..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

LAS VEGAS -- If all anyone knows about Mark Cuban is that he made a lot of money at the height of the dot.com boom -- no, make that an insanely huge oil tanker full of money -- and that he tends to take all fouls called on his beloved Mavericks personally, then only about a third of the picture is being transmitted properly. In tech terms, it’s like comparing an analog image to one delivered in hi-def.

Besides being obsessed with the fortunes of the NBA’s Dallas franchise -- a onetime league doormat, resuscitated, in large part, by Cuban’s Internet windfall -- the Pittsburgh-born entrepreneur also is a passionate advocate for all things digital. He was in Las Vegas Wednesday morning to preach the gospel of HDTV before the assembled body of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Almost immediately after closing his address, the long-ago founder of MicroSolutions, AudioNet and Broadcast.com hopped on his personal jet (purchased on eBay) and headed for Memphis. It was where the playoff-bound Mavs would play their 82nd and final regular season game.

Once a convention primarily dedicated to the engineering concerns of the broadcast industry, NAB has morphed into a showcase for the so-called “new media” and other high-tech answers to questions raised by the government-mandated transition from analog to digital. Station managers still browse the miles of aisles in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s four huge halls, in search of the latest in antennas, cranes, tripods, cameras and helicopters (for those all-important police chases). But, these days, the busiest booths on the exhibition floors belong to companies involved in post-production and CGI effects.

Officially, the NAB hierarchy is all for progress and all the ancillary benefits of life in the high-tech universe … especially those that impact favorably on a station’s bottom line. Unofficially, a sizeable portion of the membership would like to turn their clocks back to April, 1994, when “digital” was a technology associated mostly with cheap watches. They have yet to be introduced to an economic model that works in their favor, and wouldn’t savage the hair-spray budget of their news anchors.

While the bean-counters are still tinkering, however, consumers apparently have decided that the future is now for hi-def and other digital broadcasting appliances.

In the third quarter of 2004, the Summer Olympics, NFL “Big Ticket” package and an abundance of affordable hardware all conspired to fuel the sudden acceptance of a technology once considered too expensive for mainstream use. Buyers found allies in the cable, satellite and wireless companies that were perfectly willing to fill the set-top void with receivers that cost as little as $200.

Satellite and Internet radio began to catch fire at about the same time, and mobile television via cell phones quietly became a reality, as well. Indeed, Tuesday, at about the same time iHollywood Forum was beginning its concurrent MoTV: Mobile TV & Video Forum at a nearby hotel, folks sampling products at the MobiTV table would first learn of the ascension of a new pope, via a Sprint cell phone. Great timing.

Rather than serve merely as a cheerleader for his HDNet and HDNet Movies services, Cuban used his keynote address -- webcast as a pay-per-view event through the NAB site -- to serve notice on broadcasters that the digital revolution has already begun, and it is being televised. In 2001, Cuban and co-founder Philip Garvin launched what would become the world’s first national television network broadcasting 24/7 in the 1080i format. In addition to previously recorded entertainment and infotainment programming, HDNet often goes live with breaking news stories and sports.

The subscription base for packages that include HDNet and HDNet Movies, Cuban allowed, is growing at a rate of 20 percent each month. Now, granted, the business remains in its infancy, and the relevancy of such numbers is suspect, but it’s Cuban’s contention that it’s the all-HD channels that new buyers of HD sets gravitate to first. After sampling the handful of services available, he thinks viewers will treat them as “bookmarks,” and broadcast fare will suffer by comparison.

Much of HDNet’s programming arrives in the form of travelogue-style shows, which look splendid in 1080i and accentuate the brilliance of nature’s color palette. Others feature bikini models in exotic locations, and spring break drink-a-thons in places like Cancun and Padre Island. There’s even Real Sex-style docu-series, with semi-naked dudes and dudettes.

The rest of the day-parts are filled with familiar library titles -- TV series and movies -- from the Rysher Entertainment catalogue and other material from 2929 Entertainment.

Cuban and Todd Wagner, also a beneficiary of Broadcast.com‘s success, are partners in the vertically integrated media holding company, 2929 Entertainment, which also owns the Landmark Theaters chain, Magnolia Pictures Distribution, 2929 Productions, Rysher Entertainment and a chunk of Lions Gate Entertainment. The goal of HDNet Films is to produce lower-budget titles, in hi-def, for release day-and-date in theaters and on television. 2929 Productions was created to produce or finance films in the $10-30-million-budget range, and in traditional cinematic formats and release patterns.

