NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems has optimized the use of memory that lowers the total cost of ownership of running its software, reducing the cost per channel by up to two-thirds for compressed video workflows.

TAG has always sought to give its customers the lowest cost per channel. For compressed workflows, that has historically been achieved by pairing mid-range servers with maximum memory, a configuration TAG benchmarked and certified for optimal price performance, the company said.

The global shortage of server memory and associated rise in price led TAG's R&D team to revisit its optimization calculations and develop an alternative approach that dramatically reduces the amount of memory each server requires while preserving quality. By running a server on as few as four memory modules, rather than a fully populated configuration, TAG delivers comparable monitoring capability at a substantially lower cost per channel.

For compressed workflows, the trade is heavily in the user's favor: cost per channel falls by up to 66 percent while server capacity drops by only around 20 percent. TAG has now extended the same approach to uncompressed ST 2110 environments, where benchmarking on certified platforms is complete. The memory savings there are significant with a larger capacity trade-off of up to around 50 percent in some configurations, it said.

"Our commitment has always been to optimize our customers' investment in hardware, not just to keep pace with it," said Stas Bangiev, vice president of R&D at TAG Video Systems. "When memory prices rose across the industry, we didn't ask our customers to simply absorb the increase. We went back to the drawing board and engineered a way to deliver the same quality for dramatically less, because reducing our customers' costs is central to how we operate."

Memory usage optimization is available in the latest release of TAG's MCM software with further platform work already under way. Innovation is delivered as part of the Zero Friction subscription. Customers receive this optimization and every improvement that follows as part of their plan at no extra cost. Customers should contact their TAG representative to confirm the optimal configuration for their environment.

More information is available on the company’s website.

During Q2 2026 earnings calls with analysts, CEOs at several of the nation’s largest station groups were particularly bullish about the increased market demand for spectrum and the opportunities this creates for broadcasters as they transition to NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0.

“There's no question in my mind that we're sitting on a goldmine of spectrum, one that actually has proven to be increasing in value over time,” Scripps president and CEO Adam Symson told analysts on August 7. “And there's also no question that none of that value is reflected in our stock price. Scripps is one of the largest holders of broadcast spectrum. It was one of the reasons why we found the ION acquisition so interesting. We are always looking at what the best and highest uses of our spectrum, and we'll continue to do so.”

This valuable spectrum was a major reason for Scripps' decision to turn ION stations into sports duopolies, Symson added, but it could also be monetized through a Federal Communications Commission incentive auction.

“We're always looking for the best and highest use of our spectrum,” he said. “Whether that's turning stations that are ION sticks into local stations in order to create high-margin duopolies, we will continue to look for the greatest opportunity. When there is an opportunity to monetize our spectrum, either through an incentive auction, as [FCC] Chairman Carr referenced [recently]...or otherwise, I am absolutely sure we will take full advantage to benefit our shareholders, our employees and the company's ability to continue to serve its mission.”

Those remarks followed comments by Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley during their August 5 Q2 earnings call touting the station group's lucrative spectrum assets.

Ripley noted that while the last auction in 2017 was a disappointment, there is now increased demand for spectrum, both from wireless carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon and from companies that are launching low earth orbit satellite broadband services.

Putting this spectrum up for sale could occur, he added through a conventional auction, negotiated sales or “some sort of a lease arrangement to make capacity available.”

“So…the macro point is that this spectrum is very valuable,” he said. “I think it's easily at market, at auction, at a negotiated sale over $2.50 a megahertz-pop. I think it would be a floor valuation that I would see in any sort of transaction, which, by the way, implies $4.1 billion for Sinclair's portfolio in totality.”

“It also underscores the necessity to fully roll out 3.0 and sunset 1.0,” Ripley stressed. “By sunsetting 1.0, we're able to free up a lot of spectrum, which could be used for additional programming and data casting, which we're working on at EdgeBeam.

That means, Ripley added, “there is sort of a cost-benefit analysis that I think will go on once we sunset 1.0 and these commercial applications are available that EdgeBeam was working on. The industry will have to assess [if it] is it better to run those use cases over that spectrum and earn an annuity stream of income from it? Or is it better to transact and sell or at least to someone like Starlink.”

“I think all of those are possibilities, and it's really just an economic equation,” he concluded. “[I]t reinforces to me and the rest of the industry that we need to get the FCC to act and approve the NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] in front of them on 3.0 and sunset 1.0 in order to open up these types of opportunities.”

In its August 7 Q2 earnings call, Kevin Latek, executive vice president, chief legal and development officer and secretary at Gray Media also stressed the importance of the ATSC 3.0 transition in helping broadcasters maximize the value of their spectrum.

“We're seeing a bit of a repeat from 15 years ago when AT&T was making some very strong pushes to have the FCC reclaim some broadcast spectrum for the reverse auction, so they could be redeployed to mobile,” he noted.

While “the spectrum needs were maybe satiated for a number of years there,” he added that “now we're hearing a lot more about spectrum needs again. At the same time, the broadcast industry is as you know well, transitioning to 3.0…[I]f there is a strong push in demand for the spectrum, which seems to be increasingly likely, and we have this new technology that allows us to repack more easily…there could be some spectrum reallocation with another auction for broadcasters.”

This he explained would allow “us to accelerate the 3.0 transition, get all the stations on to 3.0. That would be a fantastic wind at our sail, to allow us to do a lot more with less spectrum allocated to our service and provide better use for some of that spectrum. And it also would, we believe, provide the federal government with a backup timing system” to the current GPS system using ATSC 3.0 broadcasters with BPS.

“So it seems at least at this point that there are a lot of very favorable and complementary pressures to move spectrum monetization forward in the medium term,” he concluded.

AMSTERDAM— At IBC 2026, the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) has announced a joint initiative with the EBU to bring together leading broadcast technology suppliers to demonstrate interoperable implementations of NMOS BCP-008 Minimum Status Reporting.

The specification is designed to give operators a consistent view of device health across multi-vendor IP environments and help them identify the problems.

“The broadcast industry has always made its greatest progress through collaboration. These demonstrations show what's possible when vendors, end users, and integrators come together around open specifications to solve real operational challenges,” said Brad Gilmer, executive director of AMWA. “BCP-008 gives broadcasters a practical, standardized way to understand what's happening across multi-vendor IP facilities, helping them operate those facilities with greater confidence. Leading manufacturers demonstrating interoperable implementations together at IBC is an important milestone for our industry."

Presented live on the EBU stand (10.D21) during the show between Sept. 11 and 14, the demos will show products from multiple vendors reporting status consistently across a multi-vendor IP environment.

By giving operators a common view of device health, BCP-008 can help them distinguish urgent problems from routine conditions and resolve issues faster.

"These demonstrations aren't simply about showing technology," said Stefan Ledergerber, NMOS Control project lead and CEO of Simplexity. "They're about demonstrating that multi-vendor interoperability is real, practical, and ready for deployment."

Participating companies include:

• Arkona
• DirectOut
• EVS
• Leader
• Nevion
• Pebble
• Providius
• Riedel
• Simplexity
• Sony

The companies have spent months preparing their BCP-008 implementations to work together. Before IBC, they will convene at EVS's facilities in Belgium for an intensive, hands-on interoperability event, where they will validate the implementations before taking them live in Amsterdam.

"To have products from each of these participating companies implementing BCP-008 at once is the largest commitment to NMOS since the introduction of IS-04 and IS-05," said Ledergerber. "It shows the necessity of status reporting within our industry. We should applaud these manufacturers for having a vision for an interoperable, open, and flexible future of IP and for bringing that vision to reality."

BCP-008 complements NMOS connection management by giving devices from different vendors a standardized way to communicate operational status. Because the end device is best positioned to recognize when it is not operating correctly, the approach helps operators distinguish conditions requiring action from routine status information.

"The industry hasn’t yet mastered the complexity of ST 2110, much less DMF. Training broadcast engineers to become IT experts doesn't scale. BCP-008 is an important ingredient to scale," added Ledergerber. At IBC, visitors will see systems respond to packet loss, link disconnects, packet jitter, PTP grandmaster changes, stream validation errors, and other common operational errors.

Additional information and BCP-008 developer resources are available at: www.amwa.tv/post/developer-resources-nmos-bcp-008-minimum-status-reporting

CYPRESS, Calif.—FOR-A will showcase new, practical solutions to real-world production challenges, including its MixBoard, viztrick AiDi, the FA-1616 and Hi-RDS, during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Typical of the issues facing broadcasters and production companies is the need to deliver multiple versions of the content to different formats and technical specifications, often in real time.

MixBoard, a software-based switcher powered by ClassX, is more than an integrated audio mixer and video switcher. It incorporates the ability to generate cropped versions for different aspect ratios and to stream outputs in multiple formats for broadcast and online services. As a software platform, MixBoard benefits from continuing enhancements, and IBC2026 will see the first showing of its comprehensive control for PTZ cameras.

Widely used for multiple outputs, viztrick AiDi is an on-device AI solution developed by Nippon TV and delivered globally by FOR-A. It is powered by NVIDIA AI infrastructure. One of its most widely used solutions is GoVertical! AiDi, which delivers AI-aided 9:16 autocropping for social media in real time while automatically keeping the action centered and optimized for vertical viewing.

Other applications include player tracking and object recognition. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, viztrick AiDi operates entirely on-device, eliminating reliance on internet connectivity.

With most installations still depending on hybrid architectures, the FA-1616 is proving immensely valuable as a software-defined digital video processor. It supports up to 32 streams, including SDI and IP, and incorporates up/down conversion, color correction, audio remapping and timecode generation. Capable of providing the bridge between 2K and 4K, SDI and IP, compressed and uncompressed, it is the Swiss army knife of video processing.

Aimed at solving the real-world problems systems architects face today as they implement increasingly complex software-defined environments, Hi-RDS goes simplifies network design. Typical Registration and Discovery Systems (RDS) allow each node to be incorporated in just one RDS. Hi-RDS – hierarchical RDS – adds a primary RDS layer that then manages each node on the operational layers, making it simple to pass content between operational areas, between different vendors’ technologies and between formats.

The IBC stand will also see demonstrations of the latest routing switchers and video switchers, including new additions to the MFR and HVS-Q12 Hanabi families. Each is designed with operational simplicity and high reliability in mind, while working with multiple formats and outputs for real-world practicality.

These switchers incorporate multiviewers, making cabling and installation simpler and reducing points of vulnerability. In addition, AI updates to the software-defined FOR-A IMPULSE live production platform will be shown.

See FOR-A at IBC 2026 stand 2.B53.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—The Audio Engineering Society has elected David v.R. Bowles to serve as the group’s new president-elect in 2027.

He’ll join the AES board of directors as president-elect on Jan. 1, then succeed Cesar Lamschtein as the group’s president in 2028. He’ll then serve a year on the board as past president in 2029, followed by a subsequent two-year term as an agency governor.

The society’s newly elected regional vice presidents and governors will serve for two-year terms beginning on Jan. 1, 2027. The new AES vice presidents are: Malik Williams, VP, Eastern Region, U.S./Canada; Jess Berg, VP, Western Region, U.S./Canada; and Merlijn van Veen, VP, Northern Region, Europe.

Newly elected as at-large governors are Helen Caddes, Ivo Marković and Angela Piva. Valerie Tyler was reelected as Secretary.

“As a volunteer-driven professional membership society, the AES board elections are a critical part of our operations,” outgoing AES President Brecht De Man said. “I want to congratulate the elected leaders for 2027 and look forward to working with each of them. I am also very grateful to each and every potential candidate, whether nominated to be on the ballot or not, and hope the Society is always supported by this level of volunteer energy and commitment.”

The members of the 2027 AES board are:

• Cesar Lamschtein, president
• Brecht De Man, past president
• David v.R. Bowles, president-elect
• Valerie Tyler, secretary
• Jayant Datta, treasurer
• Agnieszka Roginska, director

One additional director will be elected by the AES board of governors within the next 60 days.

In addition to the board members, the following AES members will serve on its 2027 board of governors:

• Masataka Nakahara, VP, Asia-Pacific Region
• Merlijn van Veen, VP, Northern Region, Europe
• Piotr Majdak, VP, Central Region, Europe
• Huseyin Hacihabiboglu, VP, Southern Europe/Middle East/Africa Region
• Ezequiel Morfi, VP, Latin American Region
• Malik Williams, VP, Eastern Region, USA/Canada
• Kelvin Grimble, VP, Central Region, USA/Canada
• Jess Berg, VP, Western Region, USA/Canada
• Jamie Baker, governor
• Fariuska Lira Barully, governor
• Leslie Gaston-Bird: governor
• Helen Caddes, governor
• Gary Gottlieb, governor
• Ivo Marković, governor
• Angela Piva, governor
• Bernarda Ubidia, governor

LONDON—As consumers continue to feel pressure from the rising cost of living, one researcher predicts that the increasing popularity of ad-supported streaming subscription services will reshape the streaming business.

According to Ampere Analysis, ad tiers are now the dominant monetization model in North America, and the research firm expects them to account for more than half (54%) of total subscription streaming service revenues in the region by year-end. As the world;s most mature streaming market increasingly relies on advertising to drive growth, Ampere says the region offers a clear indication of where the global streaming market is heading.

Ampere expects revenues from advertising alone will exceed $18 billion in North America this year, accounting for more than one-fifth of total subscription OTT revenues for the first time.

To illustrate how this could influence the world market, North America currently dominates the global ad-supported subscription OTT market, accounting for nearly 60% of global revenue. Platforms in this region benefit from stronger subscription ARPUs, higher CPMs, a more mature connected-TV advertising environment and a greater consumer acceptance of ads. As subscriber growth slows elsewhere, the region is suggesting the direction of travel for the global streaming market, Ampere said. Consumer goods and retail companies are leading the shift to streaming advertising, with Procter & Gamble, Amazon and Walmart accounting for 22% of U.S. subscription OTT advertising impressions so far in 2026.

Amazon’s Prime Video, which began charging subscribers a monthly fee to skip ads starting in 2023, leads the North American ad-supported subscription OTT market, with revenues expected to exceed $14 billion in 2026. In contrast, Netflix and Disney+ have encouraged users to choose their ad tiers, offering a lower price point and fewer ads.

"Advertising has become a fundamental part of streamers' business models, changing both how success is measured and the content they commission,” Ampere Analysis Research Manager Rory Gooderick said. “As subscriber growth slows in mature markets, the focus has shifted towards driving engagement and habitual viewing. The challenge now is to increase monetization without compromising the premium viewing experience that these streamers have spent years cultivating.”

BURBANK, Calif.—Matthews, a global provider of grip gear for professional media production, has introduced the Monitor Stand III, the latest evolution of the company's trusted rolling monitor support.

To benefit today’s on-set workflow, Monitor Stand III adds straight-tracking, dual-locking casters that glide seamlessly across any set, with V-shaped brakes that lock in at three points of contact, so the rig stays put exactly where it's placed. A new tough black forge-texture finish adds durability and a premium look.

The stand can be paired with the optional bolt-on Battery Tray to place a battery at the base, freeing up the risers to support monitors and other equipment above.

The Monitor Stand III features a new black forge-texture finish, along with reinforced braces and an integrated carry handle. A 1/4-"-20 tapped baby pin provides an extra mounting point for flags and accessories, while an ultra-low 5.5"/14cm base height allows the stand to slide under furniture. A Rocky Mountain leveling leg is included to handle uneven surfaces, and the stand offers a 70-lb/31.75kg weight capacity supported by straight-tracking casters and 3-point V-brakes.

The Monitor Stand III has a minimum loading height of 31 inches (78 centimeters) and a maximum loading height of 69 inches (175 cm), with a base height of 5.5 inches (14 cm). It weighs 20 pounds (9 kilograms), carries a capacity of 70 lbs. (32 kg), and incorporates a 1/4"-20 thread.

The stand is fully serviceable, made entirely of nuts and bolts with replacement parts available from the company's Burbank factory.

The Monitor Stand III (SKU 249574) is available now. The optional Battery Tray (SKU 861837) and Battery Tray with Jr Pin (SKU 861836) are also shipping.

Tom Keller, broadcast pioneer and former executive with the National Association of Broadcasters died July 19, 2026 at the age of 96.

Keller, who began his career in broadcasting as Director of Engineering for WGBH in Boston for 18 years, went on to serve as head of NAB’s Science and Technology department in the 1980s, helping establish the Advanced Television Systems Committee and overseeing the Advanced Television Terrestrial Broadcast Project, which provided transmission/reception of early HDTV technologies used for demonstrations to the FCC and Congress. Keller was a Lifetime Fellow of SMPTE and a senior member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society.

A recipient of NAB’s Television Engineering Award in 2011, Keller spent over 50 years working in the U.S. television broadcast industry, contributing significant achievements to broadcast engineering development and emerging as a leading technical innovator. As president of technology consulting firm T. Keller Corp., he led development and extensive laboratory and field studies of new technologies for broadcasting. Among his accomplishments, Keller created an early computerized captioning system for the hearing-impaired and engineered one of the first Electronic Field Production programs ever produced for network release.

SBE President Kevin Trueblood, CBTE, CBNT issued the following statement:

"Tom's extraordinary career provided the vision and technical leadership that helped shape modern broadcasting. From advancing closed captioning and television audio standards to helping establish ATSC and guiding the development of digital television, his contributions have had a lasting impact on our industry."

Keller, from South Yarmouth, Mass., is survived by six children, seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

NEW YORK—The New York Jets and CBS New York have inked a multi-year extension of their deal that will provide fans with preseason game broadcasts, Jets shoulder programming, and exclusive team content.

The deal continues their 28-year relationship and re-establishes the station as the official broadcast home of the New York Jets.

The Jets preseason coverage begins on Friday, August 14 when the team hosts the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium (7:00 p.m. ET). On Friday, August 21, the team will make the trip to Pittsburgh to take on the Steelers at Acrisure Stadium (7:00 p.m. ET). The final tilt of the preseason slate will be the annual summer contest against the New York Giants (Friday, August 28, 7:30 p.m. ET) in Preseason Week 3.

All preseason games will air on CBS New York and stream on Paramount +.

“For nearly three decades, CBS New York has been a trusted partner in helping us connect with Jets fans across the region,” said Hymie Elhai, president, New York Jets. “This extension builds on that longstanding relationship and allows us to deliver even more access, insight and exclusive content to our fans. From live preseason coverage to behind-the-scenes programming and new team-focused shows, we’re excited to continue bringing Jets football to fans year-round through CBS New York.”

