Tech Spotlight

The Raleigh, N.C., CBS affiliate has adopted rigorous standards for drone deployment as it learns how to operate them in preparation for the day the FAA approves their use in newsgathering. The requirements include operator training on par with that needed to acquire a private pilot’s license and following a set of operating rules designed to ensure safety and respect privacy.

After the FCC conducts its incentive auction of 600 MHz TV spectrum in early 2016, the amount of available spectrum for wireless mic operation — in diminishing supply now — could become even scarcer. Less spectrum means fewer unused TV channels for wireless mics and a whole series of other wireless devices generally lumped into the wireless mic category, including wireless intercoms, IFB cueing systems and in-ear monitors used by musicians and other entertainers. In addition, switching to new equipment could be costly for broadcasters. (Photo: AP/Charles Sykes)

In two weeks (Nov. 12-13), NAB will present the first Content and Communications World and Satellite Communications Conference (CCW+SATCON) to be put on by the association since buying the show in December 2013. The trade group will continue down the path charted by the annual gathering’s previous owner, says NAB’s Chris Brown. “We see tremendous synergy with the NAB Show,” he adds. “Many companies will use the NAB Show in April to announce new products. Six months later there is definitely a need to engage the marketplace with updates on those plans, and CCW presents that opportunity.”

With all of the convention buzz during the NAB Show and IBC that IP received as an alternative to SDI for transport and routing, it’s little wonder SMPTE 2014 would offer a technical deep dive into the underlying technology making IP routing and transport for broadcasters possible. “File-based workflows are another big topic, especially with the addition of IP as a factor as well as new regulations regarding closed captions,” said Sara Kudrle, one of the conference’s chairs. SMPTE image courtesy of Vizrt.

Having to use a production switcher from the same manufacturer as that of your news automation system is becoming a thing of the past. New switcher-agnostic news automation systems give stations that bought a production switcher without a complementary automation system a few years ago a way to add it without having to replace the switcher. The latest software also makes possible better use of the Internet and social media as complements or alternatives to on-air news without adding additional people.

Broadcaster-backed ConnecTV says its new Clip Ads app lets consumers and stations create six-second clips and send them out to Facebook friends and Twitter followers. The service can be monetized by attaching ads to the clips. “It’s really a way for the traditional broadcast spot to be extended into this social video space,” says CEO Ian Aaron.

A new app for smartphones and tablets lets viewers of the new ABC talent series vote in real time during the live broadcast to determine whether singers move on to the next round or go home. The technology making this real-time audience interaction possible is Screenz’ Real Time Platform, a cloud-based solution that in testing has demonstrated the ability to process more than 100 million interactions per minute.

Verizon’s new offering in development, LTE Multicast, will use broadcasting’s one-to-many model to deliver video to mobile devices. Although the service is still a long way off, broadcasters see it as a threat and are responding in part by pushing forward with the development of a next-generation broadcasting system through the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

The ABC Owned Television Stations Group, which six years ago began a massive project to digitize, catalogue and store its analog news stories, has just finished doing that at its KGO San Francisco (the latest after WABC New York, WLS Chicago and WPVI Philadelphia). The ABC Owned Television Stations Group Preservation Project is also underway at KABC Los Angeles and KTRK Houston.

Single frequency networks may be the technology that makes it possible for stations compete with wireless in reaching viewers on their mobile devices. Proponents say these booster sites can provide strong signals throughout a station’s coverage area. However it comes at a price: capital costs to implement such booster networks could hit $2 million per market.

Sam Matheny, Capitol Broadcasting’s VP of policy and innovation, has several “big buckets” of issues that he says need to be studied and resolved before a successful ATSC 3.0 transition can take place. Among them are determining the impact of the transition on the audience, the possibility for interference, the duration of the transition, the availability of spectrum and the impact of the transition on direct-to-home satellite, cable TV and telco TV partners.

