WASHINGTON—In a joint filing with the Federal Communications Commission, America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) and PBS highlighted the importance of NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 for the future of public broadcasting but asked the regulator not to set a firm date for cutting off ATSC 1.0 broadcasts.

The NAB, Pearl TV, state broadcast associations and large commercial broadcasters have been pushing for a firm sunset to ATSC 1.0 signals.

In a separate filing with the FCC, Pearl TV, which is backed by major commercial station groups, argued that "a clear deadline is the only way to align incentives across broadcasters, manufacturers, and retailers. Threshold-based approaches would replicate the early confusion of the DTV transition and prolong uncertainty. A firm date provides the predictability necessary for investment and consumer clarity."

APTS and PBS, who referred to themselves as PTV in the filing, said PTV “supports the Commission’s proposal to facilitate and accelerate the ongoing voluntary transition to NextGen TV by removing regulatory hurdles and providing broadcasters with maximum flexibility for the transition. These proposed changes will empower all local stations, including local public television stations, to deploy ATSC 3.0 at their discretion and at the appropriate pace to best serve the unique needs of their local communities and local audiences.”

The filing stressed that PTV supports enabling local stations to best meet viewers’ needs by eliminating regulatory barriers and providing maximum flexibility for local station decision-making.

“PTV agrees with the Commission that the continued permissive, flexible deployment of ATSC 3.0 by local broadcasters will best serve the public interest," the Jan. 20 filing noted. "The FCC can best support television stations, and the viewers they serve, with the transition to ATSC 3.0 by providing local stations with maximum flexibility to make their own decisions about ATSC 3.0 deployment” and by adopting “a flexible (and local) grassroots approach (rather than a top-down regulatory approach)”

As part of that the PTV filing supports the FCC proposals to eliminate the substantially similar and simulcast regulations.

But the filing also opposed a hard cutoff date. “PTV believes it is premature for the FCC to establish either a date certain or specific market conditions for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 service at this time; rather, any sunsetting of ATSC 1.0 service should be market-led for now (as with the rest of the transition), so that local stations continue to have maximum flexibility to serve their communities.”

The full filing can be found here.

[This article is part TV Tech’s ongoing coverage of the FCC and NextGen TV; articles about comments and filings from other companies and associations with different perspectives on these issues can be found here and here.]

WASHINGTON—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) has elected its new board leaders and board members, who will officially begin their terms on Feb. 22.

Andrew Russell, president and CEO of PBS SoCal and KCET in Los Angeles, has been elected to the role of chair of the board. Susi Elkins, director of Broadcasting and general manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., is the new professional vice chair. David Stewart II, immediate past board chair of Nine PBS in St. Louis, will serve as the lay vice chair.

Newly elected board trustees include: Eric Easter, lay trustee of WHUT in Washington, D.C.; and Anthony Hayes, chief operating officer and general manager of New England Public Media in Springfield, Mass.

A number of trustees were re-elected this year as well, including W. Craig Fugate, at-large trustee in Gainesville, Fla.; Jeffrey Gilbert, board chair of New Hampshire PBS; Mimi Chapin Gregory, lay trustee of WGCU in Fort Myers, Fla.; and Edward Ulman, president and CEO of Alaska Public Media.

For more information, visit www.apts.org.  

WASHINGTON—The votes have been tallied for America's Public Television Stations’ new board leaders and members, and APTS has announced that Molly Phillips of Iowa PBS has been elected to the position of board chair.

Phillips is the executive director and general manager of Iowa PBS, Iowa’s only statewide broadcasting network. Working with Iowa PBS since 1990, Phillips has dedicated her career to public television. In addition to her day job, Phillips is a past chair of the National Educational Telecommunications Association Board of Directors, and currently serves on the APTS Board of Trustees and the PBS Board of Directors. In 2010, APTS presented Phillips with the National Advocacy Award.

Additional election results for board leaders include Jefferi K. Lee, general manager of WHUT in Washington, D.C., as the newly elected professional vice chair, and the re-election of Carol Kellerman, Lay Trustee, Thirteen/WNET in New York, as the lay vice chair. Terms for all three of the elected officers will begin on Feb. 25.

There were also newly-elected members to the board of trustees: DeAnne Hamilton, executive director and general manager, KBTC Public Television, Tacoma, Wash.; Laura Hunter, station manager and COO, Utah Education Network/KUEN, Salt Lake City; Dax Schieffer, board chair of Friends of MontanaPBS in Bozeman, Mont.; and Dolores Sukhdeo, president and CEO, South Florida PBS, Miami; Re-elected trustees include Kathy Rae, board member of KPBS in San Diego, and Andrew Russell, president and CEO, PBC SoCal KCET in Los Angeles.