As the 2026 NFL preseason kicks off, the collaboration will feature exclusive behind-the-scenes content produced by “1JD Films,” including preseason and offseason special programming that the station said will bring fans closer to the action than ever before.

Throughout the season, Jets fans can also tune in to a robust lineup of team-focused programming, including “Jets GameDay,” “Jets Late Night,” and “The Official Jets Podcast.” As part of the refreshed programming slate, “Jets GameDay” will replace the former “Coaches' Show,” while “The Official Jets Podcast” will deliver new perspectives and expanded coverage of the team year-round.

"The New York Jets have been an outstanding partner for decades, and we're proud to continue this relationship for years to come," said Johnny Green Jr., regional president and general manager of CBS New York and CBS Boston. "As we extend the partnership past 30 years this reflects our shared commitment to serving fans, and continuing to work together to deliver compelling content and support impactful community initiatives that engage our audiences and Jets fans across the region."

ATLANTA—At the 2026 IBC Show, Sept. 11-14 in Amsterdam, swXtch.io will launch groundSwXtch for Audio over IP (AoIP), a software application that lets broadcasters and media organizations move audio in all major AoIP formats, including Ravenna, AES67 and ST 2110-30, between facilities and into the cloud over standard IP networks, including the public internet.

The application achieves this without codec hardware and without reconfiguring switches or routers to support multicast. By carrying audio in its native, uncompressed form end to end, groundSwXtch preserves bit-identical quality while removing the encode/decode latency, hardware cost and deployment complexity that come with traditional AoIP transport, according to the company.

Unlike current methods, which mostly rely on dedicated codec pairs to move audio between facilities by compressing, transporting over a standard connection and decoding on arrival, groundSwXtch removes that step by carrying the existing multicast AoIP streams on a facility's network across the connecting network (WAN, 5G or public internet) through a centrally managed software overlay.

A lightweight application on standard hardware/servers or virtual machines forms the overlay and moves native AoIP traffic across existing IP infrastructure, including over switches and routers that were never configured for multicast routing. Broadcasters connect studios, production centers, remote facilities and data centers into one unified fabric without touching physical network hardware, with built-in packet protection for hybrid links including SMPTE ST 2022-7 hitless failover, and a single-pane view of every flow, according to swXtch.io.

Because groundSwXtch shares its core architecture with swXtch.io's cloudSwXtch platform, the two can be paired to extend the same multicast fabric into the cloud—giving broadcasters one hybrid network spanning on-premises and cloud environments rather than separate ground and cloud workflows.

Timing accuracy across that fabric is maintained through integrated clock synchronization including support for PTP, preserving the accuracy required for live production, intercom systems and distributed audio mixing. Because groundSwXtch transports AoIP streams natively in their original format, with no compression or transcoding at any point, audio arrives exactly as it left the source.

swXtch.io has validated groundSwXtch with broadcast and professional audio partners across live sports and remote event production, intercom connectivity between facilities, distributed audio mixing, remote production for entertainment venues, and radio workflows linking studios, newsrooms and regional bureaus into a single software-defined audio network.

"For decades, the industry has focused on making audio codecs faster and more efficient," said Brent Yates, CEO of swXtch.io. "We took a different approach by asking whether broadcasters need codecs at all. If audio already exists as native AoIP and we provide an IP network that can transport it reliably, removing that encode-and-decode layer simplifies infrastructure, lowers costs and preserves the integrity of the original signal. groundSwXtch allows broadcasters to move audio exactly as it was created while making distributed production far easier to deploy and scale."

swXtch.io will demonstrate groundSwXtch for Audio over IP during IBC2026 in meeting room 5.MR13 (Hall 5) in the RAI Amsterdam.

CINCINNATI—GatesAir will launch its next-generation Maxiva XTK software-defined exciter at IBC2026, Sept. 11-14 at the RAI Amsterdam, positioning the platform as the next-generation signal processing engine for its Maxiva family of digital television and DAB/DAB+ radio transmitters.

Designed to support broadcasters across worldwide digital transmission standards, Maxiva XTK combines exceptional signal processing power, advanced Transport over IP (TSoIP) capabilities and software-defined flexibility to simplify digital broadcasting today while preparing networks for tomorrow's transmission technologies.

Maxiva XTK delivers optimal signal quality across all major digital television standards worldwide, including DVB-T2, ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0, ISDB-Tb and Brazil’s emerging DTV+, while extending the same software-defined architecture to DAB and DAB+ networks, according to GatesAir. Its advanced FPGA-based platform significantly increases processing capacity and incorporates sophisticated Real-Time Adaptive Correction techniques that optimize signal performance across a wide range of RF amplifier configurations, ensuring reliable, high-performance operation for broadcasters regardless of network architecture.

Designed as the next-generation software-defined exciter for GatesAir's Maxiva transmitter portfolio, the XTK establishes a common technology platform that supports today's transmission requirements while creating a flexible foundation for future digital standards through simple firmware updates in the field. The modular architecture also provides a path for optional internal satellite and RF input capabilities, further extending the platform's long-term value, the company said.

The Maxiva XTK comes standard across GatesAir's newest Maxiva television transmitter platforms and is fully compatible with previous-generation Maxiva UHF and VHF transmitters, as well as many Harris legacy digital television systems. The platform's backwards-compatible design enables broadcasters to modernize signal processing while preserving existing transmission infrastructure, reducing upgrade costs and simplifying transitions to new digital standards.

GatesAir will be in Stand 8.B75 during the show.

President Donald Trump has nominated Danielle Thumann Severs, who is a senior counsel to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, to serve on one of the two open seats on the commission.

The nomination was sent to the U.S. Senate on Friday, where it will go through a formal process for confirmation.

“Danielle is a dedicated public servant and has consistently delivered policy wins from bridging the digital divide and protecting consumers to advancing public safety,” Carr said on X, congratulating Thumann on her nomination.

“I am deeply humbled and honored by President Trump’s nomination to serve in this role,” Thumann Severs said on X. “I look forward to the Senate confirmation process and, if confirmed, to serving our country with dedication and gratitude.”

Thumann Severs advises Carr on matters before the Wireline Bureau, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, according to her FCC biography.

She rejoined then-Commissioner Carr’s office in August 2024 after working in the private sector on government relations matters for Crown Castle, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Thumann Severs previously served as legal advisor in Commissioner Carr’s office from March 2021 until July 2023. Before that, she worked as a communications attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Wilkinson Barker Knauer.

In 2016, she earned her J.D. from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, where she was associate editor of the Law Review.

Thumann Severs received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Implications

The FCC requires a quorum of three commissioners to conduct commission business, according to the Communications Act. That’s how it has been operating since Olivia Trusty, a Republican, was confirmed by the Senate last year.

The quorum does not have to include members of both political parties. However, the statute limits the commission to no more than three commissioners from the same political party.

“Serving on this commission is one of the most rewarding jobs in government,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat commissioner, said in congratulating Thumann Severs on X. “I look forward to continuing our work together, hopefully soon with a full commission of five, the way this agency was built to operate.”

In response to the nomination, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt also congratulated her.

“NAB congratulates Danielle Thumann Severs on her nomination to the FCC," LeGeyt said in a statement. "Danielle is a dedicated public servant who is well regarded across all sectors of the communications bar. Her extensive experience at the Commission and deep understanding of communications policy will serve her well in this important role. We look forward to working with her throughout the confirmation process and, if confirmed, as a commissioner.”

We’ll update this story with more information as it is warranted.

[This article originally appeared in our sister publication Radio World. You can access their extensive tech, business and regulatory coverage here.]

WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has appointed Keelin Ferris as Legal Advisor in the Office of the Chairman.

Following Callie Coker’s move into the private sector earlier this summer, Ferris will join the Office to focus on matters before the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

“The FCC works day in and day out on issues ranging from emergency alerts to protecting consumers from scams callers, from disaster recovery to modernizing our communications networks,” Carr said. “Keelin brings her talents and work ethic to the FCC to help us do this critical work for the American people – and it doesn’t hurt that she’s a graduate such an esteemed law school. I am happy to welcome her to the great FCC workforce.”

Prior to joining the FCC, Ms. Ferris was an associate at a creditor’s rights law firm. She earned her Juris Doctorate from Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law and Technology and obtained a Certificate in Data Privacy and Communications from the Law and Technology Institute. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science and data science from American University where she played Division 1 soccer.

NEW YORK—Nielsen Holdings has announced a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleVerify in an all-cash transaction valued at about $2.15 billion.

DoubleVerify is a leading software platform that offers solutions for verifying media quality, optimizing ad performance, and proving campaign outcomes.

The deal comes at a time when Nielsen faces increasing competition from a number of other companies and many industry players continue to express frustration with the state of audience measurement in the streaming era.

The combination, Nielsen said, would to provide clients clear, verified, and independent data and would help advertisers improve their campaigns and outcomes.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.

“Over the last few years, Nielsen has undergone a fundamental transformation — accelerating product innovation; expanding our platform across the full media lifecycle, from discovery and planning through measurement and outcomes; and strengthening our financial foundation,” Karthik Rao, CEO of Nielsen, said in announcing the deal.

“This combination will unite two organizations focused on strengthening independence and trust in advertising, Rao continued. “Joining forces with DoubleVerify will extend our capabilities deeper into the digital media industry, ensuring that the spend flowing between buyers and sellers is reaching real people in brand-suitable environments, through verified channels. As advertising workflows become increasingly automated, together we can offer publishers, advertisers, agencies, and platforms a truly independent, end-to-end partner that connects trusted audience intelligence with verified media delivery — across every screen, every channel, and every transaction – enabling superior decisions and outcomes.”

“Today’s announcement is an exciting milestone for DoubleVerify,” added Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “As a private entity with the support of Nielsen, we will have access to expanded resources to deliver new, market-leading solutions that drive exceptional value for our customers and partners. DoubleVerify’s MRC-accredited quality signals, in combination with Nielsen’s deduplicated cross-screen audience measurement, will fuel genuine market innovation – a single currency that scores media on both audience delivery and media environment quality. I’m proud of the strong momentum we’ve built for DoubleVerify as the leading media effectiveness platform, the strength of our AI-powered measurement and optimization platform, and the exceptional work of our team.

Nielsen described the key benefits of the transaction as follows:

• Extends Nielsen’s Platform Across the Full Media Intelligence Stack: Nielsen’s platform already spans the entire media lifecycle — from content discovery and audience planning through cross-platform measurement and outcome attribution. DoubleVerify adds the layer of independent verification that the impressions underpinning every campaign are real, viewable, brand-suitable, and free from invalid traffic. Today, advertisers must reconcile these signals across separate vendors. The combination unifies them into a single, integrated platform covering audience, context, and delivery quality.
• Expands Nielsen’s Addressable Market into High-Growth Digital Channels: DoubleVerify sits at the operational core of how digital advertising is bought and sold, with integrations embedded into the day-to-day workflows of the platforms, publishers, and agency groups that execute the world’s largest campaigns. Nielsen products already power media decisions across television, streaming, audio, and sports. By coming together, Nielsen will reach across the full breadth of the $240 billion digital advertising segment, giving clients a better partner as budgets continue to shift toward digital channels. The combination delivers global, end-to-end, independent, transparent measurement and optimization across linear TV, CTV, social, mobile and AI platforms.
• Preserves Independent Verification Standards the Industry Depends On: The combined company will continue to support the open, independent standards that are highly valued by global advertisers. This includes preserving DoubleVerify’s industry-leading capabilities in invalid traffic detection, viewability and brand suitability.
• Helps Enable a Reliable, Trusted Shift to AI in Advertising: As AI-driven planning, activation, and optimization shape how campaigns are built and executed, the combined company will help enable the advertising industry to adopt AI with confidence, with the verified data, outcome signals, infrastructure, and platform integrations necessary to execute the spectrum of advertising workflows.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nielsen will acquire DoubleVerify for $13.60 per share in an all-cash transaction, representing a 30% premium to DoubleVerify’s 60-trading day volume weighted average price as of August 5, 2026. The value per share implies an enterprise value of approximately $2.15 billion for DoubleVerify.

The transaction, which has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2027, subject to approval by DoubleVerify shareholders, receipt of required regulatory approvals, and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.

The transaction will be financed through a combination of committed debt financing provided by Barclays, BofA Securities and Citi, incremental equity financing and cash on hand at Nielsen.

Upon completion of the transaction, DoubleVerify will become a privately held company as part of Nielsen and DoubleVerify common stock will no longer be listed on any public market. DoubleVerify will continue to operate under the DoubleVerify name and brand.

Funds affiliated with Providence Equity Partners LLC (“Providence”) that own approximately 11.8% of DoubleVerify’s outstanding shares of common stock as of August 5, 2026, have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the transaction. As part of the transaction, Providence will conclude its investment upon close.

DENVER—MediaKind will make its first major appearance as a unified global provider of video infrastructure solutions during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

MediaKind will present unified demonstrations showing how it is already sharing technology across its portfolio, demonstrating rapid progress in integrating capabilities across its on-premises and SaaS ecosystems.

“We’re bringing our teams and technologies together at speed,” said MediaKind CEO Allen Broome. “Customers can rely on the products they use today, while benefiting from deeper integration, a broader portfolio and faster innovation.”

Many of these capabilities were used during the recent World Cup where MediaKind supported more than 20 brands and delivered 3 billion streams. These customer deployments ensured reliability with peak viewing concurrency exceeding 20 million across MK.IO and VOS360.

MediaKind technology and demonstrations will also be featured across selected partner stands throughout the show, highlighting the strength and reach of its broader technology ecosystem.

See MediaKind at IBC 2026 stand 1.D71.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SACRAMENTO—A sternly worded ruling from a federal judge in California has found that Nexstar violated a preliminary injunction pausing completion of its acquisition of Tegna. The judge also ordered the station group to remove its employees from Tegna’s board of directors.

“Defendants cannot convincingly argue that having Nexstar executives serve on Tegna’s Board complies with the preliminary injunction,” ruled Judge Troy Nunley in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. “Defendants’ hyper-technical reading that the Order does not contain a similar prohibition on Nexstar employees or officers serving as Tegna directors is entirely disingenuous — especially given that the Order refers to officers because that is how Nexstar worded its modification request. It is clearly the spirit of the preliminary injunction that Nexstar executives would be prohibited from serving as not just Tegna officers, but Tegna directors as well. It is shocking that Defendants think installing a Board of Directors comprised primarily of Nexstar executives would not create influence over Tegna management. This undermines Tegna as an independent entity and violates the preliminary injunction.”

Judge Nunley in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California is presiding over an antitrust case brought against the $6.2 billion Nextstar/Tegna deal by by DirecTV, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, State of Oregon, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia.

In the August 5 order, which became publicly available on August 6, Judge Nunley also required that Nexstar must reconstitute Tegna's board to exclude Nexstar employees. Within 10 days, Nexstar must also file a status report identifying its actions to ensure compliance with Judge Nunley’s preliminary injunction and within 7 days, Nexstar must comply with the plaintiffs’ outstanding discovery requests regarding compliance.

In the future, Nunley also ruled that Nexstar must provide monthly financial and other reports, as requested by plaintiffs to ensure compliance with the preliminary injunction and that within 14 days, Nexstar and plaintiffs must jointly file a stipulation and proposed order appointing a Special Master to oversee compliance with the preliminary injunction.

The Judge also admonished Nexstar for not notifying the court that it had appointed Nexstar executives to the board.

“Through the instant motion, the Court has learned for the first time that, on the very day the motion for temporary restraining order (“TRO”) was filed, three Nexstar officials were appointed to TEGNA’s Board,” the Judge complained. “Yet, Defendants never disclosed this material information to the Court — not in briefing on the TRO, not in their TRO compliance report, not in seeking modification of the TRO, not during the preliminary injunction hearing, nor in the months following the preliminary injunction. Defendants repeatedly failed to disclose material information to this Court, declined to seek Court guidance or relief, and then publicly declared that the Court had “approved” their actions.”

In response to the ruling, Nexstar issued a statement saying "We will comply with the Court’s order, including its requirements regarding TEGNA’s Board and the compliance process going forward. We remain focused on defending the transaction on the merits and strengthening local broadcasting for communities across America.”

TORONTO—Nolia Studios, a new AI-native film studio has launched under the leadership of award-winning filmmaker Bob Gaudette and veteran TV producer and creative director Kirk Hipkiss.

The launch follows the international success of Gaudette’s short film “A Face Only a Mother Could Love,” which has emerged as one of the most recognized AI films of the year. The eight-minute film earned the $50,000 Grand Prix at the 2026 Runway AI Festival, Best Picture at the OMNI International Film Festival, Best AI Film at the New York International Film Awards and the David Harold Blackwell Award for AI & Emerging Technology Film at The Eudaimonia Project Film Festival. It was also named a finalist at the 2026 Reply AI Film Festival in Venice.

Building on that momentum, Nolia Studios has been established as a dedicated, slate-driven production company focused on original intellectual property across film, television and emerging formats. The company formalizes a creative partnership that has been developing over the past year between Gaudette and Hipkiss through AI-driven film and broadcast projects.

Nolia Studios is currently developing a slate of original projects spanning short-form, feature and serialized content. Among these is “The Little Cloud Thief,” an animated property in development for both feature and episodic adaptation.

The launch of Nolia Studios is supported by Hipkiss’ broader production infrastructure through Radical Point Media, an established animation, visual effects, motion graphics and generative AI studio. The company is currently delivering CG and AI-driven production work for major broadcasters and platforms, including projects for Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and A+E Global Media, while continuing to support original IP development alongside client productions.

More information is available on the studio’s website.

COLUMBIA, Md.—LTN has expanded capabilities for its Live Event Master Control, providing sports broadcasters, leagues, rights holders and content owners with a more flexible and scalable approach to managing live event distribution.

Built on the LTN Network, the enhanced master control solution combines low latency IP transport, cloud-native playout, automation, scheduling, monitoring, graphics and optional operator-assisted services for live sports and events into a unified platform designed for live sports and events.

LTN’s Live Event Master Control capabilities have supported more than 20,000 live sporting events and broadcasts for leading broadcasters, sports leagues and content owners worldwide. The latest enhancements streamline live MCR workflows with greater automation, visibility and flexibility across live production workflows.

Its capabilities enable users to launch and manage complex workflows without the cost, time and infrastructure requirements traditionally associated with dedicated control rooms and on-premises systems.