Any new broadcast TV technical standard must “harmonize” with the standards used by wireless mobile operator and the white space spectrum user communities, according to Sinclair’s tech guru Mark Aitken. That’s why Sinclair is working on an alternative to ATSC 3.0 along with Coherent Logix. Their joint venture, ONE Media, will create a platform that relies on software-defined radios in consumer devices ranging from LTE mobile phones to tomorrow’s TVs to make updates possible so TV stations don’t get locked into a standard that quickly becomes obsolete.

While waiting for the FCC to repack the band and hand out new channel assignments, TV stations should not be idle. Here is a list of things they can start doing now to head off trouble later.

This year’s convention and marketplace in Las Vegas will cover a wide range of technology and engineering-related topics, with three of the most important at center stage — the FCC spectrum incentive auction and repack; next-generation digital terrestrial broadcasting; and Ultra HD formats like 4K and 8K.

As a result of the uncertainity over the FCC’s plans to auction and repack the TV spectrum, stations are putting off investments in transmission gear. The latest victim is Electronics Research Inc., which just laid off 22 employees.

As a result of the uncertainity over the FCC’s plans to auction and repack the TV spectrum, stations are putting off investments in transmission gear. The latest victim is Electronics Research Inc., which just laid off 22 employees.

Many U.S. broadcasters view the adoption of the digital encoding scheme as crucial to the new ATSC 3.0 standard. They say it’s the best bet for stations to deliver strong, robust signals for reception not only on big-screen TVs with indoor antennas, but also smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. An OFDM-based standard, they say, would facilitate a TV station’s ability to “cellularize” its broadcasting system — that is, supplement its main transmitter and antenna with several strategically located booster stations broadcasting on the same frequencies.

Mike Dreaden, news director at Cox’s Atlanta ABC affiliate, explains what went into getting all those live shots ready to go during last week’s crippling snow storm.

The new Connecticut operation will account for about 400 of the 3,100 people that will be working on the Winter Olympic games for NBC. Among its jobs will be to produce play-by-play coverage of the curling competition for distribution on the cable channels; produce Gold Zone for NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra app; produce news cut-ins for the digital coverage; and will also be home of the “highlights factory,” which will crank out highlights from all the events for all the platforms.

Spearheaded by Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s VP of advanced technology, the new “broadcast-centric”  transmission standard is being designed to address an issue Sinclair feels is being left out of ATSC’s efforts: the ability to reach viewers on their mobile devices. “ATSC 3.0 ought to be whatever broadcasters want it to be,” Aitken says. “This process should be about bringing broadcasters to the table for a solution, rather than having it dictated to them by TV set manufacturers.”

Broadcasters are anxiously awaiting details of the FCC’s plans for the spectrum auctions and resulting TV band repacking. FCC Chairman Wheeler last month laid out the schedule leading up to the auctions in mid-2015. But he did not offer a timeline for the post-auction channel switching, a process that could involve many stations and extend into 2020.

As the year opens, a number of tech questions and issues remain unresolved. Here are 10 that are likely to make news in the upcoming 12 months that you’ll want to stay on top of. They range from the Emergency Alert System to drones, to bonded cellular, all the way to the cloud.

The ability to run master control for multiple stations is the latest operation to begin the move to an IT-based solution. Companies including Florical Systems, Harris Broadcast and Snell are developing products that put everything needed to run stations in the cloud, rather than in a local master control room.

WSB Atlanta is the first station to use Nexidia Dialogue, a speech search technology also being used by major cable news networks, including MSNBC. The technology uses basic language sounds called phonemes to find any audible words in any digital library. WSB can now quickly access more than 40,000 hours of material dating back to the 1950s.

Group owner Morris Multimedia is outfitting all its stations with virtual sets, citing the economy and flixibility they offer. CEO Dean Hinson: “Each of our stations … put out more than one signal and those second channels each have their own branding. The decision to go virtual is an economic one, and it’s one based on space. We’ve watched the prices come down on the equipment to do this and are ready to move at a rapid pace.”

The Gray Television CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs is finishing up a news building that’s only 9,000 square feet, but includes augmented reality graphics, a state-of-the-art power system and a new Gray-built system called GrayTooth that allows everyone from reporters to producers, to sales people and engineers to sit down at any workstation, swipe a key fob and pull up their customized desktop.