Friday, Magnolia is launching Alex Gibney’s original documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room simultaneously on HDNet Movies and in Landmark theaters in Houston and New York. Aside from video image collected from company and television-news outlets, the documentary was shot entirely in HD.

Although the film doesn’t break much new ground on the Enron scandal, it does an extraordinary job of profiling the energy firm’s corporate culture of greed, lies, power brokering and arrogance. It will be shown twice on Friday night, and later in pay-per-view windows as theatrical release unfolds nationally.

HDNet Films will begin production this month on One Last Thing ..., described as a “bittersweet drama,” starring Cynthia Nixon, Michael Angarano, Sunny Mabrey, Wyclef Jean, Gina Gershon and Gia Carides. It, too, will premiere on HDNet Movies under the same day-and-date model

Other HDNet programming includes HDNet World Report, Face 2 Face with Roy Firestone, Art Mann Presents, HDNet Concert Series and True Music, as well as the complete Smallville series. Live sports productions include NASCAR auto racing, National Hockey League (if the players ever lace ’em up, again) and Major League Soccer games.

Meanwhile, Magnolia will continue to scour festivals and other film markets for indie and foreign titles that fit Landmark’s art-house concept. Movies under this banner may not always open day-and-date on HDNet Movies.

As a small company, with no legacy products to protect, 2929 can “zap … zap … zap … leverage the technology to create more opportunities and take more chances,” said Wagner, who was in New York Tuesday, on business.

According to Wagner, Cuban oversees the Mavericks and HDNet, while he looks after the other entertainment interests. Both men, he said, believe in “letting the consumer decide” where the technology will carry the company.

“Consumers are becoming digitally trained, and it soon will be second-nature to them,” Cuban said in his keynote. “Consumers want to experiment, see new things, in addition to the tried-and-true. All they really care about, though, is the quality of the programming.

“We’re providing that programming right now.”

As for the affordability of high-def and other new-media appliances, Cuban said that he expects a “death war” to erupt among manufacturers and carriers when the FCC announces a drop-dead date for the transition from analog to digital. Like cell phones, today, companies may end up giving away receivers and translators, in an effort to increase their subscriber base.

“They’ll be spending like drunken sailors to get customers,” quipped Cuban, who was sporting a shaggy early-Beatles haircut and a green t-shirt. In a room full of guys and gals who rarely leave their homes without a business suit and briefcase, Cuban stood out like a Raiders fan at a chamber recital.

Cuban and Wagner also have taken the bull by the horns in Hollywood’s controversial and long-delayed move to create a digital model for film distribution and exhibition. Last month, 2929 announced that it would soon get the ball rolling by converting its 59-theater, 209-screen Landmark chain to digital projection, employing Sony’s 4K SRXD projectors.

The conversion, which could cost as much as $140,000 per screen, will begin this July in about a half-dozen theaters. It goes against a rising tide of conversions employing Texas Instruments technology and, just recently, a business model forwarded Technicolor.

“We were trying to get a deal done for a long time, but it never happened,” Wagner said. “We decided to leapfrog the existing technology, by going 4K (4,000 lines of resolution, versus 2,000 lines in TI units), which should last a bit longer.”

When asked, Wagner emphasized that Landmark would continue to showcase the kind of indie, documentary and foreign titles its customers want, and which already fit the digital-projection model. 2929 will, however, endeavor to find new ways to take advantage of the art-house culture, by experimenting with direct sales of DVDs and soundtrack albums, upgrading concessions and adding bars and restaurants to venues.

“We want to maximize the revenue stream that already exists,” he asserted.

Wagner refused to speculate about a possible HDNet Film project, documenting the heart-tugging journey taken by Mavs forward Dirk Nowitzki, from the hardwood courts of his native Germany, to a post-J.R. Dallas, when NBA basketball took a distant fifth-place to NFL, UT, high school and Pop Warner football. It would include the 1998 draft-day miracle that allowed the pre-Cuban Mavs to acquire the rights to the 7-foot-tall sharpshooter, from the Bucks, for bulky power-forward Robert Traylor, who, until recently, was known chiefly for his ability to report to camp each year several hundred pounds overweight.

“You’ll have to ask Mark about that one,” Wagner suggested, with a chuckle that suggested his partner might just go for it.

- by Gary Dretzka

April 20, 2005