The FCC is inclined to allow KGW-TV Portland, Ore., to change from a VHF to a UHF, but is seeking input on that inclination. It has given commenters until 25 days after publication of Wednesday’s (Oct. 14) petition for rulemaking in the Federal Register, which usually takes a couple of weeks. There has been a freeze on such changes for almost a decade, dating from when the FCC first started to prepare for the 2016 broadcast incentive auction.

ATSC 3.0 in smartphones took a big step forward this week with delivery of the first of hundreds of production sample phones to the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a key part of the station group’s strategy to ensure that NextGen TV one day is an integral part of mobile phones and other devices. The ONE Media Mark One phone powered by Saankhya Labs is an Android smartphone with built-in Saankhya Labs SL4000 ATSC 3.0 receiver chip providing NextGen TV reception, tuning and demodulation.

Media companies that have scrambled to implement new workflows in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic this year will be looking for technology standards to govern them in 2021, according to four leading technologists and two rising stars set to receive TVNewsCheck’s 2020 Women in Technology Awards. During a “Predictions for 2021” conversation to be held immediately following the awards presentation ceremony on Monday, honorees will offer their thoughts on the follow-up to 2020’s extraordinary circumstances, including addressing some complicated tech debt questions.

Faster speeds will enable new levels of video, AR, VR, and other _Rs that haven’t even been invented yet. But news products are unlikely to benefit as much as all the other apps competing for audiences’ attention.

Since August, Anderson Cooper has been producing his Full Circle program thrice weekly via smartphones in his Hudson Yards office. The remote production was “quick, simple and cheap,” says CNN’s Jason Holterhaus, and signals that CNN is starting to take its digital-only shows as seriously as its linear broadcast.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for an Executive Director, Technology at WLS, the ABC O&O in Chicago.

KOCO, KFOR, KOKH, KOCB and KAUT began broadcasting Thursday with NextGen TV technology.

Broadcasters have scored a victory in the debate with Microsoft over how the FCC should allow for more unlicensed broadband in the so-called white spaces between TV channels.

The Television Academy on Thursday revealed winners of its 72nd Engineering Emmy Awards, with four of the nine companies honored for developing and deploying remote production technology that has become invaluable in a year in which the industry saw widespread shutdowns because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The interactive remote conference format offers peer-reviewed technical paper presentations, training and networking events, plus a live esports competition.

Remotely working broadcasters are increasingly seeing the advantages of IP routing systems to easily control equipment and monitor feeds. Those who adopted IP routers prior to the pandemic were “well ahead of the game,” says one vendor. Above, the BBC’s SMPTE 2110 facility in Cardiff, Wales.

The pandemic has accelerated the TV industry’s transition to IP and the cloud. A panel at TVNewsCheck’s virtual TV2025: Monetizing the Future event in October will tackle how the new technologies can impact how broadcasters will generate revenue and cash flow in the coming years. Register here.

KXAN, KEYE, KNVA and KBVO-CD began broadcasting Tuesday with NextGen TV technology.

The case before the justices Wednesday has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.

Technology executives from ABC News, NBCUniversal Owned Stations, ABC Owned Television Stations and Hearst Television will explore how pandemic-necessitated at-home production has overhauled the industry’s thinking at TVNewsCheck’s virtual TV2025 event in October. Register here.

When it comes to the deployment of ATSC 3.0 and the new services that it can provide to broadcasting and beyond, the NAB tells the FCC it should take a “light regulatory touch.” On a call on Oct. 1, NAB spoke with the FCC Media Bureau on its Notice of Ex Parte Communication that deals with potential ATSC 3.0 regulations, specifically regarding new services that broadcasters could offer the public with the NextGen TV standard.

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has published V-Nova’s VC-6 video codec as the SMPTE ST-2117 standard. Ratification of VC-6 as a SMPTE standard came after a comprehensive peer review. VC-6 leverages artificial intelligence as part of how the video codec approaches compression to offer contribution, production and workflow solutions for 4K and 8K.