The latest capabilities include:

• Automated workflows for frame accurate routing, graphics, ad signaling and playback.
• Enriched graphics, including integration with upstream data sources.
• Picture in picture, squeeze backs and other unique on-screen layouts. 
• Multi-language support, including captioning and announcer integration.
• Deep audio manipulation and video transformation.
• Advanced transmission and video/audio payload monitoring.

LTN’s platform enables customers to leverage LTN-hosted workflows running across the company’s purpose-built global IP video network.

Users can choose between:

• Live Event Master Control services operated by LTN experts.
• Self-service workflows powered by LTN’s scheduling, automation and monitoring software.
• Hybrid models that combine customer-provided operations with LTN’s managed services and technical support.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WUPPERTAL, Germany—Riedel Communications will feature the Live Production Experience, a connected demonstration that follows the production chain from image capture and signal transport to live switching, replay, audio processing, monitoring, control, communications and delivery during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Rather than presenting each technology in isolation, Riedel will show how its systems can work together within a coordinated, IP-focused environment to simplify operations and give production teams a more consistent and flexible way to build, run and evolve their workflows.

At the center of the demonstration are the SimplyLive Production Suite Flex, now expanded with SMPTE ST 2110-capable server configurations; MediorNet’s hybrid SDI-IP and native ST 2110 capabilities; SAME audio processing; and hi human interface as the overarching control and orchestration layer. With ARRI camera technology at the point of image capture, the demonstration makes the end-to-end vision tangible by connecting the production workflow within one coordinated IP environment.

Riedel will also make the IBC premieres of the MediorNet HorizoN ST 2110 MultiViewer App, the DSP-1216HL Commentary Control App and the StageLink NSA008-A as well as unveil intercom and audio developments.

SimplyLIveRiedel will highlight new Flex server configurations adding SMPTE ST 2110 to the SimplyLive platform’s existing support for SDI, SRT NDI, and other video workflows. The expansion broadens deployment choices and allows SimplyLive to fit more directly into ST 2110 production environments and Riedel’s wider IP infrastructure.

Further enhancements bring new capabilities and greater operational flexibility to the SimplyLive software suite. Alongside integration with SKAARHOJ control panels, Riedel will showcase new Venue Gateway options.

MediorNetThe new MediorNet HorizoN ST 2110 MultiViewer App expands native IP capabilities and reinforces HorizoN’s role in modern ST 2110-based infrastructures. The new app brings multiviewing directly into the MediorNet processing environment. It extends Riedel’s established multiviewer approach into native IP environments while maintaining the operational flexibility required for modern live production.

hi human interfaceRiedel's hi human interface is a vendor-agnostic control and orchestration platform. Browser-based, platform-independent and vendor-agnostic, hi enables operators to configure, control, and manage routers, multiviewers, video and audio mixers, software-defined networks (SDNs) and other third-party technologies with a unified interface.

Supporting baseband, IP or hybrid infrastructures, hi adapts to different users, operational roles, and production environments.

Smart Audio and Edge ConnectivityRiedel will showcase its SAME Smart Audio & Mixing Engine, an advanced audio processing software suite built on commercial off-the-shelf server cluster technology. Designed for scalable and automated workflows, SAME provides flexible processing resources that can adapt to changing production requirements.

Its distributed approach separates audio processing from individual physical workspaces, allowing resources to be accessed and managed across different locations. This supports a broad range of applications, including mixing, monitoring, voice-over, loudness management, signal analysis and in-line processing.

At the edge of the network, Riedel’s expanding StageLink Network Stream Adapter family provides compact, rugged devices for decentralized audio and intercom connectivity over standard IP networks. At IBC, Riedel will premiere the new StageLink NSA008-A, supporting flexible signal distribution within Artist, Bolero and wider IP audio environments.

Bolero and Bolero MiniThe company will introduce enhancements across its Bolero wireless intercom portfolio with new 5G filtering for Bolero antennas and beltpacks. The enhancements are designed to increase resilience in demanding RF environments and support reliable communications in increasingly congested production settings. Bolero beltpacks will also feature a refreshed, more robust hardware design, along with new RF-resilient options.

Bolero Mini complements the full-size Bolero beltpack. It combines four programmable keys and dedicated volume controls with the audio performance, RF capabilities, Bluetooth connectivity, and operational concepts of the wider Bolero ecosystem.

The company will also feature:

• The Artist Ecosystem with Virtual SmartPanel and 1200 Series SmartPanels.
• Easy5G private 5G network support.
• DIVA+ managed technology for complex live events environments.

See Riedel Communications at IBC 2026 Stands 10.A24, 10.A31 and 10.A38.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Kevin Trueblood will return for a second term as president of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

The association announced the results of the 2026 election for its national board of directors.

Trueblood, who holds CBRE and CBNT certifications and is a member of Chapter 90 Southwest Florida, is the 34th person to hold the role of president. (See a list of all SBE presidents.)

A member since 2008, Trueblood also is a former SBE VP, secretary, treasurer and board member. He is the president of KTrue Media Services, which provides technical solutions for broadcast, digital and IT needs and is based in Fort Myers, Fla. He does that contract work in addition to his full-time job as associate general manager for WGCU Public Media.

The newly elected will be sworn in during the SBE National Meeting next month, held in conjunction with the Midwest Regional Broadcasters Clinic in Madison, Wis.

SBE has approximately 4,000 members in 117 chapters in the United States, Hong Kong and Eastern Europe; there are members in more than 25 other countries.

Geary S. Morrill, CPBE, AMD, CBNE, of Chapter 91 Central Michigan, has been reelected vice president, and Shane Toven, CPBE, DRB, CBNE of Chapter 43 Sacramento) was reelected to a third term as SBE secretary.

Those three roles were uncontested in the election.

Charles “Ched” Keiler, CPBE, 8-VSB, ATSC3, CBNE, of Chapter 53 South Florida, was reelected treasurer, running against Greg Dahl.

Six people were elected from among eight candidates to serve two-year terms on the board of directors (asterisks are incumbents who return):

• David Antoine*, CBRE, CBNT; Chapter 15 New York City; Charleston, SC
• Dustin Hapli*, CBNE; Chapter 26 Chicago; Chicago, IL
• Joseph Geerling, CPBE, CBNT; Chapter 55 St. Louis; St. Louis, MO
• Jeff Juniet*, CBTE; Chapter 42 Central Florida; Casselberry, FL
• Tom Ray, CPBE, AMD, DRB; Chapter 15 New York City; New Windsor, NY
• Dustin Tatro, CBRE; Chapter 67 North Texas; Abilene, TX
• Those join six others who are in the middle of two-year board terms.

Read a history of the SBE.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

RASTATT, Germany—Lawo will feature the latest additions to its HOME ecosystem as well as the European debut of Edge One, the company’s latest software release for the mc² production console family and Power Core during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The company will also showcase a live implementation of its Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) approach.

Together, the innovations show how broadcasters, production companies and media organizations can increase operational agility, maximize infrastructure utilization and adapt resources dynamically to changing production demands.

The company’s HOME management and orchestration platform enables device discovery, security, authentication and control across IP-based media infrastructures. Combined with HOME Apps, Lawo’s portfolio of server-based processing microservices, HOME allows processing resources to be deployed, scaled and reassigned wherever they are needed independent of dedicated hardware.

A key highlight will be Lawo’s live demonstration of Dynamic Media Facilities, showcasing how broadcasters can dynamically allocate processing resources across studios, central facilities, remote-production environments and hybrid infrastructures. Lawo will demonstrate a working production environment showing its software-based dynamic media facilities are a practical reality today.

It will also highlight a technology collaboration with Grass Valley focused on validating orchestration, control and media exchange integration between Grass Valley AMPP and Lawo HOME, both aligned with an open system approach and the EBU Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) initiative.

The company will also unveil two new HOME Apps dedicated to graphics processing. Designed for broadcasters, live production facilities and media infrastructure operators, the applications expand HOME’s capabilities beyond signal processing and orchestration into branding, graphics compositing and real-time broadcast presentation.

Lawo will also make the European trade show introduction of Edge One, a new approach to audio and video connectivity for broadcast and Pro AV applications. Combining video, audio, networking and processing capabilities in a compact platform, Edge One makes edge connectivity more flexible while reducing equipment footprint, cabling complexity and deployment effort.

The platform combines bi-directional SDI connectivity, HDMI, MADI, USB-C audio, GPIO, synchronization interfaces and interchangeable audio I/O modules in a single device. User-swappable modules allow rapid adaptation for studio, venue, remote-production, flypack or commentary applications.

As a native SMPTE ST 2110 platform supporting up to 25 Gbps network bandwidth, Edge One integrates seamlessly into modern IP infrastructures while also serving as a standalone solution for audio embedding, de-embedding, shuffling and signal transport workflows. Supporting Lawo FLEX, Edge One is available in Audio, Video, and Audio + Video configurations.

Lawo will also show its mc² Software Release 12.4, delivering workflow enhancements for live production and broadcast applications. New capabilities include Real-Time Analyzer support for signal analysis and visual feedback, zoom module pop-ups for improved touch operation, enhanced third-party input-stage control through a new HOME data model, external channel preset recall via Ember+, sample-based delay adjustment for finer timing precision and API-key authentication for secure MCX-to-HOME connectivity. The company will also preview mc² Release 12.6.

The company will highlight its latest Power Core software release, which adds support for the Lawo OnAir Designer and introduces a new five-band equalizer featuring four parametric bands plus an additional filter band.

See Lawo at IBC 2026 stand 8.B90.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WASHINGTON—In a landmark vote likely to encourage a wave of deals in the broadcast business, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change TV-station ownership rules to allow it to approve mergers that exceed its national audience-reach caps on a case-by-case basis if the transactions are deemed “in the public interest.”

The 2-1 party-line vote, with Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez dissenting, was applauded by broadcasters who have lobbied for decades to end the caps. It is likely, however, to face lengthy legal challenges from opponents who argue the ownership limits can only be changed by Congress.

Shortly after the vote, the public-interest group Free Press announced plans to file a lawsuit against the FCC, calling the order an “unlawful power grab” because the caps were established by law and only Congress has the authority to change them.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who proposed the changes as a way to protect local news and help TV stations better compete in a media landscape dominated by big tech and large streamers like Netflix, stressed the importance of localism and the need to strengthen the economics of local news as the prime reasons for approving the changes.

“I don't want local broadcast TV to go the way of local newspapers, and yet the risk is real,” Carr said, adding that over the last two decades “more than 80% of local journalism jobs have vanished.”

Carr also stressed that the order would replace a “blunt instrument” of a rule capping any station group’s reach at 39% of the overall U.S. television audience with a nuanced, case-by-case approach.

“Maybe a deal that exceeds a 39% cap is a good one,” Carr said. “Maybe it’s a bad one. Today's decision lets the parties make their case, allows all stakeholders to be heard, ensures that the agency will decide, consistent with our public-interest review. We’re replacing a blunt instrument with a much more granular case-by-case approach.”

He also argued that “the FCC's legal authority to modify the national cap is also clear. The D.C. Circuit has already rejected the argument that Congress’s decision to pass a statute directing the agency to set the cap at a specific percentage prevents the FCC from later modifying the cap. The court stated that Congress's statutory instruction to the Commission to set the cap at a specific percentage determined, quote, only the starting point from which the Commission was to assess the need for further change.”

“The FCC has the authority to modify the cap as we do today, and it is the right policy answer to, if you care about the future of trusted local news,” he concluded. “It's time to restore balance to the broadcast airwaves. Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage and power of national programmers. Increased scale could enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted community-focused news and programming. We should learn from our mistake with local newspaper industry, and we should not let the same thing happen to local broadcast TV industry.”

As expected, Gomez opposed the order, arguing that “today's decision to eliminate the 39% national audience reach cap is unlawful on its face and a profound departure from both statutory boundaries and longstanding broadcasting policy. Congress set this cap in federal law, and only Congress can change it. I cannot support an action that so plainly violates the law and exceeds the Commission's authority while simultaneously overlooking the real-world consequences for the public we serve. The national cap matters, and Congress, not this Commission, controls its fate. Today's action undermines our core public interest principles of localism, viewpoint diversity, and competition, while failing to consider or to address the interconnected rules, market realities, and economic pressures that define today's media ecosystem.”

Gomez also cited a number of Republicans, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who helped pass legislation that included the 39% cap, who have argued that only Congress can change the cap.

In her comments before casting the second vote need to pass the proposal, Commissioner Olivia Trusty said: “Today’s vote recognizes that the media marketplace has changed dramatically, while many of our rules have not. When the national broadcast television ownership rule was last meaningfully updated, Netflix had not yet begun its streaming service. YouTube did not exist, and appointment television was still very much the norm. With many American families planning their evenings around linear broadcast schedules, now over two decades later, audiences have shifted from scheduled broadcasts to on-demand viewing, with millions opting for the convenience of near-endless streaming libraries. The data confirm these trends. Today, streaming viewership surpasses the combined share of broadcast and cable, and is more than double that of broadcast television alone. These changes have fundamentally altered the competitive landscape for local broadcasters.”

That means the caps are no longer “in the public interest” and needs to be repealed, she said.

The FCC proposal adopting “a case-by-case licensing approach is particularly appropriate, rather than relying on a rigid nationwide ownership cap, the Commission can evaluate each proposed transaction on its individual merits, considering specific competitive effects, local market conditions, and public interest benefits presented by the record,” she added. “That approach is firmly grounded in long-standing Commission practice and well-established principles of administrative law.”

In a statement, NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt applauded the move, saying “[t]he FCC’s decision to eliminate the outdated national television ownership cap marks a generational step toward strengthening local stations and ensuring they can compete in today’s media marketplace. We applaud Chairman Carr and the Commission for recognizing that rules adopted decades ago should not constrain local broadcasters’ ability to invest in journalism, innovation and service to their communities. Today the FCC helped level the playing field and strengthen local stations’ ability to deliver the trusted news and emergency information millions of Americans rely on.”

The American Television Alliance (ATVA), which is backed by the pay TV industry, released a statement condemning the move.

“The FCC’s decision to eliminate the national broadcast ownership cap is a serious setback for American consumers and local communities,” said ATVA Spokesman Hunter Wilson. “Congress established the 39% national ownership cap in 2004 to protect localism, viewpoint diversity and consumer choice. By eliminating this safeguard, the FCC has ignored Congressional intent and opened the door to unchecked ‘Big Broadcast’ consolidation that will drive up costs for viewers and reduce local news programming.”

In a statement, Nexstar, which got FCC approval for its acquisition of Tegna despite being over the cap, said the "FCC's decision to eliminate the broadcast ownership cap is a welcome, necessary and long-overdue recognition of today’s competitive landscape, which is dominated by legacy Big Media and Big Tech. For too long, local broadcasters were handcuffed from reaching the scale they needed to compete on a more level playing field by outdated federal rules that didn’t apply to the largest and most powerful companies like Google’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, or Netflix. Modernizing these rules will help ensure broadcasters can continue investing in local journalism and providing the free, trusted news and information that communities across America rely on every day."

SAN FRANCISCO—Hisense today began offering Dolby Vision 2 on select television sets, with more models to receive firmware updates bringing the High Dynamic Range technology to more Hisense TVs.

Dolby Laboratories’ Dolby Vision 2 will enable Hisense TV owners to notice a difference across all Dolby Vision content. From movies and TV to games and live sports, everything in Dolby Vision will look more captivating and authentic, offering a significant and immediate improvement to their Dolby Vision experience today.

Currently, CANAL+, iQIYI and Peacock have committed to using the expanded palette of Dolby Vision 2.

“Dolby Vision 2 sets a new standard for what television can look like, and today consumers can experience that difference for themselves,” said John Couling, senior vice president of entertainment at Dolby Laboratories. “With this update, the entertainment you love in Dolby Vision now looks even better, setting the stage for even more incredible experiences to come.”

Hisense’s 2026 UX, UR9, UR8 and U7 (U7 pro in the European Union, Middle East and Africa and Central and South America) televisions running Google TV or VIDAA OS will be the first to receive the update, unlocking Dolby Vision 2 over the coming weeks for consumers across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

“Hisense customers expect the best, and Dolby Vision 2 delivers on that promise," said Sonny Ming, general manager of TV product marketing department at Hisense. “The moment users turn on their Hisense TV, they’re immersed in lifelike visuals—delivering the vivid, true-to-life viewing experience Hisense displays are designed for.”

Dolby Vision 2 is available in two device tiers. It builds on the legacy of Dolby Vision, unlocking the full potential of modern displays while delivering a more authentic and uncompromised picture.

Powering all Dolby Vision 2 TVs is a powerful, new image engine, content intelligence and an intensity slider that allows users to control the depth and richness of their experience, the company said.

For premium TVs, Dolby Vision 2 Max adds unique capabilities designed for the highest-performing displays, including Hisense's UX, UR9, UR8, and U7 (U7 pro in EU, MEA, CSA).

Dolby Vision 2 Max features include:

• Authentic Motion, a creative-driven tool that delivers to TVs a more cinematic feel while eliminating unwanted judder and soap opera effects for newly authored titles.
• Light Sense 2, which continuously optimizes picture quality for any lighting environment without compromising artistic intent so that even the darkest scenes in a sunlit room become crystal clear.
• Pro settings that give enthusiasts even more precise control over how their display performs.

More information is available on the Dolby Laboratories website.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission announced the return of $881 million in unused funds from the TV Broadcaster Relocation Fund, known as the “Repack,” marking a significant milestone in the successful conclusion of the first-ever spectrum Incentive Auction.

Initiated on April 13, 2017, the Incentive Auction repurposed 84 megahertz of low-band broadcast spectrum for commercial and unlicensed wireless use, generating $19.3 billion in net winning bids.

The broadcast incentive auction was made up of two separate but interdependent auctions. One was a reverse auction, which determined the price at which broadcasters could voluntarily relinquish their spectrum usage rights; the second was a forward auction, which determined the price companies were willing to pay for flexible use wireless licenses.

As part of the the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 and the Reimbursement Expansion Act of 2018 $2.75 billion was allocated by Congress to reimburse broadcasters and other entities for costs incurred due to involuntary channel reassignments.

The Fund supported thousands of broadcasters through licensing, construction, and equipment removal efforts, ensuring a smooth transition to new channels.

