An old idea — centralcasting — became new again. Mobile DTV made strides on its way to becoming reality. Digital conversion growing pains for VHF stations continued as they scrambled to restore their previous coverage areas and the FCC began studying how to improve the band. More newscasts were upgraded to high-def and stations expanded newsrooms into 24/7 multiplatform operations. After years as a curiosity, BXF, the standard for integrating traffic and master control, finally looks as if it's on the way to increasing TV station efficiency.
YEAR IN REVIEW, PART III
Tracking TV’s Top Tech Trends Of 2010
Centralcasting may be an idea whose time has come — again.
As broadcast management continued its drive for greater and greater efficiency in 2010, some broadcast technologists were looking at ways of operating multiple stations or systems within stations from a common remote hub.
In doing so, they were dusting off some ideas that had quite a bit of currency several years ago, but may have been a little ahead of the technology.
With the aid of Omnibus and a hub at its KSFN Fresno, Calif., ABC began distributing and operating its Live Well diginet across the ABC O&Os and several Belo stations.
“It’s working very nicely, but we are still figuring out what we can do and can’t do in a call letter station environment,” said Dave Converse, VP of engineering. “It’s fair to say we are experimenting with it and haven’t decided how far we are going.”
BRAND CONNECTIONS
Mobile DTV
Mobile DTV, a broadcasting-based mobile video service, edged closer to reality in 2010 as TV station groups organized into two complementary consortia to bring the service to the public next year.
At the NAB Show, three networks — NBC, Fox, Ion — and nine major station groups announced the formation of Media Content Venture. Erik Moreno, of Fox, and Salil Dalvi, of NBCU, were selected to run it as co-general managers.
According to industry sources, the promised two channels will be simulcasts of the regular broadcast days of Fox and NBC O&Os and affiliates. But MCV can’t announce that until copyright issues have been settled, they said.
MCV has also indicated that it is ready to work with the Mobile500 Alliance, a coalition of smaller station groups not part of MCV. Together, MCV and the Mobile500 could blanket the nation with a mobile DTV service.
Yet a third broadcaster-run entity trying to bring mobile DTV to fruition is the Open Mobile Video Coalition. For much of the past summer and fall, it ran an extensive consumer trial on mobile DTV in Washington involving nine stations and 23 channels.
Coalition representatives say the results were positive and promise a full report at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.
Aware that the mobile DTV signal from a single transmitter and tall tower will not provide blanket coverage, particularly in urban areas, broadcasters have been experimenting with single-frequency repeaters or “gap fillers” in distributed transmission systems.
“DTS is just going to be required [for mobile DTV],” says David Neff, president of Axcera, a Pittsburgh-based transmitter manufacturer. “It’s not going to work any other way.”
This summer and fall, broadcasters overlaid the Washington consumer trial with a technical test of a single-frequency repeater or gap-filler.
According to Sterling Davis, chairman of the OMVC Technical Advisory Group, the results are still being evaluated, but preliminarly indications are that such repeaters can do the job. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” Davis said.
A fairly new technology, single-frequency repeaters operate on the same channels as their main stations, raising the possibility of distributed networks of many repeaters.
Digital Broadcasting
A year after the transition to digital and the discovery that VHF stations didn’t perform well in digital, VHF broadcasters were doing what they could to improve coverage. Some were able to get more power from the FCC. Others were able to secure UHF channels. That was WCPO Cincinnati’s solution. On Dec. 8, the Scripps’ outlet made the move from ch. 10 to ch. 22 after a 10-day “Plan to Scan” promotion.
Hoping to free up broadcast spectrum for wireless broadband use by pushing more stations into VHF, the FCC in a Nov. 30 rulemaking began looking for ways of making the band more hospitable for broadcasting. It proposed increasing VHF power and asked for new ideas for improving the band.
Broadcasters fortunate enough to be in the UHF band found themselves in the middle of an over-the-air renaissance. A New York Times story said consumers had rediscovered the wonders of OTA TV and saw it as a low-cost (no-cost?) alternative to basic cable. After being out for 40 years, rabbit ears were in again, particularly among young techy types.
