It’s Time For A Reset On NextGen TV

John Lawson

It may be time to consider a change in strategy for the ATSC 3.0 transition. Discussions with broadcasters in the heartland, senior U.S. government officials and AWARN Alliance members have crystalized questions about the viability of the current approach.

Together with the NAB’s letter to FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel over a year ago, describing the transition as “stalled,” it may be time to go back to the future and consider a different approach.

Same Unease With Local Broadcasters And The FCC

I had a revealing conversation about the NextGen TV transition at the Michigan Broadcast Engineering Conference in Lansing earlier this month. From a panel about public safety and ATSC 3.0, I asked the audience of chief engineers and station GMs if 3.0 deployment, from a consumer awareness and adoption standpoint, was on the right track. I prefaced this question with praise for the industry for lighting up stations that now reach 75% of U.S. TV households. But on the state of the transition, not a single hand went up for “right track,” with almost all attendees raising their hands for “wrong track.”

This unease with the pace of the NextGen TV transition echoes a frank meeting I had earlier this month with senior staff of the FCC. I was there to ask for the commission’s leadership on Advanced Emergency Information (AEI), enabled by 3.0. They said they were aware of AWARN (which I was representing) and sympathetic to our cause, but pointed out that there can be no AEI without the successful consumer adoption of NextGen TV. And they clearly have questions about the market viability of that adoption. The broadcasting industry’s position that NextGen will be solely market-driven, they said, means the promotion of it, and AEI, “is not our [FCC’s] job.”

Reports from both industry and FCC participants indicate the “Future of Television” initiative, the outcome of the NAB’s lobbying, is experiencing slow going. Halfway through a two-year process, it appears that only incremental steps are likely. The fact that AWARN was excluded from the Future of Television discussions is an indication, in my biased opinion, that the strategic scope of the discussions may be limited.

Back To The Future To Find A Proven Model

Many of us who were deeply involved in the analog-to-digital conversion of broadcast television during the 2000s know what a successful digital transition looks like. That includes many in the 3.0 industry today, as well as key policymakers in the FCC and Congress. It was an effective public-private partnership that enabled U.S. broadcasters to lead the world in DTV and HDTV and did wonders for their bottom lines.

Is it time to consider a change in strategy for the current digital transition? A new strategy for 3.0 adoption would draw upon the transition to what we now call “ATSC 1.0,” but with a couple of updates for current realities.

First, the FCC would establish a “hard date” to turn off 1.0 broadcasting. Rural areas would be phased in, but such certainty is needed for long-range planning and resource allocations.

Second, Congress would establish a new voucher program for 3.0 set-top boxes and dongles. This time, however, the subsidy program would be established in the name of public safety, for both resilient alerting in the face of climate change and national security to provide a back-up for GPS. Broadcasters would agree to carry Advanced Emergency Information, perhaps with sunset provisions for EAS, and receivers would be enabled to display AEI messages.

Key stakeholders from industry and government would work together to educate consumers about the transition with the goal of accelerating market penetration of ATSC 3 receivers. This mirrors the successful DTV Transition Coalition with more than 200 members from civil rights to business organizations.

The “lighthouse” station concept would be inverted, with one station remaining as a “nightlight” to carry 1.0 signals for a period of time, albeit in standard definition, the only requirement in current regulations.

Leading up to the hard-date, broadcasters would plan for flash cuts in selected markets, those with the lowest over-the-air TV viewing, as seem to be underway already in some rural markets.

Another feature of the analog-to-digital transition was, of course, a requirement to include ATSC receivers in new TV sets. Another straight up receiver mandate would be fiercely opposed by the consumer electronics industry.

But history is instructive. The powerful wireless industry opposed a similar requirement, from a Republican Congress and White House in 2006, to carry wireless emergency alerts (WEA). The workaround was that wireless companies could legally opt-out of WEA but had to inform consumers at the point of sale that their device would not display emergency alerts. For NextGen TV sales, such a disclaimer may affect consumer sales decisions in areas of the country prone to wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and floods.

Another Public-Private Partnership

These steps would basically establish another public-private partnership to get NextGen TV firmly established to the benefit of American consumers. American capitalism is replete with successful versions of this structure, including the transcontinental railroad, the satellite and DBS industries and the internet itself. The iPhone is built, in part, on the fruits of multiple federally funded R&D programs, as Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Entrepreneurial State, and others explain. These partnerships served the public interest and enabled smart companies to make vast amounts of money.

All this amounts to what I call techno-political strategy, the place on the Venn diagram where business, technology and government intersect. It may be time to decide that the market alone will not be enough to achieve broadcasters’ goals.

John M. Lawson is executive director of the Advanced Warning and Response Alliance (AWARN), but the ideas expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of AWARN.