“In support of the Trump Administration’s efforts to seek out government waste, we took a hard look at money sitting in our agency with an eye to limiting government spending and reducing wasteful programs,” FCC Chair Carr said in a statement. “As we come to the end of the Fiscal Year, we found the time was ripe to ‘clean house’ and ensure money does not sit languishing at the agency level when it can be given back to the U.S. Treasury for the financial benefits of the Nation.”

SAN ANTONIO, Texas—Video production and integration firm QuickLink has tapped Kane Peterson for its North American team as presales, customer success and product development engineer.

In the new post, Peterson is tasked with supporting North American customers with workflow consultation, presales guidance, onboarding and product development insights, the company said.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Kane to the QuickLink family,” QuickLink CEO Richard Rees said. “His extensive industry knowledge and customer‑centric approach make him an exceptional addition to our team as we continue expanding our presence and support across North America.”

A 34-year broadcast industry veteran, Peterson joins QuickLink after 14 years at NewTek, where he supported customers and advanced product capability. He stayed with that company through its acquisition by Vizrt, gaining additional experience in integrated production systems and IP-based workflows, QuickLink said.

“I’m excited to join QuickLink and contribute to a company that’s driving innovation in remote production and broadcast workflows,” Peterson said. “I’ve spent my career helping customers solve real‑world challenges and get the maximum functionality out of their systems, and I look forward to supporting QuickLink’s partners and users across North America as we continue to advance and evolve our solutions.”

QuickLink supplies more than 800 companies with software, hardware and cloud solutions for broadcast-quality multicamera video production and has been recognized with Emmy Awards and the Queen’s Award for Innovation.

For more information, visit its website.

The Walt Disney Co. and TikTok have struck what they call a first-of-its-kind global content-sharing deal that allows users of the social media platform to create content utilizing memorable scenes and moments from Disney movies and shows.

The agreement, which will pilot in the U.S. in the coming months with plans for other markets to follow, will bring a collection of what the two companies describe as “thoughtfully curated Disney-centric fan-created content” from TikTok to the Disney+ app.

At launch, short-form videos from participating creators will be live on both TikTok and Verts on Disney+, and will feature characters and stories from across Disney’s brands including Pixar, Marvel, “Star Wars,” FX and others.

The deal comes as content companies are scrambling to expand their offerings of vertical and short-form video content, which dominate viewing on social media. It also represents a notable embrace of fan-created content by Disney, which has a long history of protecting its brands from unauthorized use by creators, and a push by Disney to expand its connections to the creator economy.

As part of the deal, TikTok will offer participating creators access to assets related to hundreds of films and series from Disney’s library of franchises. Videos created through the program will be refreshed regularly on the Disney+ Verts feed, providing subscribers with another means of discovering Disney-related content.

“The best storytellers are fans first,” Asad Ayaz, Disney chief marketing and brand officer. “That has always been true at Disney, and today, fans are celebrating our stories in entirely new ways. This collaboration creates a new bridge between the stories we tell and the creativity they inspire, giving creators a bigger stage to share what they’ve made, and audiences more to discover on Disney+ every day.”

Added TikTok Global Head of Entertainment Dawn Yang: “Creators are at the heart of everything we do at TikTok. Their creativity extends the life of films and shows into conversations that fans discover and share. Together with Disney, we’re bringing the authentic creator expression of the TikTok community to Disney+, inviting audiences to experience the shared creativity that makes fandom so powerful.”

Through the jointly run Disney Creator Ambassador Program, Disney and TikTok will also help creators unlock special rewards and provide increased visibility, access to exclusive events and career development pathways, the companies said.

Disney said that this tiered program reflects its commitment to building relationships with the next generation of creative talent in partnership with TikTok.

In announcing the deal, Disney noted that fan-created content continues to play an increasingly important role in how audiences discover, engage and celebrate entertainment.

According to internal TikTok data, fans shared an average of 6.5 million film and TV-related posts on the platform each day last year. Nearly half of users said they went on to watch a movie or TV show on a streaming service or television after discovering it on TikTok, according to the platform.

At IBC 2026, Utah Scientific said it will highlight NBOSS, a software extension to the Utah Scientific Control System.

The extension enables seamless control of SMPTE ST 2110 IP media sources and destinations within the familiar Utah Scientific routing environment.

“The industry’s transition to IP is not a single event, but an ongoing evolution, and customers need technologies that support that journey at their own pace,” Utah Scientific CEO Brett Benson said. “NBOSS creates a unified control experience for NMOS-enabled devices and traditional routing infrastructure, helping facilities modernize confidently while maintaining the reliability they expect from Utah Scientific.”

Delivered on a dedicated two-rack-unit server appliance, NBOSS provides a simple NMOS-based control layer that bridges traditional SDI workflows with modern IP infrastructure, Utah Scientific said. It lets broadcasters manage IP and SDI signals together, without introducing a separate control system or changing operational workflows.

NBOSS allows facilities transitioning to IP to operate as a true hybrid SDI/IP router, preserving established operational models while enabling future-ready infrastructure.

See NBOSS and other Utah Scientific products at IBC 2026, Sept. 11–14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center, stand 10.B40.

NEW YORK—The New York Giants have expanded an agreement with WNBC (NBC 4 New York) and WNJU (Telemundo 47) for the 2026–27 NFL season, adding additional preseason programming.

New programming for this season will include three, 30-minute pregame shows, sponsored by Quest and airing on WNBC and NBC 4 New York’s digital platforms prior to each preseason game.

Fans will also be able to watch a Spanish-language telecast of the Aug. 22 Giants-Miami Dolphins preseason game on WNJU and all Telemundo 47 platforms.

This season, fans can also watch on Telemundo 47/WNJU the exclusive, Spanish-Language preseason broadcast, presented by GGL, of the preseason matchup between the Giants and Dolphins on all Telemundo 47 platforms.

Miguel Gurwitz and Rolando Cantú, the Spanish-language announcers for “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video and NBC “Sunday Night Football” on Telemundo Deportes/Universo, will call the Giants-Dolphins game.

"Our expanded partnership with NBC 4 New York and Telemundo 47 reflects our commitment to bringing Giants fans closer to the team through innovative, year-round content across every platform," said Nilay Shah, senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy for the New York Giants. "From exclusive training camp access at The Greenbrier to enhanced preseason coverage and Spanish-language broadcasts, we're creating more opportunities for fans throughout the tri-state area and beyond to connect with the Giants in meaningful ways."

WNBC will air three Giants preseason games locally, presented by Tri-State Cadillac:

• Saturday, Aug. 15 – Pregame show at 12:30 p.m. and kickoff at 1 p.m.: Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Giants at MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, N.J.) (WNBC only)
• Saturday, Aug. 22 – Pre-game show at 3:30 p.m. and kickoff at 4 p.m.: New York Giants vs. Miami Dolphins at Hard Rock Stadium (Miami) (WNBC and WNJU)
• Friday, Aug. 28: Pre-game show at 7 p.m. and kickoff at 7:30 p.m.: New York Giants vs. New York Jets at MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, N.J.) (WNBC only)

WNBC’s preseason broadcasters will feature Giants radio voice Bob Papa along with former Giants players and analysts Carl Banks, Phil Simms and Howard Cross.

The partnership extension will also continue the station's exclusive program, "All-Access: Giants Training Camp" presented by Hospital for Special Surgery. New episodes will air on Saturdays on WNBC beginning Aug. 8 and on digital and streaming platforms.

“The Coach Harbaugh Show” will premiere Saturday, Sept, 12th and feature an interview with Harbaugh previewing the upcoming matchup, a strategy segment with Carl Banks and player interviews. On-demand episodes can also be found across all Giants digital platforms.

Big Blue fans in the tri-state area can exclusively access this preseason content on:

• NBC 4 New York/WNBC/Giants.com: Aug. 15, 22, and 28 preseason game broadcasts and the weekly training camp special will be available on WNBC (Channel 4), on nbcnewyork.com and the NBC 4 App.
• Telemundo 47/WNJU: The Aug. 22 broadcast of the Giants-Dolphins preseason game will be available in Spanish on WNJU (Channel 47), on telemundo47.com, and the Telemundo 47 App.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital will showcase enhancements to its product portfolio that simplify signal processing, monitoring and IP integration as broadcast and professional AV facilities continue to adopt hybrid SDI/IP workflows while transitioning to software-defined production environments during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

For the first time at IBC 2026, Cobalt will show its family of 9935-AUD4-DANTE openGear advanced audio processors cards with optional fiber inputs/outputs to support Dante Audio Interface. By enabling direct fiber connectivity, Dante installation is simplified, longer-distance deployments are supported, and the need for external media conversion in fiber-based network infrastructures is eliminated.

The 9935-AUD4-DANTE is a quad-channel with up to 12G DANTE/AES/MADI/embed and de-embed functions with frame sync capabilities. The card features two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 64x64 configuration, and a full audio router mixer.

Cobalt Digital will also feature expanded IPMX functionality with JPEG XS Temporal Differential Coding (JXS TDC), enabling its portfolio of IPMX-certified products to seamlessly discover, establish and transport visually lossless, ultra-low latency JPEG XS media streams.

The enhancement strengthens IPMX environments, providing true plug-and-play deployment and enabling low-latency JPEG XS workflows while maintaining compatibility across mixed-vendor systems. JPEG-XS support is available for all Cobalt ST 2110/IPMX capable products, including SAPPHIRE and INDIGO lines, as well as the UltraBlue MV and the blueCORE processors.

The company will also feature its blueCORE processing platform, which delivers powerful, multi-function audio and video processing in a self-contained form factor, enabling users to adapt to changing production requirements while protecting long-term infrastructure investments.

The platform’s compact footprint, ease of operation and low power requirements (less than 80W for the ST 2110 version) make it well-suited to live production in trucks, OB-vans and other space-constrained environments. Its self-contained form factor makes deployment fast and simple—with or without a computer.

Capabilities include up/down/cross conversion, color correction, several varieties of HDR processing, audio routing and mixing, per-channel frame sync, frame rate conversion, audio embedding and de-embedding, SCTE-104 insertion and logo insertion.

The company will also feature:

• The Cobalt UltraBlue MV-SW IP hybrid multiviewer. A flexible software-based solution, the multiviewer now offers support for transitioning to ST 2110 or IPMX. UltraBlue MV-SW is available as a turnkey solution with four HDMI heads and as a software package that runs on customer-supplied dedicated hardware.
• Cobalt ARIA audio line. The COBALT ARIA family provides a path forward for facilities migrating to IP-based operations. The series includes a fully IPMX-compliant audio monitor and features best-in-class sound monitoring and 16 SDI or 64 MADI channels in a compact rack-mount form-factor. Sound is produced by an efficient Class-D amplifier with DSP and specially selected speaker components.
• Cobalt compression solutions. The company also will demonstrate its growing COBALT PACIFIC compression line, including the COBALT PACIFIC ULL-DEC upgradeable software-defined broadcast decoder now available with an ST 2110/IPMX output option. The enhancement allows decoded content to be transported simultaneously over SDI and ST 2110/IPMX. For ST 2110 operation, a built-in frame sync will emit a PTP-locked signal. Cobalt has added support for hybrid satellite-internet operations to the COBALT PACIFIC compression line, compliant with VSR TR-06-4 Part 7. A DVB-S/S2 factory-installed demodulator option enables decoding and passthrough of satellite signals on ASI and over IP.

See Cobalt Digital at IBC 2026 stand 8.F90.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Hearst has announced a deal with subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company to acquire Disney’s 50% interest in A+E Global Media for approximately $1.2 billion in cash.

The transaction is expected to close in September, at which point A+E Global Media will become a wholly owned Hearst business within its Entertainment group.

A+E Global Media, launched as A&E (the Arts & Entertainment Network) in 1984, today reaches more than 414 million households across 200 territories in 40 languages. It's brands include A&E, Lifetime, The History Channel, LMN, FYI and Vice TV.

The deal reduces Disney's exposure to the declining cable network sector, which has been buffeted by cord cutting and will give Hearst greater control over A+E, which in recent years has been working to diversify its revenue streams.

“We thank our Disney colleagues for decades of successful partnership,” said Steven R. Swartz, president and CEO of Hearst. “We look forward to supporting Paul Buccieri and A+E Global Media’s leadership team as they continue to make must-see programs and innovate around the great History, Lifetime and A&E brands.”

Paul Buccieri, president and chairman of A+E Global Media will continue to run A+E.

“In a media environment defined by fragmentation, A+E Global Media's advantage is the strength and versatility of our brands, our strong partnerships and our vast library of owned assets,” Buccieri said. “As we continue extending our storytelling globally across all platforms with IP that travels to every screen and form-factor, we believe we are well suited for whatever opportunities may come next. I also want to express my deepest thanks to Hearst, The Walt Disney Company and to our board members — both recent and past — for their guidance and support over the years.”

A+E Global Media, launched as A&E (the Arts & Entertainment Network) in 1984, today reaches more than 414 million households across 200 territories in 40 languages, and its well-known brands include A&E, Lifetime, The HISTORY Channel, LMN, FYI and VICE TV.

Hearst’s minority stake in ESPN is unaffected by the deal.

It also owns 35 television stations; 30 daily and 50 weekly newspapers; digital services businesses; and more than 200 magazine editions around the world.

The deal reduces Disney's exposure to the declining cable network sector, which has been buffeted by cord cutting and will give Hearst greater control over A+E, which in recent years has been working to diversify its revenue streams.

EMERYVILLE, Calif.—Advanced Systems Group has elevated Michele Ferreira to chief business officer, a new role overseeing the company's business systems and operational functions.

In her new post, Ferreira, formerly vice president of ASG’s Systems Integration team, will oversee enterprise resource planning (ERP), information technology, purchasing, logistics, and other core business operations, the company said. She reports to Chief Financial Officer Amy Zeno.

Her new focus will be on ensuring that ASG’s people, processes and technologies remain aligned with its long-term strategic goals, the company said.

"Michele has been instrumental in helping ASG build the operational foundation of our system integration team and supporting its growth,” ASG President Dave Van Hoy said. “She has a unique ability to align people, processes, and technology in ways that strengthen how we operate and, ultimately, how we serve our clients.”

As VP of Systems Integration, Ferreira led the development of that business’ operational infrastructure, strengthening project management processes, improving delivery operations, and implementing business tools to enable greater efficiency, ASG said.

“My goal is to ensure that the systems supporting our business evolve in alignment with the needs of our customers,” Ferreira said. “As we continue to improve our business operations, from ERP and IT to purchasing and logistics, we're establishing a solid foundation for greater growth across the company.

“This role gives me the opportunity to connect people, processes, and technology across the company so we can work smarter, measure our progress more effectively, and provide an improved experience for our clients,” she continued. “I’m excited about the opportunity to expand and improve how we execute the many systems we deliver and services we bring to our clients. My passion for this industry grows as I can have an impact on ASG’s breadth of services and what our clients do every day.”

Ferreira can be reached at mferreira@asgllc.com. For more information, visit ASG’s website.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are seeking innovations that significantly surpass the capabilities of the current Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard and have issued a call for proposals for the next generation of video compression technology.

The formal registration for proposals period runs from Aug. 1 to Sept. 1.

The call for proposals from the Joint Video Experts Team—a partnership of ITU-T Study Group 21 (multimedia, content delivery and cable TV) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 (coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information)—marks the start of the process to develop a new video coding standard by 2029.

Submissions will be evaluated by the 45th meeting of the Joint Video Experts Team next January.

The project continues a longstanding tradition of joint work that has produced VVC (ITU H.266 | ISO/IEC 23090-3), along with the Emmy Award-winning High Efficiency Video Coding (ITU H.265 | ISO/IEC 23008-2) and Advanced Video Coding (ITU H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10).

The call for proposals covers a broad range of content types and use cases, including streaming services, video conferencing, social media, gaming, content creation, extended reality (XR), machine vision, and high-dynamic-range (HDR) video.

The Joint Video Experts Team said proposals may introduce entirely new coding tools, improved system architectures or novel approaches to advance the state of the art in video compression.

Reflecting an increasingly diverse video ecosystem, innovations will be evaluated across diverse test content ranging from HDR and ultra-high-definition (UHD) video to gaming, screen content and user-generated media.

The call invites innovations that demonstrate either significantly improved compression performance or important new functionality beyond the capabilities of VVC.

The groups said they welcome innovations addressing future multimedia requirements, including those arising from the continued evolution of AI-enabled content creation, processing, analysis and delivery.

All proposals will undergo rigorous evaluation through both formal subjective quality assessment and objective performance measurements.

Proposals can be submitted here.

Amazon’s Prime Video will be the first streaming service to offer HDR10+ Advanced on supported titles globally beginning this month, Samsung Electronics said. The content will initially be made available on Samsung’s 2026 TV lineup.

The next-generation High Dynamic Range (HDR) standard—designed to deliver brighter, more immersive picture quality for supported movies and shows—brings the benefits of Enhanced Overall Brightness and Intelligent Motion Smoothing to streaming viewers for the first time, according to Samsung.

“As home viewing options become more diverse, users are prioritizing elite viewing standards and greater levels of immersion,” said Taeyong Son, executive vice president of Samsung’s Visual Display (VD) business. “By collaborating with Prime Video, we are bringing HDR10+ Advanced to home entertainment systems for the first time, we are elevating the home viewing experience all over the world.”

HDR10+ Advanced, billed by Samsung as the next evolution of the HDR10+ standard, is designed to take advantage of today’s most advanced televisions with their larger screen sizes, higher peak brightness, greater color depth and increased processing power while satisfying the requirements of top content distributors, the company said. The standard preserves the creator’s intent across compatible displays while delivering a more dynamic, lifelike viewing experience for supported content, according to Samsung.

It also introduces two new capabilities. The first is Enhanced Overall Brightness, which uses extended statistical metadata to make fuller use of today’s premium TV brightness capabilities—delivering brighter, more precise HDR across the full tonal range—and AI-driven tone-mapping, to preserve shadow detail in darker scenes and deliver heightened brightness in sports and action content, according to Samsung.

The second, Intelligent Motion Smoothing, uses scene-by-scene metadata to allow compatible displays to dynamically adjust motion processing, preserving the cinematic feel of film content while delivering smooth, natural motion for sports, action and other fast-moving scenes, Samsung said.

“At Prime Video, we’re dedicated to providing the best possible viewing experience and HDR10+ Advanced represents a meaningful step forward for our customers,” BA Winston, vice president of technology at Prime Video, said. “With Enhanced Overall Brightness and Intelligent Motion Smoothing, the picture quality adapts to bring out the best details in every scene and we’re excited to deliver richer, more dynamic visuals on the titles our Prime Video customers love on supported devices.”

