Reading an article from the New York Times made me remember something about the beginnings of digital television and what it was supposed to do for the viewers.  In the beginning, there was a big benefit given from the broadcasters about the change from analog to digital signals.  It would allow one channel to have several formats, called multicasting.  For example, KWTX offers CBS programming on digital channel 10.1 and CW Texas is on 10.2.  Two channels...on one channel.  Some places even do three or more channels when they multicast, filling those extra channels with weather or other special programming. 

About a decade later, this has been pretty much a failure.  Moneywise at least.  The money to operate the new stations was too much for the stations with having to but programming and equipment, and too much for consumers, who had to go out and buy a receiver (remember this was the late 1990s, well before the digital transition deadline was etched in stone).

But now there are a new group of digital channels making their way into homes across America, and this time executives say that they have figured out how to do it right.  Again, partly because of the DTV transition.  Since more people are having to get the new recievers, it seems to be profitable now to try again.

History has shown that this can have mixed results.  In 2006, The Tube Music Network started a music video subchannel aimed to be like MTV was in its early days.  It was something the we considered for overnight programming on our then-UPN station.  Well October 1 of last year, The Tube went belly up.  ABC News Now, a Headline News-type channel, started off as a subchannel, but now it's available in a few markets on cable or on mobile devices. 

But it can work with niche programming.  CBS had considered in the past doing a "CBS-2" channel where they would show old programming such as "Star Trek" and Hawaii Five-O."   This idea seems to have been scrapped since most of these shows can be found at the CBS website.  LATV, a network geared toward the young Hispanic population has gained over 30 affiliates in the past year. 

The true test will be of carriage and profit.  Most viewers are not able to receive multichannel feeds yet.  And most of these channels are not counted by Neilsen, who does the ratings for television.  So there's no real clue how many people are watching and how much money is possibly being made from the channels.