CBS - REALITY-SHOW PRODUCERS SHUNNING HDTV

Producers of reality TV series and game shows have, by and large, been slow to make the transition to high-definition television, blaming higher costs and the unreliability of HD equipment, USA Today reported today (Tuesday). Jonathan Littman, executive producer of CBS' The Amazing Race and president of Jerry Bruckheimer Television, told the newspaper that HD cameras "are not meant yet for that type of rough travel" necessary to turn out the program and that any effort to produce the show in HD would add "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to the show's budget. Survivor producer Mark Burnett indicated that many of his shows are shot with HD cameras but are not edited in HD. "The costs of post-producing in HD are tending to drop, and probably not only reality TV will be in HD, but all programming," he said. Of more than two dozen primetime reality and game shows, only Fox's American Idol and NBC's American Gladiators air in high definition, according to the newspaper. Program producers, it suggested, are probably deterred by the fact that currently only 11 percent of American consumers watch programs on HDTV sets.

19/02/2008