The collaboration builds on the December 2017 launch of HDR10+ on Prime Video, which made it the first streaming service to offer the standard to customers. With that launch, Prime Video’s entire library was made available in HDR10+ via Samsung’s 2017 UHD TV lineup, using dynamic metadata to deliver enhanced contrast and color. Since then, 183 companies and more than 22,000 certified products have adopted the HDR10+ standard.

HDR10+ Advanced will be integrated into Samsung’s product lineup starting with 2026 TV models, with support planned for future products as the HDR10+ ecosystem continues to grow.

For more information on Samsung TVs, visit the Samsung website. For more information about HDR10+ Advanced, please visit the HDR10+ website.

NEUSS, Germany—Ikegami will make the European market launch for additions to its UNICAM product range during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

“A highlight of our IBC 2026 demonstration will be a new constant-aperture variable neutral density filter function which expands the creative potential of the UHK-X700 and UHK-X750 UNICAM XE portable and full studio cameras,” said Gisbert Hochguertel, Ikegami Europe product specialist. “When used as an alternative to the iris, the VND filter allows the lens f-stop to remain fixed to control video exposure. This enables a director to set the depth of field for a specific shot and then control the exposure in real time by changing the continuously variable neutral density filter attenuation.”

Ikegami will also demonstrate two new viewfinders for use with its UNICAM XE and UNICAM HD cameras. Introduced at NAB Show in April, the VFE-P07D is a two-in-one viewfinder comprising a monocular OLED and an adjustable-angle 3.5-inch TFT LCD monitor.

The 3.5-inch monitor screen can face forwards, be tilted to more than 120 degrees or turned laterally to face forwards. Waveform, vectorscope and audio metering tools can be easily accessed. The VFE-P07D attaches to shoulder-mounting and studio-format cameras in the UNICAM XE series.

Shown as a prototype at IBC 2025 and making its IBC 2026 debut is the production version of the VFE-P711AD high-resolution 7-inch OLED viewfinder. Developed from the LCD-based VFL-P700AD, the new OLED model is designed to offer clear visibility even in environments with intense ambient light.

The OLED panel’s fast response time is particularly useful when focusing and framing content at high frame rate for slow-motion replay. The viewfinder also has front-facing tally indicators and a rear-facing tally. Like the VFE-P07D, the VFE-P711AD includes waveform, vectorscope and audio metering tools.

The centerpiece of Ikegami’s IBC exhibit will be the UNICAM XE series three-CMOS studio and portable cameras. Designed for the HDR, HFR, IP and UHD era, the UHK-X700 and UHK-X600 incorporate three ⅔-inch 4K sensors with global shutter architecture.

The UHK-X750 and UHK-X650 are hard-body, full-studio models sharing the same features. The UHK-X700RF is a wireless portable variant of the UHK-X700. Multichannel antenna diversity is a standard feature of this model, providing robust signal delivery in a wide range of transmission environments.

Ikegami will also promote its UNICAM HD HDK-X500 multiformat portable camera system, which can be purchased as a 1920p model upgradeable to full 4K-UHD.

Designed for remote image capture, the UHL-X40 shares the 4K-UHD 2/3-inch three-CMOS global shutter imaging architecture of the UNICAM XE series augmented for motorized pan/tilt/zoom applications in studios as well as outdoor applications, such as sports close-ups, theater and stage video capture, weather monitoring and point-of-view imaging. Two-piece construction allows remote control via up to 6.2 miles (10 km) of duplex fiber cable between head and CCU.

The UHL-43 is a three-CMOS 2160p-native 4K-UHD camera in a compact 5.7 x 6.1 x 6.6-inch (145 x 155 x 169 mm) 5.7-pound (2.6 kg) housing. It supports applications like studio robotics or remote-control PTZ image capture and point-of-view image capture. The camera can also be used on support devices, such as a shoulder brace, long-reach arm or overhead mount. The UHL-43HD variant has the same three-CMOS 2160p native sensors but comes with 1080p/i output that can be upgraded via an optional software key to allow 4K-native operation.

See Ikegami at IBC 2026 stand 12.A31.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NASHVILLE—Gravity Media has formed a strategic partnership with U.S.-based live event production and technology company Live Media Group (LMG) and has sold eight mobile units in the United States to LMG, including three premium production trucks with existing major broadcast contract.

The deal includes the addition of engineering and technical staff, further enhancing LMG’s production expertise around the country.

“The United States remains a critically important market for us. By partnering with Live Media Group, we are combining complementary strengths to deliver even greater value to our customers. We are excited about what this partnership makes possible and look forward to everything we will build together.,” said Jamie Hindhough, regional CEO of Gravity Media.

The new strategic partnership will see the companies collaborating on projects requiring both mobile production facilities and services. While Live Media Group assumes ownership and operation of Gravity Media's U.S. based Outside Broadcast (OB) truck fleet, Gravity Media will continue to support projects through its RF technology and other services, creating a comprehensive solution for clients operating throughout the United States.

Beyond expanding its mobile production fleet, the acquisition also provides Live Media Group's operating companies, including TNDV Television, Live Media and GameTime Productions, with access to additional specialty cameras, production equipment, production services and engineering resources that can be deployed across a broader range of projects.

The acquisition marks another milestone in Live Media Group's long-term strategy of expanding its national footprint through carefully selected acquisitions that enhance client service while preserving operational quality. Since acquiring SureShot Teleproductions in 2015, Live Media Group has continued to grow with the acquisitions of TNDV Television and HARB Production Services in 2019, Lyon Video in 2022 and now Gravity Media's U.S. mobile production assets.

Gravity Media and LMG are working closely to ensure a coordinated and seamless transition of the OB fleet. Throughout the process, customers can expect uninterrupted service and the same high standards of quality, innovation and delivery that both organizations are known for globally, Gravity Media said.

“Over the past few years, Live Media Group has transformed and grown in meaningful ways with a focus on expanding what we can offer our customers and partners,” said Michael Sullivan, Live Media Group president.

“This partnership with Gravity Media deepens that commitment, giving clients access to an even broader range of live production capabilities not only with additions to our mobile fleet, but also expanding what we can offer across RF, specialty cameras and flypacks for both domestic and international clients. None of this happens without great people on both sides, and I could not be prouder of where we are headed.”

The acquisition significantly increases Live Media Group's available production capacity at a time when demand for high-end mobile production services continues to rise. The three flagship production units included in the transaction arrive with existing contracts supporting major U.S. broadcast partners and premier professional events, while all eight mobile units expand the company's ability to support sports, entertainment, corporate and live event productions nationwide.

The additional fleet also arrives at a critical time for Live Media Group's operations. "Historically, our mobile units have been fully committed most of the year," said Sullivan. "These additional assets immediately provide us with greater scheduling flexibility while allowing us to support more clients without compromising the level of service they've come to expect. Rather than turning opportunities away, we're now positioned to say yes to more productions."

The strategic partnership established alongside the acquisition also broadens the company's service offerings. Clients requiring RF along with other solutions can now benefit from Gravity Media's specialized RF technology and services, while Gravity Media's international customers requiring mobile production support in the United States will be served through Live Media Group's expanded fleet.

More information is available on the Gravity Media and Live Media Group websites.

NEW YORK—TAG Video Systems will feature the latest innovations to its software-based real-time media monitoring, multiviewing and quality control (QC) platform during IBC 2026, Sept. 11-14, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

The updates build on TAG’s cloud and virtualization development and include support for the emerging MXL standard and containerized deployment—both aimed at making full cloud production a practical reality, along with deeper automated audio, subtitle and lip-sync QC, the company said.

TAG’s latest platform innovations focus on flexible, deploy-anywhere software and on the emerging standards that make cloud production real. The latest platform developments include:

• Fully containerized—Both components of the platform (MCM, MCS) are now available as a Docker container, enabling fully automated, on-demand deployment across cloud and virtualized infrastructure, enabling spin-up monitoring where and when needed without dedicated appliances.
• MXL in production—TAG was among the first to support MXL workflows and has a full MXL implementation. At IBC, TAG will demonstrate advanced MXL interoperability with AWS and will present a new collaborative MXL demo with Sony.
• Production-ready performance—Reduced latency on ST 2110 streams, as low as 1.5 frames at 50 fps and 2 frames at 59.94 fps (MCM input to MCM output), together with CIR (Cyclic Intra Refresh) encoding on MCM output, making it practical to monitor and QC inside live and cloud production workflows, not just downstream.
• Massive software scale—Support for the Mellanox ConnectX-7 network card enables monitoring of 200 and 400 Gbps links, scaling to many more uncompressed ST 2110 video streams. Clear proof that software can meet the most demanding, high-density uncompressed environments.

Alongside its cloud developments, TAG continues to invest in the quality and compliance needs of its core customers. It has extended its automated checks beyond video into audio, subtitles and synchronization to audio QC, OCR of DVB subtitles and Hitomi MatchBox support. The company also has added support for the alpha (transparency) channel in NDI streams and automated test-pattern loopback detection and comparison.

"Our customers are rearchitecting how they produce content,“ TAG VP of Product Stratey Michael Demb said. “They’re moving off dedicated hardware, into containers, into the cloud, with open approaches like MXL leading the way. For their operations, that means monitoring that spins up anywhere and scales to formats and volumes that used to require a truckload of appliances. It also brings a meaningful reduction in the hardware footprint that used to define the cost of doing this. At IBC, we’re showing exactly what that looks like live: software-defined monitoring, at scale, with none of the dedicated boxes.”

See TAG Video Systems at IBC 2026, stand 1.D33.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SAN DIEGO—Established in San Diego in 2009, Show Imaging was known as the group of producers who refused to say “no” to the crazy and seemingly impossible. Over the years, Show Imaging has grown to a team of over 200 people nationwide and a community of unique creators who come from every background to build all aspects of premier experiences.

San Diego Comic-Con, one of my favorite events of the year, draws hundreds of thousands of devoted fans across film, television, literature and comics to experience panels, artist showcases and cosplay competitions. Delivering a memorable experience requires reliable, high-quality video capture and displays to ensure every fan has a front-row seat.

In 2025, Show Imaging partnered with Panasonic to bring that vision to life, providing the production technology needed not only to capture Comic-Con’s iconic panels but also to deliver high-quality video coverage to engage devoted fans and audience members.

Immersive Fan Experiences
Many panels operate on a first-come, first-served basis, so auditoriums fill quickly, including the seats in the back. Our job is to ensure all 6,000 attendees receive a front-row experience, delivering real-time audio and video that keeps every viewer connected to the action regardless of where they’re seated.

That’s why we equipped the room with three Panasonic AW-UE150 4K PTZ Cameras, one AK-UC4000 Studio Camera and the Kairos Live Video Production Platform. Designed for fast, intuitive setup, these solutions allowed our team to capture dynamic panels in 4K without having to worry about technical complexity or system reliability.

For close-ups during panel discussions and audience Q&As, Panasonic’s 4K PTZ and studio cameras delivered precise color reproduction and consistent shading, ensuring every attendee—even those watching online—experienced an accurate view of the action on stage.

Panasonic’s AW-UE150 4K PTZ Cameras were particularly instrumental when “Star Wars” creator George Lucas made a surprise appearance to promote the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Attendees not only saw and heard the exclusive announcement of the museum, but also close-up video of Lucas as he shared behind-the-scenes stories and insights about his work, making the panel an unforgettable moment for “Star Wars” fans.

We also deployed 18 Panasonic PT-RQ35 projectors to map content across a 250-foot linear projection screen. Thanks to Panasonic’s interoperable ecosystem, the 4K PTZ cameras and projectors worked seamlessly together to deliver accurate visuals at scale with minimal adjustment. Panasonic’s Kairos Live Production Platform enabled the production team to easily edit, overlay and switch this content across screens in real time.

Kairos can also handle
ST 2110 signals directly, dramatically streamlining workflows. Comic-Con is a large-scale live event with many moving parts, and Kairos helped us manage the PTZ cameras, studio cameras, audio inputs and other visuals.

Panasonic’s integrated production ecosystem gave us the flexibility to prioritize storytelling over technical complexity, as illustrated during the “Tron: Ares” panel. A dramatic red laser light show and live stage performance were captured seamlessly by Panasonic’s PTZ cameras, ensuring audiences experienced every moment from wherever they were seated.

Images and Energy
Panasonic’s professional AV solutions enabled our team to immerse Comic-Con attendees in every iconic moment with precise imaging, seamless workflows and reliable performance. Rather than focusing on the technology behind the scenes, our crew could focus on what mattered most: capturing the energy of every panel and delivering an unforgettable experience for fans throughout the venue.

As audience expectations continue to rise, broadcast-quality cameras and production platforms will become even more essential to live events of every size.

Combined with emerging capabilities like AI-powered auto-tracking and live captioning, these technologies will help production teams create more accessible, engaging and immersive experiences to allow every attendee and remote viewer to feel connected to the action, no matter where they are.

More information is available on Panasonic’s website.

It’s impossible not to notice that generative AI is the hot topic right now, and its explosive popularity means newsrooms of all types—especially those that broadcast images to the world—face authenticity challenges that go far beyond traditional issues of whether a certain clip is fake or doctored.

Newsrooms must now grapple with whether they can show how and where a particular clip came from, the process by which it reached the edit and whether the version that viewers see still matches the material it claims to represent.

In our increasingly low-trust media landscape, AI blows everything up at a time when many major broadcasters can scarcely afford more reputational harm and attacks, especially around the basics of authenticity and provenance.

A Delicate Balance
On both sides of the trust equation, the balance is becoming more delicate. Currently, AI tools can make scarily convincing images, video and audio in moments, a far cry from the stodgy, copyright-infringing outputs of even 12 months ago.

C2PA, or the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, is one attempt to shift that work earlier in the broadcast chain. The group, formed in 2021 and designed to protect content by building an open, industry-wide cryptographic standard to map the origin and history of digital media, features most of the heavy hitters in tech, including Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Adobe and Amazon.

Rather than asking journalists, platforms or audiences to spot every possible fake after the fact, it creates a way to attach tamper-evident provenance information to media as it is captured, edited, distributed, and displayed.

To many broadcasters, the appeal of the C2PA solution should be obvious. In theory, a piece of video could carry a technical record of its journey from camera to newsroom, through the edit, out to publication, and eventually into a player or TV app.

In practice, thorny questions remain over whether that chain can survive the real broadcast workflow—from ingest to playout, streaming and social distribution—and the messy hand-offs that are a natural part of this process.

What C2PA Can Prove
At a basic level, C2PA is best understood as a way to preserve the history of a piece of media, rather than as a tool that decides if a story is true.

C2PA lets a validator check that a signed manifest belongs to a particular asset, whether the asset still matches that cryptographic binding and what the signer has asserted about its creation or editing history. It does not independently prove that every assertion is accurate, that nothing happened before the first signature or that the signer should be trusted.

In other words, C2PA is nowhere close to a panacea, and the most useful way to think about it is as a chain of custody.

As a Sinclair spokesperson put it: “Authentication and provenance answer questions such as: Where did this content come from? Who created it? Has it been altered? They do not independently determine whether every claim within the content is accurate or true.

“Editorial standards, fact-checking, reporting, and journalistic judgment remain essential,” the spokesperson said. “Provenance is a valuable tool that supports trust, but it does not replace the work of journalism.”

Bruce MacCormack, chair of the International Press Telecommunication Council (IPTC) Media Provenance Committee and co-founder of Project Origin, a consortium of global news organizations formed to combat digital disinformation by establishing a secure, end-to-end process to prove the integrity and origin of digital news and journalistic content, summed it up nicely: At both ends of the broadcast chain—ingest and output—knowing the provenance of media files is vital.

At ingest, signed content from a trusted camera, newsroom, agency or partner can help verification teams triage material more quickly; unsigned footage does not automatically become suspicious, but it may need extra manual checks.

“The issue is the increased fact-checking burden created by the wide availability of tools to generate or manipulate media,” MacCormack said. “C2PA can provide an ‘express lane’ for media that is signed by trusted parties.”

At output, the same infrastructure can help a broadcaster defend its own material once it leaves the newsroom, especially when clips are reposted, embedded or shared on third-party platforms.

A valid signature is therefore only part of the calculation. Newsrooms also need to establish who signed the credential—a camera, application, agency or publisher—and whether that identity is trusted in the relevant context. A credential from an unknown signer can be cryptographically intact without carrying much editorial weight.

Signing at the Source
The cleanest and earliest place to start that chain is in the camera.

If a newsroom can verify a video or image file only after it has been edited, compressed or pulled from a platform, it is already fighting a losing battle. Camera-side authentication aims to move the first trust signal as close as possible to the point of capture.

For Sony, that means building provenance into the camera (or media capture device) itself.

According to Martin Lindsay, head of networked solutions at Sony Electronics, Sony signs the captured file inside the camera, binding the media to the device so that downstream systems can validate its origin and integrity.

C2PA-compliant credentials then provide a standard way to record how and when media was created. In Sony’s case, capture time can help establish when the material was recorded, while 3D depth data—where supported—can add evidence the image came from a physical camera capture, rather than a generated or artificially constructed scene.

Camera-side signing is only the first link, though. Lindsay said provenance is strongest when it remains attached “from camera capture all the way through editing, storage, and distribution workflows.”

The challenge is that real-life broadcast media rarely travels in a straight line. “Provenance can be lost when content is exported, transcoded, compressed, screen-recorded or moved between systems that do not yet support these standards,” Lindsay said. “That is why industry-wide adoption and workflow integration are critical. Authentication needs to become part of the normal production pipeline rather than an additional step.”

Sony is also trying to move verification out of standalone tools. Lindsay said Camera Verify and its Image Verification Pre-Check SDK can be integrated into newsroom or media-management systems, allowing routine checks to run without requiring journalists to process every file manually.

Because news footage is rarely broadcast exactly as captured, the edit must become part of its provenance record.

Adobe Premiere and Media Encoder can attach Content Credentials at export, including verified identity and linked accounts. Premiere can also scan supported imported assets for existing credentials, while sequences containing supported Adobe AI-generated material receive credentials automatically in compatible export formats.

Adobe: Through the Edit
A clip may be trimmed, captioned, color-corrected, combined with other footage or prepared for several platforms before it reaches an audience—all of which are completely standard processes. Those changes do not make the media suspicious by default, but they do need to be carried out honestly if provenance is going to remain useful.

