according to Tim Brooks, the top researcher at USA Networks, which owns USA Network and the Sci-Fi Channel. "It's going to be what takes cable programming to the next level," said Brooks. To further sweeten the pot, Congress is working on changing communications law to make it easier for DirecTV and Dish network to carry local stations, probably starting with the largest markets. Dish network currently offers customers in 13 U.S. cities their local stations. Ironically, adding local TV stations to satellite systems will only hasten broadcasting's demise. Brooks predicts that in two years, regardless of time of day or time of year, more viewers will be watching cable channels than broadcast stations. To a cable or satellite viewer, ABC, CBS and NBC are no longer "the big three networks"; they're just three channels out of 100. To reach Aaron Barnhart,television writer for The Star, phone (816) 234-4790 or e-mailwriteme@tvbarn.com