NEXTGEN TV

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley and COO Rob Weisbordon on Wednesday said a task force currently being developed by federal regulators and key industry stakeholders will chart a course for the eventual shutdown of broadcast signals using the ATSC 1.0 standard.

Noticeably heavier crowds filled a conference swinging back from the pandemic, while strategic partnerships between vendors signaled a new tack for the industry.

Broadcast executives at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday said they are ready to begin delivering datacasting services using the new transmission standard and should see revenues in early 2024.

The commission is also preparing a rulemaking on ATSC 3.0 rules, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said Monday at NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The company says the platform will support multiple new revenue-producing use cases.

A strategic alliance announced Monday at the NAB Show is designed to address the unique needs of public broadcasters in transitioning to NextGen TV.

Anne Schelle is managing director of the Pearl TV consortium and recipient of TVNewsCheck’s Women in Technology Leadership Award, the publication’s highest honor. She earned it through her tenacity and faith in the ATSC 3.0 standard as broadcasting’s crucial way forward.

In conjunction with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the program will provide free, over-the-air redundancy to emergency messaging currently sent by local governments via text, email. social media, and other system platforms. The broadcast platform will bring with it the efficiency of instantaneous and simultaneous delivery to all users.

NextGen TV is a tech TV version of Waiting for Godot, where an unspecified something is imminently arriving to make everything better … yet never quite materializes.

Attendance and exhibitors will still fall well below the pre-pandemic high-water mark, but station groups and vendors plan to hit the Sunday-Wednesday event with packed schedules and shopping lists.

A bipartisan group of 27 U.S. senators, led by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Todd Young (R-Ind.), sent a letter Wednesday to FCC ChairJessica Rosenworcel urging the commission to take an active role in expediting the continued rollout of the ATSC 3.0 standard, aka NextGen TV.

KGO, KPIX, KNTV, KTVU, KDTV and KRON are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

KCCI, WHO, KDSM and KDIN are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

WHAM, WROC, WUHF and WXXI are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

John Hane, president and CEO of BitPath, shares an update on how far along the ATSC 3.0 consortium is toward building a national network that will support leasing data services and get cash registers finally ringing for broadcasters. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

ATSC 3.0 has hit a sludgy stretch of path toward its end goal of broad U.S. adoption and providing new content services. It will take many hands — a potential FCC task force, station group cooperation and an elongated pipeline for receivers included — to get the standard’s implementation flying again.

Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV consortium, will receive the highest honor in TVNewsCheck’s Women in Technology Awards for her tireless efforts to rally the broadcast industry around the ATSC 3.0 standard while convincing manufacturers to produce compatible sets. She’ll receive her award at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 18 at 6 p.m.

WUNI, WCVB, WFXT, WGBH, WBZ and WBTS are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

The National Association of Broadcasters said that without some action by the FCC, including sunsetting the requirement to broadcast in both the current and next-generation transmission formats, that next-generation format — the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard — is “in peril,” and with it broadcasters’ future.

WTVJ, WSCV, WFOR and WLTV are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

Broadcasters kept their focus largely on a NextGen TV narrative headed into this week’s CES in Las Vegas, where around 100,000 attendees are expected. Sinclair is discussing its own flurry of ATSC 3.0 developments, while the demise of pay TV service Evoca was one setback in the NextGen saga.

The live demo highlighted the enhanced geo-targeting capabilities, infotainment and real-time emergency information capabilities of ATSC 3.0.

Evoca TV, a Meridian, Idaho-based start-up that provided virtual pay TV service using ATSC 3.0 broadcast instead of the internet, shuttered on Dec. 31, after a last-ditch effort to secure additional funding failed. Evoca told customers they can keep their leased Android TV-powered receivers, which are still useful for receiving local NextGen TV broadcast signals.

More markets, more sets, more nations and more possibilities sum up ATSC 3.0 developments in the past year.

WUPL, WWL, WVUE, WDSU, WGNO and WNOL are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

KOAT, KRQE, KWBQ and KASY are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

WICS, WICD, WCIA, WRSP, WCCU, WAND, WBUI and WCIX are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

WABM, WDBB, WIAT, WBRC, WVTM, WTTO and WSES are now broadcasting with ATSC 3.0 technology.

Cutting the cable cord is easier than ever, thanks to the growing options of NextGen TV. Sports, local news, network TV shows and more, all for free. An inexpensive antenna is all you’ll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations in most major cities across the country. Over-the-air TV, aka the way most Americans got their TV for most of the latter half of the 20th century, has gotten a huge upgrade.

Most of ATSC 3.0’s audio delay in the U.S. is attributable to the same factors that have held back the rollout of UHD content: there is still a small base of NextGen TV-capable sets; the distribution chain from networks to stations is not fully ready for new formats; and broadcasters are somewhat hamstrung in experimenting with their 3.0 content because of FCC rules that require them to effectively simulcast their 1.0 programming. But despite that, progress is being made.

Consumers will gain expanded access to affordable accessory devices that will bring NextGen TV service to sets not equipped with ATSC 3.0 tuners.