WASHINGTON—The ATSC, the Broadcast Standards Association, honored veteran technologist Aldo Cugnini and Clarence Hau, Senior Vice President of Standards, Policy & Advanced Engineering at NBCUniversal at its annual meeting this week.

Cugnini is recipient of the 2025 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, which is bestowed once a year to an individual representative of the ATSC membership whose technical and leadership contributions to ATSC have been invaluable and exemplary. The Lechner Award recognizes the first recipient, the late Bernard Lechner, for his outstanding service to the ATSC. Lechner was the retired Staff Vice President, Advanced Video Systems of RCA Laboratories. His 30-year career at RCA covered all aspects of television and display research.

“Aldo Cugnini’s long-standing dedication to ATSC and his pivotal work in ITU-R have been instrumental in positioning ATSC 3.0 as a truly international broadcast standard,” said Madeleine Noland, President of ATSC. “His technical expertise, collaborative spirit, and international leadership make him richly deserving of the 2025 Lechner Award.”

Cugnini, AGC Systems principal, is a distinguished broadcast engineer whose career spans over 45 years, marked by significant contributions to digital television standards and technologies. He played a leadership role in developing ATSC digital television systems, contributing to both ATSC 1.0 and the next-generation ATSC 3.0 standards. Cugnini also serves as the International Telecommunication Union’s Co-Chair of the ITU-R SG6 WP6A Rapporteur Group on ATSC 3.0, actively participating in international standardization efforts to incorporate ATSC 3.0 into global broadcasting frameworks. Credited with 14 issued patents in digital television, audio, broadcasting, and spectrum management, Cugnini’s extensive experience and contributions have been instrumental in advancing digital broadcasting technologies.

Cugnini is a recognized expert in the fields of digital television, consumer technology and product development, technology policy, and intellectual property. He founded AGC Systems in 2003 after holding various technical and management positions at Philips Electronics and interactive TV developer ACTV. Prior to his work in digital TV, he developed broadcast technologies at CBS Laboratories and was a radio engineer for WKCR, WABC, and WPLJ in New York. Cugnini has both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia University. A musician as well as a technologist, he is a timpanist with the Hanover Wind Symphony and the South Orange Symphony Orchestra and also performs with several groups in Frederick, Maryland.

The ATSC also recognized Clarence Hau, Senior Vice President of Standards, Policy & Advanced Engineering at NBCUniversal, as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal.

The annual award honors individuals or teams who demonstrate exemplary leadership in advancing ATSC’s mission and embody the vision, tenacity, and commitment that defined the legacy of former longtime ATSC President Mark Richer. The 2025 Richer Medal will be presented to Hau next month during the 2025 ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference in Washington. Registration for the June 12-13 event is open until June 3.

Hau has been unanimously recognized by the ATSC Board of Directors for his outstanding contributions to the progress and implementation of NEXTGEN TV powered by ATSC 3.0 standards. His leadership within NBCUniversal and across the industry has played a pivotal role in bringing audiences the very best of ATSC 3.0, delivering better picture quality, immersive sound, and award-winning interactivity that is driving real-world adoption of the technology.

“Clarence’s passion, determination, and deep technical insight have made a lasting impact,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland. “His efforts are not only helping to shape the future of television but are also directly enhancing the viewing experience for audiences everywhere – including me. With this honor, we’re recognizing Clarence’s bold, forward-looking leadership and also NBCUniversal’s key role in the NEXTGEN TV rollout.”

“I’m very appreciative of our longstanding partnership with ATSC, and proud of NBCUniversal’s role in bringing enhanced and innovative experiences to local audiences through NEXTGEN TV,” said Hau. “This is a tremendous honor, and one that was made possible due to the ingenuity and collaboration of my NBCU colleagues, and our partners, who’ve dedicated themselves to delivering on the great potential of the new broadcast standard.”

The Mark Richer Medal is named for the longtime ATSC President who led the organization through two decades of transformative innovation, from the original ATSC 1.0 standard to the launch of ATSC 3.0 next-generation standards.

Lechner Award recipients:

2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant

2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital

2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft

2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems, Inc

2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters

2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi

2006 – Art Allison, NAB

2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics

2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT

2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics

2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic

2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal

2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, MWG Group

2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group

2014 – James Kutzner, PBS

2015 – Luke Fay, Sony

2016 – Madeleine Noland, LG Electronics

2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB

2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital

2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony

2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI

2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital

2022 – Youngkwon Lim, Samsung Electronics

2023 – Glenn Reitmeier, NBC Universal/Sarnoff Labs

2024 – Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

2025 – Aldo Cugnini, AGC Systems

WASHINGTON—The Advanced Television Systems Committee will hold its annual meeting, June 13-15 in Washington D.C., the association announced during the NAB Show. 