Each handoff still must understand what it is receiving, and cross-compatibility remains a potential stumbling block.

Adobe itself acknowledges that it cannot guarantee every publishing destination will support Content Credentials, which neatly captures the wider broadcast problem: one system can preserve provenance, but the chain only works if the next system does. too.

Any handoffs become more complicated inside a professional broadcast environment.

Much of the public conversation around C2PA has focused on capture, publishing and consumer-facing formats, but broadcasters work across a much messier chain of file formats, live signals, production tools, playout systems and distribution routes.

For Thomas Bause Mason, director of standards development at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, that means provenance has to be considered across the standards that already hold broadcast workflows together.

“SMPTE does not want to invent its own CPA specification but rather make sure that SMPTE standards are ready to support the CPA solution the market will choose,” he says. “That may be C2PA.”

In practice, the question is whether the systems used for professional editing, media exchange, IP production, legacy video links, and compression can carry a provenance record without losing it along the way.

The Material eXchange Format (MXF) is becoming more widely used for professional editing and distribution, but Bause Mason said no single format or handoff can solve the problem on its own. Broadcast workflows are made of many connected systems, and each one needs to know how to preserve the trust chain.

Bause Mason’s broader argument is that professional media infrastructure is not yet prepared to support content provenance end to end. Existing standards and systems need ways to carry manifests, identifiers or other durable links to provenance data before C2PA can move from controlled demonstrations into routine broadcast operations.

Editing, VFX, transcoding and format conversion can strip or break provenance, but they should also be able to add their own assertions to the manifest so the credential reflects what actually happened to the media.

Multiple Layers
Provenance also must represent several layers of origin. From a broadcaster’s perspective, the producer may be the source, but the audience may need to know which channel, platform or publisher endorsed the final version.

As one might imagine, this creates some difficult broadcast-specific questions.

Bause Mason helpfully frames some of them: Should authentication work frame by frame or shot by shot? How should provenance remain synchronized with the content during live production? What happens when contribution feeds from OB trucks are cut into a program, sent to consumer outlets and then passed to affiliates for further edits?

As he elegantly put it, “Only if the whole ecosystem is trusted glass to glass can the consumer be sure to receive content they as well can trust.”

When The Chain Breaks
A broken provenance chain cannot become a verdict in itself. If C2PA is going to work in a newsroom, it has to support editorial verification rather than replace it.

For broadcasters that handle user-generated video, archive footage, agency or wire material, social clips and content from third parties—in other words, many of them—this point is especially salient.

Some of the content may never have had credentials attached in the first place; some may have passed through systems that stripped or corrupted metadata before it reached the newsroom; and so on.

A newsroom may encounter media that was never signed, media whose manifest has been stripped, a credential that fails validation or a perfectly valid credential from an unfamiliar source—four different cases requiring different editorial responses.

As Marcos Armstrong, senior specialist, content provenance and integrity at CBC/Radio-Canada put it: “When dealing with user-generated content, archival assets, or third-party wire material that lacks a cryptographic signature, broadcasters cannot rely on data alone.”

At CBC/Radio-Canada, that means provenance sits alongside more traditional verification work. Armstrong points to visual vetting, geolocation, satellite imagery, public records and other open-source intelligence techniques used to check visual material when credentials are absent, incomplete or broken.

Armstrong said CBC/Radio-Canada is also exploring watermarking and perceptual fingerprinting as ways to reconnect broken credentials to their original manifests.

CBC/Radio-Canada has also tested more complete provenance workflows, including an in-house signing tool, the EBU’s C2PA-enabled video player, a C2PA-enabled Sony PXW-Z300 and Adobe Premiere in demonstrations of how a “glass-to-glass” workflow might operate.

Provenance can also fail for ordinary reasons. A genuine piece of footage may lose its credentials during compression or resizing, while a misleading video can still carry a clean technical chain.

For broadcasters, C2PA adds another signal to the verification process, helping newsrooms see where confidence is stronger, where the chain has gaps and where human judgment still needs to take the lead.

Reaching the Viewer
Even if provenance survives the production chain, it must still reach the audience in a form people can understand. Sinclair sees that display layer as central to adoption.

“For content authentication to become a routine part of broadcast news and production workflows, the standards work needs to move beyond carrying provenance in technical metadata and ensure that the end viewer can actually see and understand it,” a spokesperson for the station group said.

Authenticated enterprise identity needs to be shown consistently in media players, televisions, and software players, the broadcaster said. Without that, a piece of content may carry valid provenance data, but the viewer may never see that it came from Sinclair or another trusted source.

There is a UX problem here as well as a standards problem.

Armstrong said CBC/Radio-Canada has been exploring how Content Credentials should appear on its digital platforms without overwhelming users or making routine edits look suspicious, a delicate balance.

CBC’s proposed model uses progressive disclosure: an unobtrusive icon or banner first, followed by an expandable plain-English summary for users who want more detail. The interface would distinguish routine technical changes, such as resizing or colour-profile normalisation, from edits that can affect context, such as a heavy crop, and from transformative changes involving generative AI.

For provenance to become routine, it has to disappear into the workflow. C2PA only becomes useful to broadcasters at scale if it is built into cameras, editing tools, asset-management systems, CMS platforms, distribution chains and players.

From Trial to Broadcast Infrastructure
MacCormack argued that media provenance should become a feature rather than a standalone product—something built into capture, edit, distribution and display systems rather than handled by specialist signing or validation tools outside the normal workflow.

Armstrong makes a similar point from the broadcaster side, saying that the goal is to move away from manual resigning and embed provenance natively into common tools.

For Bause Mason, the standards challenge reaches across the professional media ecosystem, with each transformation point preserving the credential or identifier while adding its own record of what changed.

Broadcasters are not there yet. Workflows are mixed-vendor, format-heavy and full of hand-offs that were never designed to preserve cryptographic manifests. Social platforms, browsers, operating systems, televisions and software players also need to recognize and display provenance consistently before audiences can benefit from it.

C2PA will not replace newsroom judgment or settle every dispute over whether a piece of media is trustworthy. Its value is more practical: If the chain can hold, broadcasters gain a way to show where media came from, how it moved through production and why viewers can have confidence in the version they are watching.

Interest in the Broadcast Positioning System, or BPS—a relatively new offshoot of the ATSC 3.0 standard—continues to grow, sparking the creation of a new company tasked with developing the technology for commercial deployments.

In addition to their regular services, broadcasters that have adopted ATSC 3.0 can also deploy BPS by transmitting very precise timing signals. The BPS signals are received and decoded similarly to satellite-delivered global positioning system (GPS) signals (also referred to as “Global Navigation Satellite System” or GNSS signals), and may be used to pinpoint the receiver’s geographic location and as a highly accurate time reference.

Too Many Eggs in One Basket
An obvious question about the development and rollout of such an alternative to the long-established GPS technology is: Why is it needed? Doesn’t GPS function well enough in most applications?

The answer lies in the dependency upon GPS signals that now exists among many business sectors and industrial operations. These extend far beyond vehicular navigation.

GPS has become an invisible utility that provides precision time to U.S. critical infrastructure, so much so that the National Security Council describes it as a single point of failure, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimating the risk to the U.S. economy exceeding $1 billion per day, according to Sam Matheny, formerly executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcast Positioning System group and now CEO of Merkhet Solutions, an independent company launched by NAB in June.

“Critical infrastructure includes the energy grid, communications networks, financial and data centers—the infrastructure that undergirds every facet of modern life,” Matheny said.

Harvey Arnold, senior vice president of engineering at Sinclair, which has been working with the NAB to develop BPS, said GPS delivery of timing information is very much a “single thread” with no place to go should that thread break.

“As time goes on, you hear more and more about GPS’s lack of resiliency,” Arnold said. “GPS transfers time, not just positional information. This time-transfer function is very important.”

As GPS relies on reception of relatively weak signals from orbiting satellites, he noted, it is especially vulnerable to blocking or jamming—intentional or otherwise—from stronger terrestrial RF sources.

“People don’t pay much attention to how easy it is to jam or ‘spoof’ GPS signals,” Arnold said. “However, this can affect such things as financial transactions, which require accurate time stamps. It’s after jamming or spoofing attacks that people get excited.

“GPS has become the ‘gold standard’ for time transfer,” he continued. “It’s ubiquitous, but it’s a weak signal that’s subject to jamming and spoofing. Even space junk has the potential to disrupt it. Such issues are common to any space-based communications system. Russia and China have a backup for their GPS systems; we don’t.”

Bad Things Do Happen
Matheny noted that GPS disruptions aren’t just speculative—they can and do occur.

“On March 19, 2026, 12 airplanes reported false positions at Dallas-Fort Worth airport as a result of GPS interference,” Matheny said. “In mid-May 2024, solar storms impacted GPS such that farmers across the Midwest were advised to postpone use of their GPS-assisted tractors during planting season.”

Matheny also flagged a January 2022 incident in which GPS service was disrupted for more than 33 hours in the Denver area, affecting both aircraft and ground-based users over eight square miles. The cause of the outage was later determined to be accidental, traced to a transmitter inadvertently operating in GPS spectrum.

GPS jamming or spoofing (the replacement of valid GPS information with spurious signals) occurs frequently in military combat zones and also along the U.S. southern border, Matheny noted.

“While illegal, there are numerous low-power jammers that can be found for sale online,” he said. “These are known to be used by people who would like to conceal their movements, but in doing so also create interference issues in their vicinity.”

A commercial-grade GPS jammer is currently available for military applications, Matheny added, and Russia has demonstrated its ability to use satellite-transmitted signals to interfere with GPS operations.

BPS to the Rescue
Given these vulnerabilities, BPS technology seems to have arrived just in time to bolster the existing GPS navigational and time-transfer applications.

“The beauty of BPS is that it can easily become part of a broadcast system,” Arnold said. “Transmitters and towers are already in place. Once stations have converted to ATSC 3.0, the cost to add BPS is nominal.

Added Matheny: “The amount of equipment is relatively small in that you need a BPS synchronizer and a source of reference time. However, I’ll note that BPS has to function as a single, synchronized, managed network and is not something that a station would just go out and do on their own as each station has to be part of a coordinated system. That is why we launched Merkhet Solutions to deploy BPS nationwide service.”

Where Are We Now?
The concept of using broadcaster-originated signals as a GPS-adjunct dates back about five years, in a paper delivered at the 2021 NAB Broadcast Engineering and IT (BEIT) conference by its inventors: NAB’s Tariq Mondal, Bob Weller and Sam Matheny. Demonstrations and field testing began shortly afterwards and continue to the present.

Matheny said Merkhet Solutions currently has a cooperative R&D agreement in place with NIST covering several aspects of the technology, as well as a contract
with the U.S. Department of Transportation for BPS field studies. He also described testing of BPS technology in a power grid application.

“We partnered with Dominion Energy [a Richmond, Va.-based energy producer and distributor] for this effort, and have BPS installed at one of the largest power substations on the East Coast,” he said. “BPS is being evaluated for use with phasor measurement units and fault detection systems. The results thus far are positive and meet the needs of energy grid operations.”

Dominion Energy testing involves over-the-air signals from WHUT-TV Washington, D.C., and WNUV Baltimore, Arnold said.

“WNUV receives WHUT-TV, which is about 40 miles away,” he explained. “It’s configured as the ‘leader’ station which is referenced to the coordinated universal [CUT or UTC]time reference sent from the NIST facility in Boulder, Colo.”

The Baltimore station (WNUV) receives the time information signal from the Washington station (WHUT-TV), resynchronizes to it, and then retransmits this precision time information in a “leader-follower” manner, Arnold continued.

“As the BPS network develops, such ‘leader-followers’ can serve as important tools in helping to economically extend the coverage of the BPS network,” he added.

Sinclair is getting ready to turn on another BPS station (WIAV-CD, a Class-A station in Washington, D.C.) to determine how many hops are possible before the timing signal is degraded.

“This will also provide a third location for testing and analysis of BPS positioning information,” Arnold said.

Time to Retire ATSC 1.0
BPS is a unique application of ATSC 3.0 and cannot be added to ATSC 1.0, according to Metheny.

“It has to do with the signal and framing structure where BPS is leveraging the bootstrap emission time, which doesn’t exist in 1.0,” he said. “Additionally, the use of a highly robust physical layer pipe [PLP] in ATSC 3.0 enables a BPS signal that operates below the noise floor, which also isn’t possible with 1.0.”

Arnold and Matheny agreed that a nationwide BPS deployment won’t be possible until a hard date for ATSC 1.0 shutoff is established.

“We need more transmitters and geographic separation for good positional information in implementing BPS,” Arnold said. “This requires the sunsetting of ATSC 1.0. That’s one of our pushes right now.”

Matheny added: “A firm time frame for transition would certainly be helpful. That is true for BPS as well as for consumers and NextGen TV generally. Having a timeline certainty enables everyone to plan and invest accordingly. My hope is that BPS can help accelerate the transition, as it solves a well-defined and big problem.”

MINNEAPOLIS—I first founded Curling Stadium, a systems integration firm specializing in deploying livestreaming systems in curling arenas using PTZ cameras and NDI connectivity technology, in 2019. Combining my 25 years of IT experience with my background as an Olympic curler, we installed and managed systems in 23 curling clubs around the world.

Those deployments captured the attention of organizations, including USA Curling and international governing body World Curling. We started getting requests to provide full broadcast production services for major curling events, leading us to evolve into Stadium Sports Network, the full-service production company we are today.

Curling Challenges
We had used a variety of PTZ camera brands over the years, ranging from budget-oriented brands for small clubs to the premium high-end models we rented for larger productions. With our productions for World Curling destined for linear television anywhere in the world, we knew we needed to upgrade our cameras to achieve higher quality while remaining cost-competitive. A tipping point came when we were contracted to produce broadcasts of the U.S. Olympic Curling Trials in South Dakota last November for NBC Sports and Peacock.

Shooting curling involves some unique challenges. For example, when we’re tilting a camera down at the ice, we’re getting a lot of bright white that blows out the exposure on most of the other cameras we’ve used. The lighting also varies a lot between events depending on the venues—from dimly lit older curling clubs to bright, modern arenas—so we needed cameras with at least a 1-inch sensor as well as exceptional exposure handling.

One of our partner companies recommended we check out Telycam PTZ cameras, and I’m glad we did. After testing their broadcast-class Explore XE model, we purchased three of them.

In our typical workflow, the Telycam cameras output NDI HX3 streams that are delivered to the production center over a 10 Gbps Ubiquiti network. Switching is done on a computer running vMix software, with Singular Live powering HTML5 graphics and a Behringer X32 audio mixing console.

We use AVKANS controllers for PTZ camera control. Telycam makes its own controllers, but the Telycam cameras support the standard VISCA control protocol and we already owned many AVKANS controllers, so we stuck with them.

The Telycam PTZ cameras have been outstanding, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. When I compare them to other manufacturers we’ve used, aspects like color shading and autofocus have been standouts, and the autoexposure has been amazing in overcoming the above challenges.

In fact, we had rented high-end cameras from a big broadcast brand for a previous project, but we found that Telycam’s autoexposure and focus management blew the more expensive cameras out of the water. The Explore XE gives us superior quality and at its price point, we can buy the cameras rather than renting them. The value we’re getting from them allows us to be competitive at the high end of our market.

PTZ Creativity
Curling is also fairly repetitive compared to other sports, so the shots are almost always the same. We need to be more creative with how we mix in shots with zoom, and the Telycam cameras’ responsiveness with different presets has been valuable.

Most importantly, our broadcast clients have also been happy with the results. We previously heard from skeptics that PTZ cameras couldn’t achieve this level of production quality, but I believe that’s been proven not to be true.

Telycam has also been great to work with. The demo and sales process was smooth and their technical support has been excellent. During one project, we found that we needed a different firmware package, and within an hour, they had responded and new firmware was running on the camera.

We plan to expand to produce multiple broadcasts at the same time, so we’ll be investing in more cameras. Based on our experience, when we do, it will be with Telycam.

More information is available on the Telycam website.

PORTLAND, Maine—Portland Media Center is the nonprofit community media hub for the greater Portland, Maine, area. We operate two local broadcast stations and two fully equipped production studios that are open to the public.

Our mission is straightforward and a little radical: Everyone has a story worth telling, and everyone deserves the tools, the training and the airtime to tell it. We offer workshops, seminars, and hands-on media production training for everyone from seasoned documentary makers to people who have never so much as touched a camera.

When I walked into the control room for the first time, I saw a love letter to every decade of broadcast technology since 1985. Racks upon racks were assembled over the years with genuine skill and craftsmanship, each piece there for a reason, often because something older needed a translator to talk to something newer.

It worked, but it was clunky. It was difficult to teach, scale and maintain. It was not exactly a system you could confidently put in front of a newcomer and say: “You belong here. This is yours to use. Go tell your story.”

Designing a New Studio
That needed to change and I knew what I wanted. A system that spoke one language, camera to switcher to edit suite—all of it integrated, intuitive and designed to get out of the way and let the storytelling happen.

We built out the new studio around four Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro live production cameras, an ATEM Television Studio HD8 ISO live production switcher, an ATEM Camera Control Panel and four camera converters. The transformation was immediate and dramatic—three full racks of old equipment came out, and the entire Blackmagic Design system went into half of one rack.

The cameras run on Power over Ethernet, delivering clean, timeline-ready files directly to the ATEM. The clutter and complexity are gone, and now we have a studio that looks exactly as it is supposed to look.

Choosing the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro was deliberate. For a nonprofit operating on a community media budget, cost matters, but so does performance and teachability.

The Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro delivers on all three. Color correction is intuitive whether you are working in camera or through the CCU. The switched feed integrates flawlessly into DaVinci Resolve Studio and Fairlight, producing a pipeline that feels less like a workaround and more like it was designed by someone who actually thought about how these things connect (because it was). Files arrive already embedded in a timeline, ready to go. In a pinch, the entire system can be run by a single operator.

Perhaps more importantly for our mission, the system is easy to teach. New creators can get up to speed quickly, while more experienced producers have plenty of depth to explore. We have shifted from a place that produces programming to a place that produces producers.

Simplfied Debates
The proof came in the form of a recent live gubernatorial debate. Five candidates—
including one appearing remotely—as well as two hosts and a live studio audience of 65, were delivered simultaneously to broadcast, video-on-demand and YouTube. It was exactly the kind of high-stakes civic production that used to require crossing your fingers and hoping nothing went sideways.