Brigadier General (Retired) Leo A. Brooks Jr., vice president, Enterprise Subsidiary Integration, Government Operations, for The Boeing Company in D.C., was also elected as an at-large trustee.

Terms for the trustees will begin on Feb. 24.

For more information, visit www.apts.org. 

WASHINGTON—Bert Schmidt, president and CEO of WHRO in Norfolk, Va., has been elected as the new chairman of the America’s Public Television Stations Board of Trustees.

Joining Schmidt at the head of board will be Molly Phillips, executive director and general manager of Iowa Public Television in Johnston, Iowa, in the role of professional vice chair; and Carol Kellerman, lay trustee of Thirteen/WNET in New York, as lay vice chair, a position she previously held.

The elections took place following the retirement of former Chairman Roy Clem, executive director of Alabama Public Television.

“Roy has been one of public media’s most effective and respected leaders for many years, and he never stopped leading,” said Patrick Butler, APTS president and CEO. “We will be forever grateful for Roy’s tremendous contributions to our organization and our system, which will continue for generations to come.”

Butler also welcomed Schimdt, Phillips and Kellerman as they take on their roles.

The newly elected trio’s terms begin immediately, with them serving in these roles until the next board elections on Feb. 25, 2020.

WASHINGTON—The America’s Public Television Stations has told the FCC they “stand ready, willing and able to leverage their nationwide network of high-powered broadcast television stations” in collaboration with FirstNet for the benefit of public safety users nationwide.

This was shared in response to the FCC's request for comment on whether the FCC should make a declaratory ruling on the scope of FirstNet’s interoperability requirements, 

APTS believes that the creation of a nationwide IP delivery network to complement FirstNet’s services and coverage by using the licensed spectrum of public television stations will improve first responder access to critical information during emergencies.

“All commenters, other than FirstNet and AT&T, support the commission’s review of FirstNet’s interoperability requirements under the Spectrum Act,” APTS said, adding that it has offered to assist both FirstNet and AT&T without success. “To leave public television stations, serving almost 97% of the American people—including some of the most rural and remote areas of our country—on the sidelines of the FirstNet infrastructure is to ignore a robust, reliable and ubiquitous partner whose public safety capabilities have proven effective in a variety of critical use cases. An inquiry to address the scope of FirstNet’s obligations—and its willingness—to provide access to and from other public safety networks, especially in light of FirstNet’s statutory requirements for coverage in rural areas, would be useful to all concerned.”

FirstNet was created by Congress with the goal of creating a system for enhancing communications during emergencies and other events. The nationwide service has a public-private partnership with AT&T to help deliver critical emergency information, including priority and preemptive features to create a “fast lane” on the public safety network.

APTS points out the infrastructure of more than 1,000 transmitters in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories that can work with FirstNet’s own infrastructure. It also identifies the advantages of digital datacasting for delivering encrypted and targetable IP data directly to first responders, helping to prevent the need of AT&T/FirstNet to preempt the public’s cell phone coverage during times of emergency.

Specifically, in a review of FirstNet APTS believes that the commission should “FirstNet’s ability approach to interoperability and integration with other public safety networks,” with a particular focus on coverage in rural areas and how it meets the needs of first responders in remote regions.

“Since the commission has the exclusive authority to determine whether renewal of FirstNet’s license is in the public interest, based on a determination of whether FirstNet has met its ‘duties and obligations’ under the law, the commission should certainly satisfy itself that FirstNet is providing ‘substantial’ coverage to rural areas of the country, as required by the Spectrum Act,” APTS wrote.

“Most importantly, FirstNet and the commission should work to establish the best possible eco-system for public safety communications. APTS and its member public television stations can play, and are eager to play, an important role in that eco-system—if given the opportunity.”

WASHINGTON — A new report from a working group of the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) lays out a new vision for alerting the public in times of emergency and explores how the new ATSC 3.0 television standard can play a major role.

“The ATSC 3.0 (AKA Next Gen TV) standard holds the potential to not only vastly improve the broadcast television viewing experience and expand programming opportunities, but also enhance emergency communications capabilities and create new operational capabilities for broadcast stations,” it says.

The report, “Comprehensive Re-imagining of Emergency Alerting,” identifies three ways the Next Gen TV standard supports distribution of emergency information, including EAS support, advanced emergency services, such as Advanced Emergency Alerting (AEA), and CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) relay via 3.0’s native IP transport capability.

