WASHINGTON—Renard Jenkins, president of SMPTE and SVP of Warner Bros. Discovery will deliver the keynote address at the NAB Show Broadcast Engineering and IT (BEIT) Conference, April 15-18 during the NAB Show in Las Vegas. 

Produced in partnership with the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and the North American Broadcasters Association, the conference offers forward-focused insights into the technical issues, challenges and opportunities affecting the future of content delivery ecosystems. It’s designed for broadcast engineers and technicians, media technology managers, contract engineers, broadcast equipment manufacturers and distributors, engineering consultants and R&D engineers. The conference will feature technical presentations on the evolution of next-generation content delivery systems for radio, television and the broader media and IT ecosystem.

Currently the senior vice president, Production Integration and Creative Technology Services at Warner Bros. Discovery, Jenkins oversees teams that support more than 23,500 cast and crew members, produce more than 8,500 hours of content and generate hundreds of global feature film, animation, and syndicated television productions annually. Among his many honors in over 35 years in the television, radio and film industries, Jenkins is the recipient of a Peabody Award, two National Headliner Awards and the 2020 Broadcasting and Cable Technology Leadership award.

The BEIT opening session will also feature the presentation of the NAB Best Paper Award, honoring the author(s) of the conference’s best technical paper. Technical papers will be presented during sessions focused on topics including NextGen TV, artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity, media workflows, innovation in radio, media in the cloud, hybrid radio, sustainability, streaming, 5G and video coding, among others. The papers will be included in the BEITC Proceedings, which will also be released by PILOT, the innovation wing of the National Association of Broadcasters, on April 15.

"The BEIT Conference is the place for media professionals to discover the latest breakthroughs helping to make the content pipeline more effective, efficient and expedient," said Sam Matheny, NAB executive vice president, Technology and chief technology officer. "We are looking forward to an impressive lineup of presentations at NAB Show that will provide our community with real-world insights into keeping pace with the rapid evolution in how content gets delivered."

WASHINGTON—“We are not just dealing with a crisis, but also a catalyst.” 

So says Sam Matheny, CTO and executive vice president at the National Association of Broadcasters, opening the online version of the Broadcasting Engineering and IT Conference Wednesday. It was part of the two-day NAB Show Express event.

“Things are changing rapidly, and in ways people may have never thought possible,” Matheny said, according to the text of his prepared remarks as provided by NAB. “Companies have adopted remote production, cloud technologies, distributed master control and so much more.”

Matheny said such change would typically take a long time—“years to convince people of, and still years more to deploy.” But the pandemic is prompting rapid change. “It unleashed your talents and genius as you were tasked with adapting and thriving in a new operating environment.”

Matheny said he has had numerous CEO conversations about the value of technology and engineering right now, enabling stations to stay on the air.

“They’ve said, ‘You know, if you had asked me eight weeks ago was this possible, I would have told you no. But, it has actually worked quite well.’ And they weren’t describing minor changes. They were describing 75% of the workforce being displaced from the office. They were describing massive change. And you, you are your company heroes of this pandemic. Thank you for all you are doing to keep our communities and nation informed and safe, and also entertained.”

A number of the sessions planned for the BEITC conference migrated to the NAB Show Express website and are accessible there either live or on-demand.

The site also features presentations and acceptance remarks for the NAB’s Engineering Achievement Awards including the TV award to Jim Stenberg of American Tower and the radio award to Jeff Welton of Nautel and the Digital Leadership Award to J.D. Crowley of Entercom.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication Radio World.

WASHINGTON—If you have an interesting insight into some of the major technology trends in the radio, TV or general broadcast industry, then the NAB wants to hear them as the organization has announced that it is now accepting technical paper proposals for the 2020 NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference.

The BEIT Conference, which is designed for all involved in the development, manufacture or implementation of broadcast technology, will feature many technical papers that address the latest opportunities and challenges facing broadcast engineering and media-industry IT professionals.

Topics of interest for the NAB will be eyed toward trends and technologies that will help drive the future of broadcast. Possible topics could include all-digital AM and FM HD radio; audio over IP; podcasting; Next Gen TV technologies; OTT technologies; content and signal security; 5G effects on broadcast; C-band satellite issues; smart speaker applications in broadcasting; and others.

