For Pearl TV’s Anne Schelle, NextGen Coalition Is Built On Belief

Anne Schelle, recipient of this year’s Women in Technology Leadership Award, may have landed in the technology universe by happenstance, but she quickly fell in love with it.

Schelle, the managing director of the Pearl TV consortium, has promoted the new voluntary ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard that broadcasters, manufacturers and consumers are embracing. On April 18 at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, TVNewsCheck will recognize her for this effort with the Women in Technology Leadership Award.

Bringing all those disparate groups to the table required serious consensus building and perseverance.

Schelle says she helps those with different points of view find common areas of agreement. This was critical, she says, as she helped the industry build a new transmission standard that had to be adopted by the FCC, adopted by broadcasters, supported by manufacturers and accepted by consumers.

“I’m good at bringing together coalitions to make decisions,” she says.

Part of it is the fact that she understands the technology and its value and is able to articulate that in a simple way. “Whether it’s a broadcaster or a TV manufacturer or a regulator, what’s in it for them?” Schelle says. “I think about it as a value proposition that at the end of the day benefits the consumer.”

She says she has been fortunate to learn about technologies from the Pearl members who are “a bunch of Navy SEALs” with strong technology specialties.

“They know so much about a technology that I’ll never know. I’m curious and they teach me. They lead,” she says.

Schelle at the 2019 NAB Show announcing the launch of NextGen TV.

Working on the NextGen TV wasn’t the first time she’s used her consensus-building muscles. She’s previously brought groups together in digital wireless as well as with the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC).

John I. Taylor, SVP for public affairs and communications at LG Electronics USA, says he first saw Schelle’s ability to bring stakeholders together to advance a cause with the OMVC and later through Pearl TV and the NextGen effort.

“She’s a tireless advocate for the new standard and the benefits it’s going to bring” to broadcasters, equipment manufacturers and viewers, Taylor says. “NextGen TV wouldn’t be where it is today without her vision, without the creation of the Pearl TV group and advancing the cause of reaching across the industry to bring everyone together.”

Schelle, Taylor says, is not the kind of leader who only operates from the 90,000-foot level. “She has a vision as a leader at that level, but she is also really in the weeds. She knows the technology, she knows the business, and she is very adept at working with both engineers and corporate executives in making a compelling case for NextGen TV.”

Catherine Badalamente, president-CEO of Graham Media Group, says Schelle “gets the technology probably better than anybody else that I know” and understands how to have the “difficult technology conversations.”

In addition to understanding the technology, she says, Schelle understands how it can benefit the future of broadcast, mapping out a way forward for broadcasters through the NextGen effort.

“She’s figured out that world for us and allowed us to stay relevant in the game,” Badalamente says. “She sees the path forward better than anybody, and she’s relentless to make sure we stay on that path.”

And it hasn’t been easy, Badalamente adds. “I see her worry, just like I do. We need [NextGen TV] to be able to compete today so that we’re even in the game. And that has been her mission.”

Schelle at CES 2023 following a Pearl TV demonstration to FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington (center) and ATSC Board Chair Richard Friedel.

Pat LaPlatney, co-CEO-president of Gray Television, says Schelle’s perseverance has helped push NextGen through a long process. “Early on, she saw that a this was going to be a long road,” he says. “She persevered. She found a way to get all the many different constituencies involved and invested. And when we had a setback, she never lost sight of the broader goal. For that reason, we’ve come a really long way in 10 years.”

And staying with a project that has taken so long could prompt some with lesser staying power to opt out, he notes. “It would be easy to say, ‘I’m done with it.’ But she’s got a ton of juice” and has brought energy and excitement to the journey. “She’s never lost an ounce of that over the years from what I can tell.”

And she also brought the right skills — including big-picture thinking — to the job, he says.

“She’s a wonderful blend of technologist, government relations person, with a really solid understanding of the media business,” LaPlatney says. “She’s not an engineer, but she absolutely understands the engineering, and she understands how the government works, and she understands the media business. There aren’t a lot of folks who really understand all three of those distinct areas and you really have to, to be effective in what she’s doing.”

As Schelle puts it, she’s worn a lot of hats to push NextGen and ATSC 3.0 from concept to reality and get buy-in from the various groups. “We did tests together, and we all tripped over the truth together. Each partner sees the benefit when you see the benefit.”

Currently, NextGen TV is at the rollout phase, which she calls the hardest phase and requires “delighting the consumer” with services being introduced. The marketplace started teasing NextGen TV technology to consumers during the 2020 CES (Consumer Electronic Show) with a number of TV models on offer.

“It wasn’t just one TV, it was 20 models from three manufacturers” that kicked off the marketplace, says Schelle, who enjoys hanging out with her daughters and taking family trips when she’s not consensus building for NextGen TV, and is on the board of noncommercial WYPR-FM Baltimore.

In 2021, Phoenix marked the first market to have a commercial NextGen station on air. “In Phoenix, we brought in an entire ecosystem. Ecosystems don’t happen overnight. It happens through collaboration,” she says.

The Phoenix rollout tested the reception of NextGen technology with consumers.

“Those two moments were validation of our ideas,” she says. “Innovation and progress can be complex, but this process we put in place worked, and it culminated in a real device that was being sold at retail to consumers.”

The whole project has been a big lift for broadcast, Schelle says, because NextGen is not backward compatible.

“It requires investment from broadcasters, it requires belief from the regulators to do it, it requires consumers to want it,” she says. “It’s completely voluntary. It’s voluntary for broadcasters to do it, voluntary for consumers to buy it, voluntary for manufacturers to make these devices.”

Schelle during an ATSC board visit to Jeju Island, South Korea, in 2018.

And while Schelle has had successes in her past, she’s also had some failure. She co-founded XDSL Networks and raised a lot of money, but when the market went sideways in 2001, she says, it imploded.

“We believed in the technology so much, but we didn’t see the marketplace. That was a real lesson for me,” she says. “It didn’t change the way I look at things, but I just got smarter.”

In order to win, she adds, “You’ve got to place bets. There are going to be some things that don’t work. That’s part of it.”

And, she says, for those entering the world of technology, it’s important to know that “if you haven’t failed at something, you’re going to fail at something.”

Those failures, Schelle says, can make you “a better businessperson, a better technologist.”

All through the long NextGen journey, Schelle says she has maintained a belief in the technology itself.

“I have a strong belief in the curiosity around technology and the passion for how it can transform consumer’s lives, and the good it can bring,” she says.

Read more about this year’s Women in Technology Awards here.