Nothing did. The Blackmagic Design system handled every element with zero drama and delivered a production we were genuinely proud of. Having the right tools meant it looked as important as it was.

For us, that’s the real value of the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro. The cameras don’t just produce excellent images, they simplify complex productions, make professional broadcasting accessible and allow our nonprofit to do more with limited resources. By modernizing our infrastructure, we’ve strengthened our ability to serve the community and ensure that more local voices can be seen and heard.

More information is available by contacting Blackmagic Design at 408-954-0500 or by visiting the Blackmagic website.

SAN DIEGO—When your “broadcast studio” is 5,000 meters below the ocean surface, you have to get creative with your camera technology. That’s what our combined teams at DeepSea Power & Light and Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) did on a deep-sea expedition, modifying Sony’s HDC-P50 POV camera to explore and live-stream UHD content from the ocean depths of the Cook Islands.

Each OET expedition is focused on scientific exploration, visiting never-before-seen parts of the planet, documenting ecosystems in poorly understood ocean regions, discovering new species and sharing this data with the world. A core part of OET’s mission is education and outreach, using the excitement of discovery to inspire the next generation of explorers.

Extreme Tech
Sending exploration tools to depths of 5,000 meters or more requires a unique set of hardware that can survive and operate in extreme temperatures and low light. Space constraints further complicate mounting cameras on remotely operated underwater vehicles and controlling them from confined workspaces aboard an exploration vessel.

In 2019, DeepSea partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to design a camera system that could deliver studio-level imaging quality in these conditions, an idea first championed by MBARI’s Mark Chaffey. The team sought a camera capable of UHD resolution, HDR and native 12G outputs to integrate with standard broadcast workflows. The Sony HDC-P50 hit the sweet spot for all criteria.

What sealed the deal was the camera’s modular design. DeepSea completely deconstructed and re-engineered its chassis to integrate the HDC-P50’s features into the MxD SeaCam, a broadcast-
grade 4K subsea imaging system with a ruggedized pressure housing designed for deep‑ocean exploration, scientific research and underwater filmmaking.

Building the MxD SeaCam around Sony’s proven compact broadcast camera helps us deliver the same imaging performance and control as a full-sized studio system but hardened for thousands of underwater pressure cycles. In 2025, OET and DeepSea brought the camera to sea on the Exploration Vessel Nautilus and tested it under real-world conditions.

A key objective of the Cook Islands expedition was to explore the South Pacific region’s biological and geological diversity and provide information about these environments to the Cook Islands Government.

ROV-based (remotely operated vehicle) surveys are best suited for filming macro fauna, which is everything large enough to see with the naked eye, or about a few centimeters in size. During the Cook Islands expedition, the camera’s combination of UHD resolution with a faster frame rate to capture more detail per second brought out the finer details of organisms that scientists need to identify species and examine geological patterns. Color is also important, and this HDR system gives us a richer range of hues and spectral information about underwater habitats and environments.

High-Resolution Science
The HDC-P50 will remain an essential part of DeepSea’sMxD system and the team will test and evaluate newer Sony camera versions as our organizations continue to advance deep-sea floor imaging. Only about 28% of the seafloor has been mapped at high resolution. We know more details about the moon’s surface than we do about the ocean floor.

The ocean contains about 99% of our planet’s habitable volume, yet roughly 90% of the species that live in it have yet to be identified. The visual information we gather with Sony tools is used for high-quality broadcast viewing and permanently stored in public repositories where it remains available to scientists and anyone interested in researching and learning in the future.

For many scientists, the complexity and cost of at-sea research limit their access to the sea floor. With advanced imaging solutions like the Sony HDC-P50 and DeepSea MxD SeaCam as well as OET’s telepresence outreach, researchers worldwide can unlock new ultra-high-resolution views of the deep. The better the quality of the data we can deliver to our audiences, the better they can do their jobs.

More information is available on Sony’s website.

Science-fiction writers, who love to write about artificial intelligence taking over the world by exterminating humanity, rarely address a far more pressing and mundane issue that many engineers face every day: What happens when things begin to get too complex for humans to understand?

“The biggest complication everyone has is that we have more devices all the way down the line, from intake acquisition to live production to master control to delivery and OTT, processing media flow than we’ve ever had in our history,” said Thomas Carlisle, senior solutions architect at TAG Video Systems. “And that complexity is only going to increase.”

With some important caveats, this mind-boggling complexity, which can potentially cost companies revenue and trigger massive regulatory problems, is accelerating the use of AI by providers of test, measurement, QC, monitoring and compliance solutions.

“The big tech companies have given us this ‘big hammer’—which is AI—and have spent a lot of time looking for problems it can solve,” said Mediaproxy CEO Erik Otto, who is bullish on using AI to improve monitoring and the quality of experience for viewers, but cautions that clients want to move beyond the hype and see real applications and results. “But if AI is a big hammer, not everything is a nail. Not everything makes sense.”

Cloud-Based Complexity
While the interest in AI isn’t new—many of the main suppliers have been using it for years—the ongoing shift toward software-, IP- and cloud-based solutions is making it easier to deploy and apply AI-based technologies in test, measurement, QC, monitoring and compliance solutions.

“All the components are there for file-based,” cloud and IP workflows, Matthew Driscoll, vice president of product management at Telestream, explained. “And it is progressing fast for live, particularly for sports. That gives you this flexibility and burst capacity for things like the World Cup, but it also adds to the complexity. You have all these complex changes from SDI to IP. You’re asking these same teams to now leverage the cloud, so you have all these more permutations of things that could go wrong.”

To handle those challenges, Telestream has developed two new solutions: Pulse, a software-defined IP monitoring platform for ST 2110 signals, and Lens, a cloud-native solution that unifies all of its monitoring capabilities.

Ashish Basu, executive vice president, worldwide sales and business development at Interra Systems, agreed there is a growing demand for solutions to help monitor IP- and cloud-based infrastructures and that this shift is impacting the use of AI.

“One of the major market segments that we are seeing emerge as a very big opportunity is in sports,” he said, noting Interra is working with several major professional leagues and with major events like the World Cup, which pose many complex QC and monitoring challenges.

“We are focused on the end-to-end visibility of the content workflow and as a result are very focused on root cause analysis,” Basu said. As part of that push, Interra is developing an AI chatbot to help users identify the source of problems. “We want users to know that a problem occurred, how to fix it and how to avoid it in the future,” he added.

No ‘Winner Take All’ Scenario
Others caution that the market is likely to remain fragmented, with measurement and monitoring solutions needed for many different IP, cloud and baseband infrastructures. This fragmentation will also have an impact on AI use.

“There are big clients where the flexibility of IP is a godsend that really helps you speed up your setup,” Lynx Technik Chief Technical Officer Vincent Noyer said. “But in other cases, the gain is not so obvious. SDI is still easy to work with. I don’t see it as a winner-take-all scenario where everything is all-IP or all-cloud. We are still seeing strong demand for our products from clients who are focused on broadcast quality.”

This fragmentation is important in applying AI to tackle measurement and monitoring problems, with deployments that work best in cloud environments that can handle the massive processing and power requirements of LLMs.

“If you are in the cloud, you are not constrained by power and by computing resources; you can do many things,” Noyer added. “But in other environments you can be limited. If you can’t support a 500-watt GPU, then other approaches, simpler products and technologies, will work better.”

Another major issue with LLMs and some of the newer AI approaches is the need for massive amounts of data for accurate results.

“AI is going to matter, but you do also have to be careful,” said Triveni Digital President and CEO Mark Simpson, adding that his company has used what might be called AI for 20 years. “Effective AI requires tremendous observations and historical knowledge in terms of big data sets. The question is, do we have enough data yet in this industry? The underlying system really must provide very detailed observations for the AI to use.”

Another example of the market fragmentation and complexity that will affect how AI might be applied to test, measurement, QC, monitoring and compliance systems for broadcasters is the transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0 in the U.S. and other advanced broadcast standards internationally.

IP and Hybrid Complexity
ATSC 3.0 and similar standards are IP-based and can meld broadcast feeds with internet streams to provide interactivity, dynamic advertising and a host of other features. While this will let broadcasters better compete with digital media, it also creates additional complexities.

To handle those, TV Globo in Brazil recently deployed solutions from Triveni designed to handle the unique features of that country’s new TV 3.0 standard. “This has made it much easier for them to detect problems,” and will help them take advantage of the new standard’s features, according to Simpson.

All this fragmentation and complexity raises a longstanding issue—the need
to simplify monitoring, measurement and QC processes.

“A lot of operations, engineering and leaders come to us and say we need one, one piece of glass,” TAG’s Carlisle stressed. “They don’t want to go to four or five different products. I want a unified, simple platform.”

In addition to simplifying the monitoring process, Carlisle and others believe AI can proactively analyze networks to solve issues before they might occur, greatly improving the viewing experience, which in turn would help retain audiences and subscribers.

Mediaproxy’s Otto noted that his company’s products, used by the major U.S. broadcast networks and hundreds of TV stations, allow customers to monitor hundreds of outputs, including encrypted ATSC 3.0 feeds and YouTube offerings that have been difficult to track.

“We can join together hundreds of thousands of sources,” he said. “And we are getting to the point where we can employ AI to do more interesting things to improve the quality of experience, which can have a direct impact on revenue, costs and audience. That is where we are directing a lot of our attention with AI.”

RICHMOND, Va.—Opening a brand-new, state-of-the-art production facility at CarMax Park for the Richmond Flying Squirrels minor league baseball team presented many challenges and opportunities.

Among them was the all-important decision of selecting the camera system. Taking the leap from our previous workflow in our old stadium, “The Diamond,” our goal was clear: support productions of home games, live events, LED programming and multiplatform content with a consistent, high-quality production standard that truly sets us apart.

Knowing that the cameras would be in use throughout the day, reliability, image quality and flexibility were all important factors.

We looked at several options before selecting the Grass Valley LDX 110. During our evaluation, it delivered better performance in low light and other challenging lighting conditions than the alternatives we considered, while remaining within the budget we had set for the project. The Xenios CMOS image sensor consistently delivered the picture quality we were looking for, and the compact camcorder-style design was a good fit for how our operators work on game days.

All-Action Capture
Our production schedule begins when the gates open and finishes after the last fans leave the ballpark. During that time, in addition to the game itself, we’re producing a variety of content including player introductions, fan features, live entertainment, promotions and activity around the concourse. Camera operators are constantly moving between different environments and lighting conditions.

Our fixed cameras, including the high home and centerfield positions, provide the main coverage throughout the game. They produce excellent pictures and give us the consistency we need across the entire production.

The MVP in our live production workflow has been the mobile camera system, a huge upgrade over previous systems deployed. The LDX 110 gives us much more freedom to cover everything happening around the stadium with the same picture and color quality we see on fixed cameras. Operators can move freely around the 360-degree concourse to spend time with fans, react to big moments and capture entertainment occuring on and off the field, all with a consistent high-quality production standard. These shots are critical in telling the story of the fan experience at CarMax Park.

The mobile system is a seamless, natural fit in our workflow with the color-grading system in our control room, allowing our shader full control while the camera operator freely moves around CarMax Park. That combination has made mobile operation far easier than we have experienced in past workflows.

We use the word “consistency” often, as that has probably been the biggest operational improvement seen since opening the venue. The picture quality and consistency of the LDX 110 systems is big league, giving our production the polish our fans and partners deserve while allowing our team to stay focused on the live show.

Big-League Delivery
The response from our fans and community partners has been extremely positive. Fans, colleagues and industry peers who visit CarMax Park often describe our productions as “big league.” That was one of our main objectives when we designed the production facilities, so it is very rewarding to receive that feedback.

Overall, the deployment has exceeded our expectations, and we are already working with Grass Valley and our integration partners to add a second mobile camera system. That decision is based on how much value the first system has added to our productions and how often we now rely on it during a game.

Opening a new ballpark gave us the chance to build the production workflow we wanted from the beginning. The LDX 110 cameras have become an important part of that workflow, helping us produce consistent, professional coverage throughout every game while giving our production team more creative freedom around the stadium.

More information is available at Grass Valley’s website.

BRISTOL, Conn.—“College GameDay” is ESPN’s premier college football pregame show, for which we have won the Sports Emmy for Best Weekly Studio Show for three consecutive years (2024–2026). It’s a privilege to work on the show and to continue to shape it.

For those unfamiliar with “GameDay,” it’s a 20-plus-camera, multiset, fan-immersive broadcast that moves to a new college campus every week of the season. It’s exciting, unpredictable and one of the most technically complex studio shows on television.

Live in HDR
Last season, we began exploring how to evolve the show’s visual identity. We had already moved “GameDay” into HDR, and that shift opened the door to a more cinematic presentation. I don’t just mean shallow depth of field, which tends to dominate conversations about “cinematic sports,” but the full package: Crisp edge detail, richer color and extended dynamic range. With a controlled lighting environment on our set (even outdoors), we knew we could push the look further.

At the 2025 NAB Show, RED’s booth immediately caught my attention. They were showcasing the V-RAPTOR with the SMPTE back, and the combination aligned exactly with my search for a cinema-grade sensor that could still integrate cleanly into a broadcast workflow.

After meeting RED’s specialists and digging into the camera’s capabilities, it became clear the V-RAPTOR could deliver two things we needed simultaneously: One was a true cinematic image suitable for HDR and the other was high-frame-rate performance for studio slow motion.

We weren’t just chasing a “pretty picture.” I needed a camera that could slot into our EVS replay system, take a matching look-up table to sit alongside our Sony broadcast cameras and still be painted live from the truck. V-RAPTOR ticked every box.

Every week of the season, “GameDay” rolls into a new campus. We build a full studio environment outdoors, surrounded by thousands of fans who show up before sunrise. It’s a wild place to deploy a cinema camera, but RED made the integration straightforward.

Canon supported us with optics, primarily the Canon 17–120 mm Cine Servo zoom, and later a prototype Canon 11–55 mm. We ran the camera through a Cyanview control panel, RED provided the necessary rack gear and we powered the camera directly from the truck to accommodate the different power requirements.

Operationally, the only noticeable change was weight. With cine glass and the larger body, we assigned the camera to an operator with experience carrying one through long, energetic handheld sequences. Once it was on his shoulder, he ran with it creatively.

We deployed the V-RAPTOR for two weeks of the 15-week regular season, at Vanderbilt and Utah. Vanderbilt was a perfect test case—the show featured live country music performances, and the camera produced standout images that immediately
differentiated themselves from our standard broadcast coverage.

We ran the camera at 3x slow motion, using it for fan reaction slo-mos, which are a show signature. We also used it for our on-set field-goal challenge, where a student attempts a kick for a cash prize.

Ready for 500th Show
The camera bridged the gap between cinematic presentation and high-frame-rate replay in a way we hadn’t achieved before. RED proved itself as a valuable tool in our broader innovation strategy.

As “GameDay” enters its 40th season and prepares for its 500th road show, we’re always looking for ways to evolve. V-RAPTOR gave us a new visual language to explore and helped inform how we think about balancing cinematic storytelling with live broadcast reliability.

As we continue to push forward in HDR, in camera tech and in how we bring the energy of thousands of fans into viewers’ homes, RED will remain part of the conversation.

More information is available on the RED website.

The term “cloud” originated from diagrams of large-scale data networks and, for a long time, the cloud was just a “means to transfer information from one place to another using someone else’s computer.” In time, privately controlled services emerged that allowed users to store data with “cloud service providers,” new businesses that permitted access to their “private” data from anywhere.

In truth, the user’s data lived on computer systems owned and hosted by a cloud service provider. Those physical places became known as data centers, consisting of racks and racks of computers, storage devices and networking devices that communicate and/or support many compute functions. Such services must be capable of expanding—as necessary—to meet the user demands for short-term, long-term and immediately accessible data housed in locations typically unknown to those end users.

Private Clouds
Large companies often have their own “scaled” data centers located at their physical buildings, which allow for personalized management and cost a great deal to fabricate, support and manage.

Today, there are two general meanings of this “data center” terminology:

• It’s where the term “on-prem”—meaning “on the premises” comes from—inferring that self-managed compute services (usually servers and computer elements), storage and input/output network management are physically placed in the company’s owned-and-operated facility (such as a hardened warehouse full of electronics, cooling, backup power and security).
• You can host your data in your own datacenter “on prem,” or you can host it with another service “as in the cloud.” Private companies are now building entire data centers to either outsource/lease space (only) or house entire systems solutions for users to place their own gear into or rent the service provider’s systems on a “square-foot” basis or a “rack-by-rack” space basis—with or without maintenance or support by a third-party organization.

Cloud Structure
A cloud can be considered a business when it is owned and operated by a “recognized” entity such as Amazon (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft (Azure), Google, etc. But they may not be the only “cloud resources”—companies that offer software services under their own “private” cloud (e.g., Wasabi or Comcast). Such cloud organizations or structures may also provide intercloud offerings, allowing them to scale across larger data sets, bridge various specialized “data centers” or even sublet entire facilities to a particular single entity as needed.

For on-prem solutions or even large-scale public data centers, monitoring platforms are “managed over-the-top subsystems” that may drive an entire solution set platform (data center) or link groups of data centers. For an on-prem environment, such a platform could require a large up-front commitment by the organization.

If your organization is employing a cloud-based DevOps solution with rapid iteration and continued live or real-time practices that involve continuous results reporting and direct-to-developer feedback, though, it may be difficult to predict or understand the depth of commitment necessary on the front end, let alone what might occur as the systems scale upward in response to growing needs for client services or compute and storage expandability.

Self-deployed monitoring systems may also generate a lot of unused capacity and wasted resources. That is unpredictable as the software-solutions processes move through the various “bring-to-market” stages. Even when the DevOps solution is built for internal or local operations only, the self-built/self-managed monitoring platform can overwhelm the IT or engineering services with unpredictable consequences.

Today, there are many potential open-source monitoring solutions available to organizations; some strictly on-prem and others entirely cloud-based. Any improperly integrated solution could generate a lot of unused capacity and wasted resources—as reported by service providers, vendors and end users.

That’s not to mean an experienced organization familiar with today’s most relevant trends (and with sufficient cloud management solutions experts in-house) should not or cannot develop a comprehensive, scalable monitoring solution that fits its needs. However, the risks and costs can escalate as the environment expands or as the scale mushrooms. It is a complex balancing act that can make or break the organization’s performance or profitability.