All proposals will be subject to peer review. All content proposed should be presented in a tutorial, non-promotional form.

The deadline for proposals is going to be Nov. 1. Selected papers will be announced in December.

The 2020 NAB Show will take place in Las Vegas from April 18-22.

For more information, click here.

LAS VEGAS—Bleeding-edge tech and issues will be front-and-center at this year’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC) at the 2019 NAB Show. This year’s conference runs April 6-11 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in the North Hall meeting rooms.

“The focus of the 2019 BEITC is, as always, the latest and most authoritative technical presentations of broadcast and related media technologies, from experts in their respective fields,” said Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach for NAB. “Presentations will cover radio and television broadcasting technology, both on-air and online, including core audio, video and RF engineering topics as well as IT-related supportive elements.”

Big Topics this year include ATSC 3.0, artificial intelligence, IP-based facilities and SMPTE ST 2110/AES67, according to Pizzi. “The industry seems to be moving to calling this ‘professional media networking,’ so we are following suit—5G, big data, OTT, cybersecurity and content protection,” he said. “I hope delegates will come away having deepened their understanding of technologies critical to their personal skill sets and their employers’ operations, and ideally also learned a few brand new things.”

Given the wealth of compelling presentations scheduled for BEITC 2019, it wasn’t easy for Pizzi to choose some to recommend to TV Technology readers. The five below are by no means the only must-attend sessions at this year’s BEITC, but they do belong on this list.

TRANSITION TO ATSC 3.0

To address broadcasters’ questions about the transition to ATSC 3.0, the NAB and partnering broadcasters have created the “ATSC 3.0 Station Transition Guidelines Manual.” The details of the new manual will be explored during “Transitioning Television Markets to Next Gen TV is a Team Sport,” April 7. 3:20-3:40 p.m.

“The manual provides relevant information to all those involved with broadcast stations, large and small, in how a coordinated market transition may be implemented from the current ATSC-1 broadcast standard to the Next Gen TV platform or ATSC 3.0,” said Jeff Andrew, director of broadcast communications for Osborn Engineering, who along with NAB Senior Vice President of Technology Lynn Claudy will speak at the conference. “This session is for all broadcast executives and engineers who want to learn more about how to make ATSC 3.0 part of their stations’ business.”

The new manual is being unveiled at a crucial time for U.S. TV broadcasters. Unlike the move from NTSC to ATSC-1, “the conversion to ATSC 3.0 is especially challenging since there will be no additional interim TV channel made available by the FCC during the transition,” said Andrew. “Most stations will have to coordinate within their particular markets with other stations in order to form channel-sharing agreements to be able to provide legacy ATSC 1 programming and the new Next Gen TV services. In most television markets, cooperation between stations, commercial and non-commercial, with be key in order to have a successful market transitions to ATSC 3.0.

“Hopefully most of their questions will be answered on how to get started, including formulating the budgets required to convert [repacking and non-repacking], and the new Next Gen equipment needed to be acquired for your plant in order to broadcast ATSC 3.0, plus ways to coordinate with station managers and engineers in your markets to work together on the transition to Next Gen TV in a timely manner.”

REPACK: THE 1 WTC EXPERIENCE

With broadcasters now in Phase 2 of the channel repack, BEITC attendees can learn how it was accomplished in the nation’s largest media market at “No More Broadcaster Silos: Lessons on the Repack from Phases 1 and 2,” Sunday April 7, 3:40-4:40 p.m. in N256.

“We start with a repack case study of the transmission center at 1 World Trade Center in New York, which services seven broadcasters in the most densely populated geography of any RF site in the U.S.,” said moderator and broadcast marketing consultant Josh Gordon. “The date of this session will be four days from the completion of the repack's Phase 2 which, unlike Phase 1, will include stations in heavily populated areas.”

Panelists include John Lyons, assistant vice president at the Durst Organization and Director of Broadcast Operations at 1 World Trade Center; Doug Lung, vice president of Broadcast Technology at NBC/Telemundo stations and long-time TV Technology columnist; Nick Wymant, CTO at RFS Systems; and Stephen Kolvek, CTO at MYAT, Inc.

