Goodmon Jr.: 3.0 Points Way To Bright Future

It was a big day outside Raleigh, N.C., yesterday for James Goodmon Jr., VP and GM of CBC New Media.

After all, it’s not every day you get to press a button and usher in an entirely new television standard.

But that’s exactly what Goodmon did at WRAL’s transmitter site in Garner, N.C., just south of the station’s main targets of Raleigh and Durham.

With the launch of two ATSC 3.0 channels on ch. 39 — a 1080p simulcast of WRAL’s 1080i main program channel and a 4K/Ultra HD HDR channel, which currently is looping a 4K documentary shot by the station on Minor League Baseball’s Durham Bulls, Capitol Broadcasting Co. is doing its part to nudge next-generation TV forward with the ultimate goal of cementing the future of OTA broadcasting as a varied and profitable business endeavor.

About an hour after the noon launch of ATSC 3.0 service, I sat down with Goodmon in his office at CBC headquarters to discuss what the next-gen TV standard means for WRAL, the new business opportunities it presents, how the transition from ATSC 1 to 3 is likely to play out and how television broadcasters can use ATSC 3.0 to help attract a younger generation of viewers to over-the-air television.

An edited transcript:

What does the launch of ATSC 3.0 mean for WRAL and Capitol Broadcasting?

One thing I really love about our company, and in particular my dad, is we are product guys.

What can we do better? Not that what we are doing now isn’t great, but for us, it’s about what we can do inside that finite amount of spectrum, that 6 MHz channel we have.

ATSC 3.0 represents the next generation of television, but I actually think it’s a little bit bigger than that. When you really think about [television] broadcasters, we’re the original wireless guys along with radio, and ATSC 3.0 will allow us to deliver over the air the highest quality video that will be available to consumers for the foreseeable future.

As a broadcaster, I am tired of being looked at as this outmoded, outdated technology.

It’s really important to us that we are able to deliver the highest quality of video available, and when you put that high dynamic range in place, it pops. It’s almost [equivalent to] the difference between SD and HD.

Another key part is the mobility factor. Using forward error correction and the technology of ATSC 3.0, the broadcaster can now decide how important mobility is, and how much bandwidth should be devoted to ensuring the signal can be received across multiple devices, including those in a mobile environment.

Why do you think ATSC 3.0 mobile reception will succeed where mobile DTV failed?

One of the hard things about mobile DTV as it relates to the current ATSC 1.0 is it’s a different chip. There’s a receiver chip in this TV set, and a separate chip for mobile.

Well, with ATSC 3.0, there’s one chip so you can get these super economies of scale.

If these chips are going into every TV set, then the “bomb,” as they call it, for the cell carriers will be nothing to put these tuners into their devices. Before you were talking a dollar to two dollars per device. That’s a huge expense.

From a business standpoint and a consumer demand standpoint, ATSC 3.0 is primed for getting chips in every device.

What other new applications do you envision for 3.0?

Interactivity is key. IP [upon which ATSC 3.0 based] allows us to get interactively involved with our viewers and be in two-way communications with them.

What that means in terms of a business, what we are going to deliver and how we are going to deliver it, I don’t think anyone knows yet.

Even if you don’t know all of the specifics yet, is there an example of interactivity that you are thinking?
Yes, but it will come down to whether or not our technology partners can get it done in time.

We are going to be doing something similar to the NFL RedZone with high school sports. We have a product called High School O.T.

We will be able to do eight to 10 games in the same sort of format as the NFL’s RedZone where we are basically jumping into each of those games at different moments.

Viewers will open the experience on the web and be able to watch the live whip coverage of the games. They will also be able to select the live feed of each of those eight to 10 games.

You can imagine the experience with television sets and ATSC 3.0 once the GUI and protocols are in place. You can experience that on a TV set, where you are watching the channel, but we give you these seven other streams you can select from to have a live stream of a particular game pop up.

What about what I could call “non-broadcast” applications for 3.0, such as leasing a portion of your digital pipe so other businesses can deliver their bits wirelessly? Or, is it too soon to think about that?

I don’t think it’s too soon to start imagining. One thing I want to make clear though is that that is still a broadcast application. It’s just not a linear TV signal.

At the end of the day, once we move into the digital world, we are moving ones and zeros.

Nitpicking on what we deliver — whether it’s video or not — to me is not the point. We are just trying to use our asset the best we can.