Before venturing into this domain, be sure to understand the overall solutions development processes—especially the real-time management core initiatives and the harmonization of the operation’s IT functions.

First, Defining DevOps
DevOps is a collaborative approach that merges software development and IT operations—and is nearly always a live or real-time environment. DevOps typically combines people, processes and automated tools to build, test and release software much faster and with greater reliability.

Throughout the DevOps process, software is constantly monitored while in development or in use. During the testing and “spinning up” process, user issues generate large amounts of data and feedback that go directly back to developers to be quickly improved. Once deployed, the procedures usually continue and may require more capabilities than an “on-prem” solution might be able to handle.

In the cloud, DevOps may function by using “on-demand” cloud infrastructure (Fig. 1) to automate software delivery, manage infrastructure through code and auto-scale resources dynamically to meet delivery needs, adjusting the flows by reacting to anomalies, including failures, crashes or data overruns. In the cloud, instead of manually configuring physical servers, teams write code to provision environments, test automatically and deploy updates while continuously monitoring application health.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process by which operations teams define network servers, databases and environments using configuration files (such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation) rather than manual clicks in a portal.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) is an accompanying cloud-native service (such as AWS CodePipeline or GitHub Actions) that permits the automatic testing of code as soon as developers commit it. Once verified, the cloud platform automatically pushes the software update into production.

Data Centers
One of the “DIY” challenges is when an organization is driven to write all of the integrations itself and then forced to manage those integrations long-term. Novel “open-source solutions” require a great deal of upkeep, attention and maintenance.

Users report they almost need to have a Ph.D. to set up effective and sufficient monitoring capabilities that can address the ever-growing needs of a DevOps environment.

Some (but certainly not all) system solutions vendors may either make it difficult to figure things out intentionally or require long-term solutions support contracts, resorting to extensive Googling or digging into all kinds of online forums for answers. Much of that information will likely be inapplicable to the organization’s actual needs without considerable DevOps adoption (while under live operations).

Monitoring for Success
Effective end-to-end monitoring is crucial for enterprise DevOps teams to ensure high-quality, scalable and secure software delivery across complex environments.

Key requirements for enterprise DevOps monitoring platforms (Fig. 2) must be properly selected to ensure scalable, reliable and efficient software development and operations. The cloud on its own is not generally designed to develop those platforms without a considerable amount of code or structured elements that are specifically fashioned to the needs of the user’s organization.

Effective end-to-end monitoring is crucial for enterprise DevOps teams to ensure high-quality, scalable, and secure software delivery across complex environments.

In our next installment, we will dig deeper into issues on dynamic scaling, integration and vendor support, the importance of documentation, how to establish real-time notification and developer access without infrastructure exposure and end-to-end data capture across the DevOps lifecycle.

A person is scrolling through social media and stops on a video of a real human being making a plausible claim. Nothing about the clip looks obviously fake. The lighting feels normal. The voice sounds right. It may even be genuine footage.

How does that person decide whether to believe it?

That is the real question now: not whether media can be manipulated—we already know it can. Not whether synthetic media will continue to improve; it will. The harder question is how belief gets formed when authentic-looking media is abundant and context is fragile amid constant technological innovation.

Since my column “Content Provenance: Audience Trust Is at Stake” in the December issue of TV Tech was published, confidence in the telecom sector continues to fall. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, a record-low 28% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media (see chart below). The conversation around the importance of the verifiability of content authenticity, i.e. content provenance, has become pivotal.

This article does not argue that provenance can solve the trust problem; that challenge depends on a multitude of factors, including effective marketing, brand and customer strategy, as well as human emotion, environment and temperament. Rather, we argue that provenance is now a necessary infrastructure for making digital content more transparent and defensible. The need for authenticity is not coming soon; it is already here.

Over the past two years, meaningful progress has been made on provenance technology. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is an industry standard for attaching provenance metadata to digital content so people can verify where media came from and whether it has been edited. It has become the center of gravity for content credentials.

As synthetic media becomes easier to create, and AI-generated images and videos become more commonplace, regulators are beginning to insist on machine-readable transparency. Article 50 of the European Union AI Act becomes enforceable on Aug. 2, and California’s AI transparency rules are moving in a similar direction. For media companies, provenance is more than a best practice. It is a capability they will need to operationalize.

Why Trust Cannot Be Engineered
People trust institutions. They trust familiar people. They trust sources their communities already recognize. They trust what aligns with their prior experiences more readily than what disrupts them. And while technology may modify some of these patterns, it does not replace them.

This is why propaganda still works in a world where authenticity tools are improving. A message does not need to be fake to be manipulative. It only needs to be framed effectively, repeated often enough and delivered by a messenger the audience is predisposed to trust. Conversely, a piece of information can be authentic in a narrow technical sense and still mislead. A real clip can be selectively edited. A true quote can be stripped of context. A genuine image can imply something false.

This is the core limitation that provenance cannot solve.

C2PA is designed to certify the history of content, not its inherent truthfulness. It can help establish where a file came from and whether its recorded history has been altered. It does not determine whether the message is honest, persuasive, manipulative or fair. It is a transparency layer, not a truth engine.

The news industry has been dealing with versions of this problem for years. User-generated content has long been highly valuable and highly risky. It feels authentic because it is often captured by real people in real moments. But that makes it easy to over-trust. “Shot by a real person” is not the same thing as “reliably framed,” “fully contextualized” or “immune from manipulation.” In some ways, that is precisely why provenance matters. In other ways, it is precisely why provenance is not a silver bullet.

AI Makes the Problem More Visible
AI has not so much created the trust problem as made it harder to ignore. For broadcasters, the more immediate issue is not whether AI can generate convincing content. It is how to preserve confidence in the provenance of content as it moves through increasingly complex production and distribution chains.

The healthiest relationship with provenance is pragmatic: use it to strengthen verification, not to outsource judgment.

That becomes especially important in broadcasting because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Content may be signed at capture, but downstream platforms and intermediaries can still strip or distort metadata during re-encoding or distribution. In practice, that means provenance can disappear before the audience ever sees it. For broadcasters, that means provenance technologies cannot be treated as a point solution. It must be operationalized across capture, editing, publishing, metadata management and governance.

C2PA is not a trust substitute. It is an enterprise capability that supports trust at scale.

The future is unlikely to produce a universal trust layer that makes belief automatic. That is asking too much of any technology. What it can do is provide better information.

For media executives, this creates a practical agenda.

First, treat provenance as infrastructure. Second, start where the risk is highest, especially around UGC and breaking news workflows. Third, build governance around what you capture, expose and retain. And fourth, prepare for provenance to become part of compliance architecture, not just editorial experimentation.

That is where the real opportunity lies. Not in claiming technology can manufacture trust, but in building systems that make trust easier to earn and easier to defend.

Technology can tell us where information came from. It cannot tell us what to believe. Even if it could tell us what to believe, would we?

Now that consumers can stream live sports of just about every description through one OTT service or another, the question is, can service providers draw enough viewers to make money on their big sports streaming bets?

Amid much publicity about the boom in sports streaming, the general absence of sports-specific ROI data can’t hide the fact that, by all indications, providers are a long way from generating the returns they’re looking for on huge licensing and infrastructure costs. Notwithstanding a wealth of vendor-supplied, audience-building solutions aimed at achieving that goal, live sports viewing is still predominantly experienced through legacy TV outlets.

That point was driven home in April by Dan Rayburn, streaming media analyst and producer of the annual NAB Show Streaming Summit, who noted that pay TV still accounts for around 85% of total live sports viewing hours in the U.S. Citing inflated numbers widely ascribed to recently streamed marquee productions, Rayburn said the impression that streaming services are drawing “tens of millions of viewers” is wrong.

“It’s not happening,” he said, adding, “I see almost nobody reporting the numbers correctly.”

With streamers spending $12.5 billion of the $64 billion global outlay for sports distribution rights in 2025 and likely to add another $1.7 billion this year, according to Ampere Analysis, it remains to be seen if the pursuit of better UX will deliver the payback platforms are looking for. Getting there starts with eliminating the hassles confronted by consumers in searching for specific events, suggested Sandeep Tiku, chief technology officer at global sports streaming giant DAZN, which, as reported by the Financial Times, finally hopes to turn a profit by year’s end.

Battling the Fragmentation Impact on UX
Joining Rayburn for a different session at the NAB Show Streaming Summit, Tiku took streamers to task for thinking the use of recommendation engines qualifies as personalization. “Personalization totally is a joke,” he said, with Rayburn voicing concurrence. “Open your app and keep scrolling to find what game to watch? That’s not personalization. That’s marketing buzz.”

Tiku suggested the granularity of the in-the-moment, per-user personalization providers need will require streaming via the new Delta protocol, which DAZN and multiple development partners plan to demonstrate at next month’s IBC in hopes of bringing it to market over the next two years. But there’s ample evidence that sports streamers are already moving toward significant improvements in personalization and UX in general by tapping into the outpouring of new vendor solutions now at hand.

One way to get over the fragmentation hump with a more search-friendly UX can be found among the many multiview platforms that have appeared over the last year or so. While multiviewing with three or four on-screen options has gained some currency, a spurt of newly introduced next-gen systems could bring streamers much closer to mitigating the fragmentation issue.

The platform Broadpeak introduced at April’s NAB Show is a case in point. As Broadpeak sees it, the key to getting the most from multiviewing lies with lifting limitations on the number of user choices, how those options are configured and how fast they are rendered, said Damien Sterkers, the company’s vice president of products and solutions marketing. In an interview, Sterkers said the new multiview platform meets these requirements with improved cost and streaming efficiency compared to other available options.

But as with any consumer-targeted multiviewing platform, there are matters of rights, market testing and other business complexities that must be dispensed with before Broadpeak can talk about customer implementations. “There’s huge interest, but it takes a lot of time,” Sterkers said.

That appears to be the case with most of the other next-gen systems just hitting the marketplace, including the widely varying approaches taken by AWS, Eluvio, Harmonic, Imagine Communications, MediaKind, Syna­media, Tiledmedia and Red5, all of which were also on display at NAB Show. To date, very few service provider implementations of these solutions have been publicized.

One exception involves AWS, which began its foray into multiviewing late last year with the development of Formula One’s F1 TV Premium platform, enabling in-sync displays of camera feeds from every car in a race. Still in development with general availability targeted for IBC in September, Prime Video used the AWS solution in last season’s NBA telecasts to give viewers instant access to all games in action at any given time, according to Greg Truax, director of live services at AWS Elemental.

Truax said his team has put a lot of work into developing a ready-to-deploy platform that can be customized to each provider’s specific needs. Given that implementations can be resource-intensive on the server side, he said, this can only be done at reasonable cost “with on-demand scaling in the cloud.” What matters is that, by packing multiple videos into a single bitstream, “you’re not burning batteries or using other extra resources like advanced chips on the client,” he added.

Innovations in Production
There’s also a lot happening on the production side to enliven live-streamed sports, as exemplified by the support industry operators are getting from Techex, the longtime U.K.-based broadcast production system integrator and solutions provider that is expanding its U.S. customer base. At NAB Show, Techex announced a partnership with Encompass Digital Media that integrates Encompass’ cloud-production workflow platform with Techex’s content transformation, user interface and control technologies.

As described by Techex product manager David Edwards, the partnership is focused on live sports and production convergence for traditional broadcast and streaming in the cloud, including hybrid operations involving both on-prem and public commodity processing centers. “What’s unique for Techex is we can insert content seamlessly in multiple live transport streams with the ability to scale operations in the cloud compute environment,” Edwards said, adding this is done with no need to decode the streams.

A big focus for customers has been enabling on-the-fly insertions of SCTE 35 (“Scutty”) markers and then ads on a regionally targeted basis whenever game breaks occur. The benefits and scalability of the Techex functionalities were on display in DAZN’s 2026 World Cup productions, he said, noting production for the championship game in New Jersey involved dealing with feeds from 50 cameras.

A UX Game-Changer Tied to Latency Reduction
On another front widely regarded as essential to a better sports streaming UX, industry players are moving aggressively to lower end-to-end distribution latencies. These initiatives have two goals: reducing streaming latencies to broadcast equivalency in the 6-to-8-second range (and sometimes lower) over conventional HLS and MPEG DASH streaming platforms, and achieving sub-500-millisecond latencies, commonly referred to as “real time,” over new streaming infrastructures.

As previously reported, the search for real-time streaming solutions shifted into high gear at the NAB Show with surging industry participation in testing and, in a few cases, commercial operations over new CDN infrastructure supporting the new MOQ Transport standard.

But there’s something more to MOQ beyond support for real-time streaming that may account for the surging industry involvement, and this could go beyond the latency question to address the larger challenge of how to drive ROI on live sports streaming.

As Broadpeak’s Sterkers noted: “MOQ gives us one single protocol for streaming all video applications. Imagine you have a streaming service where you can mix programs on the same transport platform, adding real time for watch parties or to bring in commentary from influencers, while maintaining broadcast-level latency with the core content.”

That’s possible because MOQ users will have independently managed dashboard control over each track of a MOQ stream. They can assign latencies ranging from sub-500 milliseconds to two-second “interactive live,” for applications like sports betting and interactive shopping, to 5-second “conservative live” matched to broadcast speeds.

Broadpeak is all in at this stage of MOQ experimentation, taking a highly flexible approach to its CDN infrastructure that will be productized as soon as one of its tire-kickers is ready to go public, Sterkers said. “It really depends on how much people want to spend on latency optimization,” he added. “But with MOQ they can do a lot more natively.”

Whatever the motivations might be, demand for MOQ support is high enough to persuade AWS it is worth a lot of the Elemental team’s time, AWS Elemental’s Truax said. Given that AWS has long supported streaming with the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), a fundamental component of the QUIC protocol used with MOQ, “we’re excited about the standardization of UDP video delivery,” he said.

With several customers already in MOQ beta testing, “it’s kind of a latency thing right now,” Truax added. But now that “all the pieces of the chain” are in play, aside from control over device playback, AWS has more expansive goals in mind.

“You will see us make a fairly big splash,” Truax predicted. But with the IETF hoping to complete the MOQ Transport specifications by year-end, getting to commercial operations is “going to take a lot of work all the way into December.”

Imagine building a TV business based on streaming IP-packetized local TV channels to viewers on a market-by-market basis. Who would have thought of that?

Well, it turns out the broadcasters, broadcast vendors and CE companies responsible for developing the ATSC 3.0 standard aren’t the only ones. In early July, a tech company called “FreeCast,” specializing in providing “streaming Platform-as-a-Service” solutions, threw its hat into the ring with the announcement of FreeCast Cities.

The service combines local TV channels, free streaming channels, premium television services, on-demand entertainment and subscription management into a single consumer experience. Currently in beta, FreeCast will enable consumers to access this content via supported TVs, mobile devices, computers and connected streaming platforms, according to a press release.

The FreeCast Cities announcement came about three months after a company called Landover Saturn 5 proposed to the Federal Communications Commission that it conduct an auction of a nationwide block of TV channels 28–36.

The two are unrelated in most respects but share a common thread: They both give the FCC even more to consider as it works on its final report and order regarding ATSC 3.0, which is expected to be out before the end of the year.

To be sure, neither proposal is a slam dunk. FreeCast must successfully navigate its way through rights negotiations with stations and their networks before it has a chance of fulfilling what it calls its “consumer-focused design philosophy,” namely, “One City. One Login. All Your Television.”

Regarding the Landover proposal, the FCC has much to consider, not the least of which is whether it wishes to empower a private entity to conduct the proposed auction on its behalf.

What’s worrisome is these proposals further muddy the waters for the commission as it considers its NextGen TV report and order—something a television industry seeking clarity on sunsetting today’s DTV standard and an expeditious transition can ill afford.

A Bit Overwhelming
A month or so ago, I reported about my stroke and my upcoming open-heart surgery to bypass four significantly clogged cardiac arteries.

Since then, I have undergone the surgery and am convalescing at home. While I am not ready to run down the aisles at NAB Show any time soon, the doctors assure me that after my outpatient rehab is complete, I will be back in the swing of things. In fact, following the operation, my surgeon told me I now have “the heart of a 20-year-old.”

I also wanted to report that the outpouring of support, well wishes and prayers from both family and friends, as well as many in the TV industry, has been a bit overwhelming. I want to thank everyone for their supportive texts, emails, phone calls, cards and flowers. They have meant the world to me.

As I sign off, I will echo the closing of my last column. I am eager to put this all behind me and get back in the swing of things, reporting on our fast-changing industry.

PISCATAWAY, N.J.—The IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS) has announced that Charles Einolf of the U.S. will receive its 2025 Jules Cohen Award.

The Jules Cohen Award is the society's highest honor, recognizing individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the broadcast industry and shown unwavering integrity and professionalism, as well as a sustained commitment to sharing knowledge for the benefit of colleagues and the industry as a whole, IEEE BTS said.

The group said Dr. Einolf has demonstrated exceptional technical leadership and service to broadcasting throughout his career in several influential roles.

From 1996 to 2003, Dr. Einolf served as deputy drector of the Advanced Television Test Center (ATTC). Under his leadership, the ATTC produced objective, technically rigorous test results that were instrumental in the adoption of the Grand Alliance digital television system, which ultimately became the foundation for the ATSC digital television standard. The ATTC's reports were recognized for their depth, accuracy and professionalism. Dr. Einolf consistently stood behind the integrity of the findings, even when the results generated controversy, earning the respect and trust of colleagues throughout the industry.

Dr. Einolf also represented the U.S. on the ITU Study Group 6 delegation, where he played a key role in advocating for the preservation of broadcast spectrum. His technical expertise, thoughtful leadership and clear, well-reasoned contributions were instrumental in protecting critical spectrum resources for the broadcasting community, the group said.

In addition, Dr. Einolf served multiple terms on the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Administrative Committee (AdCom). During his tenure, he exemplified the highest standards of integrity, professionalism and dedication to advancing broadcast technology. His leadership and service have benefited not only broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers, but ultimately the millions of viewers who rely on broadcast television every day.

Historically, this award has been made as part of the BTS’s Fall Symposium activities. However, there was no Fall Symposium event in 2025.

As a result, both the 2025 and 2026 awards will be made at the society’s Oct. 27–28 tech conference, rebranded this year as the “IEEE BTS Broadcast Technology Forum.”