One of the issues up for discussion will include repack-linked stations, according to Gordon. “Doug Lung and John Lyons first realized the extent of this issue when formulating test plans for the post-repack facility at 1 World Trade Center,” Gordon said. “As a broadcaster moves to its new repack frequency, it becomes ‘linked’ to the station that currently occupies that frequency. Before a station can move to its new channel, stations on that channel have to move to their new channel, which in many cases is occupied by another station that has to move to a new channel and so on. The presentation will trace how the linked chain of stations that must move before WCBS-TV in New York City can move extends as far as Ohio and Ontario.”

Wymant and Kolvek, whose companies were involved with the 1 World Trade Center build, will add perspective on the state of repack building services nationwide, Gordon added. “We anticipate discussing other issues that will come up during Phase 2.”

APPLICATION TELEVISION

With ATSC 3.0, broadcasters will be able to offer apps for their viewers to consume live and VOD content via over-the-top (OTT) streaming services. This change will plunge broadcasters into “The Brave New World of Application Television,” a BEITC 2019 session hosted by Jim DeChant, vice president of Technology for News-Press & Gazette Broadcasting, April 7, 2:30-2:50 p.m. in Rm. N256.

"My presentation will explore ATSC 3.0 mechanisms for signalling and replacing content, methods for defining clip order, interfacing with content decision engines and the use of media cache to facilitate dynamic content replacement in an application based display system,” DeChant said. “Advanced signalling techniques offer new ways to provide a ‘broadcast quality' streaming experience featuring UHD video, immersive audio and a customized user content via a process known as ‘Dynamic Content Replacement.’"

DeChant will assess the value of broadband routers, storage devices and ATSC 3.0-capable consumer receivers for handling Application Television. The need for common mezzanine formats, media identifiers, content security and new technologies like Common Media Application Format will also be discussed. "These systems will bring a new content ecosystem to our homes, cars and businesses improving the media experience through dynamic content replacement," he said.

DELIVERING UHD HDR CONTENT

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup and Winter Olympics delivered in UHD HDR, the demand for the ultra hi-res standard is on the upswing worldwide. Although the signals were transmitted over a variety of cable TV, DTH, IPTV, terrestrial and OTT platforms using HDR10/PQ10 and HLG10 standards, for many broadcasters and content providers, UHD HDR remains a “black box,”—they know what it is, but are not quite sure what how it works.

“Demystifying Live UHD HDR Service Delivery” will reveal what’s inside the black box. The session, held April 10, 10:40-11:00 a.m. in Rm. N260 is hosted by Thierry Fautier, Harmonic's vice president of video strategy and president of the Ultra HD Forum.

“I will examine all of the different deployment scenarios and analyze the rationale for picking a specific HDR solution," said Fautier. "Additionally, I'll discuss some of the UHD HDR delivery challenges and recent technology innovations that are enhancing UHD HDR experiences."

Fautier will also tackle the topic of backwards compatibility and provide insights on how operators are deploying live HDR. "Beyond shedding light on some of the inherent challenges of delivering UHD HDR, I'll look at how the current HDR experience can be improved using advanced techniques, such as dynamic mapping while still being backward compatible with an installed base of existing HDR receivers," he said.

USING BLOCKCHAIN IN MEDIA PRODUCTION

IP-connected data lives in an insecure cyberspace constantly beset by hackers and other security threats. Blockchain is an IT architecture that stands up against such threats by creating a “distributed ledger” across a distributed, peer-to-peer network that resists data modification by outsiders, while accepting ongoing updates and growth of the records.

Also referred to as a form of online “crypto-currency,” blockchain can also be deployed as a centralized, secure platform for managing all of the revenues, records and expenses associated with producing content. Groupe Média TFO Vice-President and COO Éric Minoli will explain how this can be accomplished in “Blockchain - An Opportunity to Refine Intellectual Property Management,"April 10, 11:40 a.m.-noon in Rm. N258.