ATSC 3.0 opens up a whole new realm, in terms of being what you could call a wireless edge network, sort of like Akamai, only wireless. They have physical servers all over the place. Now you could extend their services to a wireless mode.

Let’s say Netflix releases a new show, a new episode of Bloodline comes on. Akamai and Netflix know that X percentage of folks inside WRAL’s signal are going to watch that show.

If you were to deliver that in a unicast model via the internet across the Raleigh market, here’s what it would cost you.

Hang on though. What if Netflix could come to WRAL and say they would like to push this entire show to 20% of the population. What does that do for them?

I don’t think the economies and that business has been solidified in terms of what the numbers look like yet, but it is exciting stuff.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has been demoing different 3.0 use cases at industry gatherings like CES and NAB. Have you seen that, and what did you think?

Sinclair was demonstrating an audio service at the NAB Show that was really cool. I’d never thought about that.

It was basically a subscription audio channel service. Obviously, with mobility you can think about it being in cars, on phones or anywhere.

Unlike the analog-to-digital transition, where there was a hard date for the transition — although that did get extended, the proposal on the table at the FCC for a 3.0 transition is voluntary. Broadcasters could choose to transition to 3.0, and if they do, the proposal envisions them channel sharing to keep ATSC 1 on air while a more organic sort of transition to 3.0 occurs over time with consumers. What do you think about that approach?

First of all, I think this is going to be a really important transition from ATSC 1 to 3. It will obviously take time.

When I think about it, the No. 1 thing that is going to be unique about it is broadcasters in a market will have to work together in ways we have never done before. We will really have to put our heads together and cooperate.

I think it can be done, and from that perspective in our market I am really excited.

We have Sinclair, an ATSC 3.0 leader; we have Capitol here. That’s four signals. So we only have to get a couple of other people on board for this to be a market that is an ATSC 3.0 go.

I am hopeful broadcasters look at ATSC 3.0 and look beyond the edge of their desks and see this is the future, and we need to invest in this, even if it doesn’t make your share price go up in the next quarter.

But as it relates to where you are five years from now, ATSC 3.0 is going to be very important.

I have always thought that the ability to transmit over the air for a TV broadcaster is critical because it means you are in control of your content distribution, not a third party. However, there are those who think broadcasters should simply get out of OTA operations and rely on OTT to stream content to mobile devices, smart TVs and tablets. Who’s right? In other words, will over-the-air broadcasting be a viable business in the future?

I hope so. If you know something I don’t, I should tell my kids.

We are in broadcasting for the long run.

A lot of the notion of this over-the-air stuff isn’t important or might impede us in the future, I believe, comes from the retransmission business.

The notion is that you can pick us up for free over the air, and there are people cutting the cord. That means retrans revenues are going down.

But when you really think through it, owning the pipe and having control of your content and the pipe is the holy grail.

If you want to know where I find refuge in the middle of the night when I’m worried about the future of our industry, it’s in the fact that this new technology will enable us to be over-the-air broadcasters to everyone, everywhere without having to have big [home] antennas, and it’s going to change the way people think about us.

My kids are 28 and 31 years old. The only reason they know TV is transmitted over the air is because of what I do for a living. And even at that, they don’t really get OTA, and their friends are even more unaware of OTA. How does the television industry reach this generation and those who are younger to let them know that high-quality television is available over the air for free?

That’s what is exciting about ATSC 3.0. I think your children, they do realize they can get media over the air, on their phones, every day, when they watch their YouTube videos and Netflix. They know there is this invisible thing delivering this content.

That’s essentially what we are.

Now, we’ve been kind of excluded from that world, which I’ll call the small device world, because your kids haven’t been able to pick us up on those devices.

I think ATSC 3.0 is going to change that.

I also think we as an industry are going to have to figure out new ways to tell stories — new ways to deliver news content to various demographics. Maybe two different products for different demographics so that the news, information and entertainment is what they want.

Technology gets us in the game. Now we have to figure out how we are going to attract people who don’t know they can get the Olympics over the air, or primetime content over the air.

I talk to a lot of college professors. When I went to college, it was important to have a TV there. Nobody brings a television to school anymore. They have a phone, a tablet or a computer.

They use the devices they have, and I’m not there. And there are people who tell me I can’t be there, whether it’s a network, content providers or distribution partners, and I kind of want to get there.

That’s the business I am in.

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