In an interview with TVNewsCheck, antenna manufacturer Richard Schneider estimated that the total market for antennas has grown to between 4.5 million and 6 million a year. And he said he believes there is plenty of room for growth since 80% of population doesn’t even know you can get brilliant HD pictures off air.
HD News
The roll out of local HD news, which slowed in 2008 and 2009 as broadcasters tried not to spend money, began accelerating again this year.
Throughout the year, TVNewsCheck reported a steady stream of stations switching to HD, mostly from the studio only. In most cases, HD field acquisition was put off until gear could be upgraded as part of the normal replacement cycle.
And a lot of the new HD news stations were in small markets like Bangor, Maine; Harlingen-Weslaco, Texas; Sheveport, La.; Tri-Cities, Va.-Tenn.; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Nobody seems to have a handle on just how many newscasts have gone HD.
According to a Hofstra University survey of news directors released in May, two-thirds of the stations in the top 50 markets were running HD news, but only a quarter of the stations in markets 51 and below were.
Forty percent of the stations in Top 25 markets that had not made the move said they would this year, the survey found. That percentage dropped to just 15% in markets below 151.
Multiplatform News
To feed the multiplatform beast, stations have embraced iPhones, Flip Minis, Skype, Streambox, Ustream, Twitter, Facebook, plain old cellphone and other consumer-grade gizmos and media.
Hearst Television’s Next-Generation Newsroom initiative is all about putting such tools into the hands of its reporters. “The whole focus … is to change the mindset of our news staff, to get them away from the thinking that we only publish to broadcast at 5, 6 and 11,” said project manager Joe Addalia. “We are now always live. We are always on the Web. We don’t sit on our news.”
For now, satellite and microwave trucks remain the principal way reporters in the field send video and reports back to the station. But stations are increasingly using the Internet to get packages and breaking news on the air ahead of the competition.
If reporters and photojournalists are now going out and simultaneously shooting for print, TV and digital media, why not produce a single camera suitable for all those media? That’s a question that leading manufacturers apparently asked themselves a while ago. Canon, RED and Sony began showing prototypes of do-to-all cameras that may be what every multimedia journalist will be carrying years from now.
Automation
After years of being mostly a curiosity, BXF, the SMPTE standard for integrating traffic and master control, finally looks as if it is on the way to increasing the efficiency of TV station operations.
After extensive testing at its KTVU San Francisco, Cox Media Group expects to roll out BXF at the Fox affiliate and four other stations this month — KIRO Seattle; WHIO Dayton, Ohio; WSOC Charlotte, N.C.; and WFTV Orlando, Fla., according to Chip Reif, engineering manager at WFTV and the group-wide manager of the BXF project.
In contrast to BXF, news production automation has firmly established itself in TV stations with Sony (Enhanced Live-production Control) joining Grass Valley (Ignite) and Ross Video (OverDrive) as a major purveyor of the technology.
Simply Business
WideOrbit in October bought out VCI, its chief competitors in trafficking software. With the deal, WideOrbit increased its estimated share of the domestic broadcast market to as much as 70%.
After a couple of lean years, Harris Corp’s Broadcast Communications Division in February introduced Harris Morris as its new president, the successor to Tim Thorsteinson, who had left the company the prior October. Morris had been GM of one of the division’s operating units.
In an interview with TVNewsCheck, Morris explained his strategy for turning around the $500 million-a-year company by relying more heavily on international sales, repurposing technology in new markets and helping broadcasters make the move into the multiplatform world.
Virtual sets are probably still not ready for primetime, at least not on U.S. TV stations, but several companies including Orad, Vizrt and Chyron showed systems at NAB that suggest the technology may soon be.
Click here to read Part I of our Year in Review, which covers the happenings in business, retrans, management, multicasting as well as regulatory and legal developments in Washington and elsewhere.
Click here to read Part II of our Year in Review, which covers programming, journalism, sales/advertising and new media.
Click here to read Fade to Black, our remembrance of some of those who died in 2010.
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