[Ann Clark] "When it comes to TV commercials, the local nets have been flamingly Beta SP across the board, with the occasional footnote of "accepting" HD format with a boatload of format restrictions."
Maybe it's different in different parts of the country. I'm in the southeast US. We produce almost nothing but broadcast commercials, and were the first in this market a few years ago to produce an HD commercial that actually
aired on a local station in HD (previously they were all downconverted).
Now, of the several dozen television stations and cable systems that we send commercials to daily,
all except one of them will now accept (and prefer) commercials delivered in HD. Some have 1080i specs and some are 720p, but all but one of them request HD. The lone holdout in our market is the NBC affiliate which still requests standard-def (and strangely enough, they were they first station in this market to broadcast network programming in HD, and the first with their local newscasts in HD, so I'm not sure why their commercial side has not caught up with that)..
Standard-def or HD, it's all uploads now. I can't remember the last time we made a tape dub for anyone. The racks of Beta decks at our place are sitting silent, and there are boxes of unused tape stock in storage that we will probably never need. Many of the television stations no longer have (or maintain) their Beta decks.
[Ann Clark] "For national nets, the story is somewhat different, with both being accepted, but 4x3 still the norm."
I haven't actually counted the ratio (I probably should), but being in my business I
do pay a lot of attention to national commercials. Today the vast majority of them are 16:9. The ratio is probably three-to-one, maybe even higher.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