The three-day event will take place at the International Spy Museum on L'Enfant Plaza as well as the Hilton Washington D.C. National Mall, which will host the ATSC 40th Anniversary Celebration and Dinner on Wednesday June 14, which will include the Mark Richer Medal & Bernard Lechner Award Ceremony and party featuring the return of the Multicasters band.

Here is the schedule of events:

June 13: Members Only reception and networking event, 4:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. 

June 14:  ATSC Annual Members Meeting, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. and 40th Anniversary Party, 6:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.

June 15: ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

More information and registration will soon be available at www.atsc.org/events/. 

WASHINGTON—As evidenced by field trials across the country and a groundswell of support from equipment manufacturers at this year’s NAB Show, it’s time to consider what must happen next to get ATSC 3.0 into homes and creating consumer awareness of the new DTV standard. That was the focus of this year’s Advanced Television Systems Committee’s Next Gen TV conference, held in Washington, D.C., May 29-30.

One of the presentations (“By Any Other Name: Branding & Conformance Plans for ATSC 3.0”) examined the process of ensuring interoperability of equipment on both broadcast and consumer sides, and also of creating public awareness of 3.0 with the creation of a logo and catchy tradename.

“When you can’t get your service on a TV, that’s a problem,” said panelist Bob Campbell, director of engineering at Eurofins Digital Testing and chair of the ATSC’s Conformance Implementation Team, which is developing test materials and methodology to ensure 3.0 interoperability at all levels. “No consumer expects a $100 TV set to do exactly the same thing as a $1,000 set, but they certainly expect that when they plug it in it will show them a picture.”

Campbell stressed the importance of developing standardized test materials and making them available to all manufacturers so everyone is doing the same testing in the same way. “[Then] the broadcasters’ services all work on the TVs in the market and consumers get what they expected and they’re happy and they’ll keep buying TVs and watching your shows.”

Panelist Lesley Rohrbaugh, director of market research at the Consumer Technology Association, addressed the issue of making ATSC 3.0 a household name, explaining that development of a tradename and logo is anything but simple, noting that it began with brainstorming by a CTA study group to generate a list of names that might be used to describe the DTV standard.

“We then took this very long list of names and worked with our internal CTA legal counsel to make sure that we’re actually able to use them. We then did our favorite trademark refining just to ensure we [were] unique in our names.”

Another step involved exploration of the proposed names with consumers.

“We went to a group of 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18-plus in an online quantitative survey,” said Rohrbaugh. “They had to be household decision makers and also had to have a working television. Additionally, we looked at an oversample of 300 current over-the-air antenna users. We did that to see if that demographic differed in any way from the general population.”

She explained that these steps were just completed in mid-May, and there were still a number of processes before a branding name and logo would be ready to issue to consumer electronics manufacturers.

“After we complete the research, we’re going to work with a professional branding company to start looking at different logos. We’ll likely have another market research study in terms of testing that logo with consumers. We’ll license the official logo and then move on for the performance certification process.”

LOOKING AT ATSC 3.0 THROUGH AN MVP’S EYES

The necessity for close cooperation and partnering among TV broadcasters to get ATSC 3.0 on the air in the current era of contracting broadcast spectrum is well known by now, but there are other not-so-obvious players that also need to be included in 3.0 launch plans. This was driven home in the “Working with Multichannel Video Providers When Launching ATSC 3.0 Session”

Presenter Steve Watkins, Cox Media’s executive director of strategic technology policy, described what MVPs are up against in connection with a 3.0 launch by broadcasters.

“We recognize that the ATSC 1.0 signal has to be maintained for the next five years or so, and this is what cable systems are looking at,” said Watkins, noting that a shift to 3.0 will impact cable networks in several ways, one may be lack of a backup signal when a primary fiber link to a cable or satellite system headend fails.

“We’re finding that over-the-air signals may be different from what’s on the fiber,” said Watkins. “This leaves us vulnerable as we have no backup. [Also, it’s] a common thing in the MVP world for one operator to pass a signal on to others. This may or may not be acceptable. There also may be channels that exist on fiber but not on OTA. A lot of issues will have to be processed.”

According to Watkins, these include such items as signal watermarking, set-top box compatibility and signal formatting.

“Our systems are locked down to carry one format over a given channel,” he said. “This requires new encoding when things change. You have issues in failover as you can’t change over a whole multiplex with different formats. If any one channel goes down, you have to failover the whole multiplex. There’s a lot of complexity when you go through a failover. Dealing with customer issues also becomes much more complex—triggers that don’t work and applications that lock up.”

Watkins stressed the need to get all players in 3.0 implementation to the table and to make sure that all engineering personnel at all levels are involved.

Other conference presentations included a look at projections on how ATSC 3.0 will drive innovation in other areas, automotive applications of the standard, ways to encourage collaboration among broadcasters in implementing 3.0, and presentation on how the FCC will be assisting TV station operators in transitioning to next-gen broadcasting.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.