For media groups that are combining stations, business software vendors help merge sales and customer data, settling on common account naming conventions, integrating new traffic systems, unifying customer relationship philosophies and agreeing on a way to forecast business.

On this Halloween, we present a collection of true tales from across the U.S. that are guaranteed to make any TV station engineer gasp in fright — and perhaps in recognition of a similar situation. Read on … if you dare.

Christmas came early for the staff at the NBC Dallas O&O and its co-owned Telemundo outlet on Sept. 30, when the ribbon was cut on a brand new, 75,000-square-foot complex located in a business park near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Among the wish-list items the staff got are news editing flexibility, traffic and sales finally in the same building as news and technical flexibility to handle all the various feeds, especially since everything from the studio to the field is now in high definition.

Social media in the newsroom has boomed to the point where major breaking news stories come with a hashtag to keep people engaged with the story on their social accounts. Broadcasters who want to monitor and air those social updates have plenty of options, ranging from the $600 jury-rigged solution all the way to a $30,000 high-end system.

Most of the satellite-delivered news sharing services are migrating their distribution from satellites to cloud-based systems.The main reasons are faster upload and download times, no hassles over booking satellite time and the cost savings that come from no longer needing dishes and servers. The exception is NBC News Channel, which still has concerns about the cloud’s reliability.

Quincy Broadcasting is upgrading its seven-year-old centralcasting setup with an infusion of new technology from Harris Broadcast that’s expected to improve the group’s workflow and cut down costs. Hub stations can now distribute syndiacted programming, and the group has plans to use the technology for new tasks in the coming year.

Now that bonded cellular technology has proved itself as an effective and reliable way to send back live video from the field, the top vendors have begun supplying software for managing and sharing all the incoming feeds.“Broadcasters have gotten over that bonded cellular hump,” says Ronen Artman, VP marketing at LiveU. “Now they want to take control of their devices.”

Using leased broadcast spectrum, mostly low-power, the startup envisions partnering with telcos to bring high-speed broadband service to consumers now struggling with no broadband access or low-speed service only. “This is a great use of a spectrum,” says DTVCast founder John Kyle.

Charlie Vogt, who replaced Harris Morris as CEO of Harris Broadcast this week, says he’s eager to learn the company and the broadcast industry and ready to shape Harris’ strategy. “Clearly, we’re going to invest the dollars where we feel like the market is trending to. The team has got to be very thoughtful and really smart about where we want to place our chips, and what bets we want to double down on,” Vogt says in an exclusive interview with TVNewsCheck.

The TV antenna manufacturer’s many clients are wondering who will service their existing RF systems and who will emerge to sell them new ones. Demand could shoot up greatly if the FCC OKs band repacking following a spectrum auction. Possible solutions could be current U.S. competitors to Dielectric as well as a number of foreign firms.

The station group’s IP-based GrayMax Hotspot system is designed to provide the reliability of a microwave truck without the telescoping mast, and the newsgathering freedom of bonded cellular technology without the worry of being knocked off the air by cellular congestion. It’s being tested at Gray’s KBTX Bryan, Texas.

This week was a busy one for proponents of broadcast television’s future. On Tuesday, the ATSC issued a call for proposals for a new standard, ATSC 3.0, and the next day, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s tech guru, Mark Aitken, turned on an experimental broadcast at WNUV Baltimore of a transmission system that could be part of TV’s next-generation standard. ATSC President Mark Richer anticipates receiving a dozen or more proposals by September and plans to brief potential proponents at NAB.

The new One World Trade Center is pitching New York City broadcasters on moving their transmitting operations to the 105-story building in 2015, promising a facility that’s “future-proof” with better over-the-air coverage than the Empire State Building where most of the city’s stations relocated following the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers.

The station group is moving ahead with installing Miranda’s iTX system at all eight of its stations by the end of the second quarter. Technical uniformity across the group is key, says ABC tech Dave Converse. “Philosophically, when you want to address a problem, you want to address it the same way. Right now, when we have a problem, we have to solve it eight times.”