Newbie: Going from XDCAM HD to SD looks bad

Hi, everyone! I'm fresh to the world of video editing, and I'm having a blast. So much to learn, man I wish I'd picked this up 20 years ago. Enough about me...
We're shooting HD footage using a Sony XDCAM (the one that uses those little SxS cards...pretty slick), and dumping the footage stright into FCP. The problem is that we're producing this for a program that runs on a local cable channel, which does not broadcast in HD. So, we have to downconvert our 1080 footage to DV NTSC (I hope I'm using the correct terminology here) for the show.
I'm ok with the footage looking grainy and pixelated when I watch it at home during the broadcast, since I guess that's what happens when you shoot HD for an SD show. My question, however, is this: Even when I'm editing in FCP and looking at our broadcast monitor, the footage still doesn't look that sharp. I really would think that 1080 footage should look better while I'm editing. Can you think of any reasons why the editing portion is looking like this? Is it some kind of project setting maybe? Have I provided enough info so far for an answer?
Thanks for any help. Great to be here!

First things first: Are you sure the broadcaster wants DV? DV is a pretty low-quality codec, and lots of television engineers consider it to be right on the very edge of being broadcast-quality. Is it possible your broadcaster wants DVCPRO50 or something like that instead?
What's your workflow like? At what point in the process do you scale the footage down? Do you just drop your footage into an NTSC timeline and let Final Cut do the downscaling?
You can almost certainly get better results by editing in the native format, onto an XDCAM timeline, with ProRes rendering turned on. When you're done, export a QuickTime reference movie, take that into Compressor, and have Compressor convert the finished show to whatever output format you want, +with frame controls turned on.+ This will give you a much better-looking downconversion than just letting Final Cut do the work. Plus, it ensures that your finished masters are full-resolution, which will make it easier for you to go back to them later for use in HD broadcasting, or delivering HD over the Internet or on disc.

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