[Read: Public TV Raises Concern Over Possible WEA Enhancement]

The standard’s support for advanced emergency information services offers “a powerful tool” to target any type of emergency information beyond typical emergency alerts to TV viewers. “This is an informational service capable of conveying a broad range of urgent information bulletins and updates to targeted audiences,” the report says.

When it comes to Advanced Emergency Alerting, 3.0 offers broadcasters a way to reach fixed, mobile and portable consumer devices with audience-targeted messages, alerts flexible enough for nearly any form of emergency information, location-targeted alerts, support for multimedia content such as graphics, photos, maps and video, alert updates, multilingual messaging and a wake-up signal to awaken receivers in standby or sleep mode, it says.

The report notes that 3.0 deployment is voluntary and that the working group expects EAS “to continue to provide its essential functions for national and local public alert and warning.” It envisions 3.0-based alerting as “a value-added function from television broadcasters.”

Among the other topics covered in the document is the role PBS and local public television stations play in helping to protect communities by datacasting to deliver information to individuals and first responders.

The report lays out the main features of PBS-WARN, which takes advantage of the nationwide public TV interconnection system to provide for a nationwide emergency alerting network that serves as a redundant backup path for the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) C interface, which is technologically diverse from the Commercial Mobile Service Provider’s primary WEA gateway.

The document describes various instances of public broadcasters partnering with first responders in different locales to enable responders to send information and video via datacasts in emergency situations. Instances noted in the report include OEAS Public Alertnet with ties to all eight Ohio public TV licenses and their 12 stations, as well as other examples in Alabama, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas.

The working group’s report notes public TV stations choosing to deploy Next Gen TV will be able to provide even more robust emergency alert and communications service to first responders and the public. For example, 3.0 will allow them to operate more efficiently in terms of TV bandwidth usage, which could allow additional Common Alert Protocol feeds of national, regional and statewide data pertaining to alerts.

“Because PBS has already implemented an intersection of traditional broadcast and cellular technologies through the nationwide PBS-WARN system, we believe that public media has shown itself [to] be an ideal vehicle for projects which explore alerting and the intersection of the next generations of traditional broadcast (ATSC 3.0) and Cellular Mobile Service (5G),” says the report.

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) issued a statement July 19 lauding the report. “The extraordinary technological achievement of ATSC 3 will enhance public safety communications and interoperability capabilities for law enforcement. Public television is already experimenting with the new services this broadcast standard makes possible,” says Patrick Butler, APTS president and CEO.

The report is available on the FCC website.

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WASHINGTON — America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) — a nonprofit membership organization ensuring a strong, financially sound public television system — has elected Sherrese M. Smith to a three-year term as an at-large trustee on the APTS Board, and at-large director on the APTS Action, Inc. Board.

Smith is currently a partner at the law firm of Paul Hastings, in Washington and also serves as a member of the law firm’s Telecommunications, Media and Technology practice, as well as its Privacy and Cybersecurity practice.

“As the child of an educator who championed the importance of high-quality public television programming, I believe that the values of public television are critical to a healthy society and are more important than ever,” Smith said.

“I am thrilled to join an organization that for over 50 years has resolutely pursued civil discourse, superb children’s educational programming, and outstanding civic leadership,” Smith added, “I look forward to partnering with APTS … to promote these timeless values and navigate new challenges in the 21st century.”

Prior to joining the Paul Hastings law firm, Smith served as chief counsel to the FCC chairman, and general counsel of Washington Post Digital, where she provided washingtonpost.com, Slate.com, ForeignPolicy.com, TheRoot.com and other digital websites legal guidance and a growth strategy.

“[Sherrese] has a brilliant legal mind, and she is a well-recognized expert in telecommunications policy,” said APTS President and CEO Patrick Butler, “We look forward to her guidance as we implement the new ATSC 3 broadcast standard and make the most of the new opportunities for service and entrepreneurship that come with it.”

Butler added, “Sherrese’s expertise in cybersecurity will also be invaluable to us as America’s public television stations continue to enhance their service in public safety communications and expand on our existing partnerships with federal, state and local public safety, law enforcement and first responder organizations...”

Smith received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Carolina, and Juris Doctor from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and currently serves as an adjunct professor at George Washington University in Washington.

Smith joins former FEMA Director Craig Fugate as an at-large board member at APTS, an organization that helps member stations provide essential public services in education, public safety and civic leadership to the American people. Previous at-large APTS board members included: Dr. Louis Sullivan, former U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services, and former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

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