“Alongside the creative challenge of producing and distributing great video content internationally, there is a huge administrative burden,” said Minoli. “At Groupe Média TFO, we have developed a prototype platform which uses blockchain to create a completely fresh approach to managing all these relationships and identifying practical savings in administration.” This blockchain-based platform is designed to work during the production process and afterwards “when continuing payments are still contractual obligations but the production company may no longer have the resources available to complete them,” he said. “Indeed, it may not exist at all.”

Groupe Média TFO’s blockchain prototype has been tested in Canada and in France, and is available for use by other media groups.

For more information on the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference, visit theBEITChomepage.

LAS VEGAS—Alain Savoie, Bannister Lake’s technical director, will represent the company at the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference during the 2019 NAB Show in a presentation of the white paper that he co-authored with Vernon Freedlander, Bannister Lake’s head of strategic partnerships, and Georg Hentsch, the company’s president.

The white paper is titled “New Methodologies in Real-Time Data Aggregation and Management for Broadcast Presentation and Distribution.”

Savoie’s presentation will focus on unique data-driven engineering and development methodologies and how broadcasters can take advantage of the data aggregation and management tools and techniques supported by these methodologies for more efficient and automated production workflows. He will also speak on how broadcasters can utilize real-time data to create and distribute new revenue-generating products and services.

BEITC takes place throughout the NAB Show. Savoie’s presentation will be on April 10 at 4 p.m. in room N260 of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

To register for the NAB Show, visit www.nabshow.com.

WASHINGTON—NAB today issued a call for technical paper proposals for the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC) at the 2019 NAB Show, April 6-11, in Las Vegas.

Proposals are due Oct. 26 and authors of papers selected to be presented will be notified in November. Papers must include one of the topics listed in the 2019 BEITC Call for Papers.

The conference features technical papers on the challenges and opportunities facing broadcast engineering and media industry IT professionals around the world. NAB is looking for fresh, unique perspectives on key trends and technologies shaping the future of radio, TV and media technology.

Paper proposals will be peer reviewed prior to being selected for the BEITC. NAB will give favorable consideration to technical papers featuring original research as well as proposals from highly regarded speakers.

Papers should be tutorial in nature, not promotional. Proposals for papers that overtly promote a company or its products and services will not be accepted. However, those that explain the technologies used in broadcast products or services may be considered, NAB said.

The conference is designed for broadcast engineers and technicians, contract engineers, broadcast equipment manufacturers, distributors, engineering consultants, R&D engineers, IT professionals and related media technologists.

For more information, visit www.nabshow.org

Anyone who has debated IP’s impact on broadcast will have that topic along with many others addressed at this year's Broadcast Engineering Information Technology Conference (BEITC) at the NAB Show. The conference will kick off with several SBE Ennes Workshops on Saturday, April 7 that will discuss the state of the industry and the transition to IP. The session, “Is IP Real?” (Saturday, April 7, 9:35 a.m., in N262-N264 in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center), will face the issue head on and discuss the hard facing details about real time IP from supplier through system integrator to end-users.

“There are a lot of people that are asking that question, but it is safe to say that we’ve already shown that it is very real,” said Michael Cronk, vice president, core technology at Grass Valley and one of the session panelists.

IP for broadcast is here and now, according to Stan Moote, CTO for the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers and session moderator. “There are already enough systems out there that after this show, IP will become the norm,” he said.

[Read: What 2110 Means for Broadcasters]

The question now is how fast the industry will adopt it, Cronk added. “SMPTE has finished the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and that will open the door for a lot more IP solutions,” he said.

FINDING ANSWERS

The new standards suite specifies the carriage, synchronization, and description of separate elementary essence streams over professional internet protocol (IP) networks in real-time for the purposes of live production, playout and other professional media applications. In addition, the SMPTE ST 2110 standards will make it possible to separately route and break away the essence streams—audio, video, and ancillary data.

“Right now we’re in the beginning of this adoption,” Cronk said. “However, as people see that it is now being used in the field it will begin to take off.”

Other SBE Ennes Workshops include “Next Gen is OTT/OTA,” (Saturday, April 7, 9:55 a.m., N262-N264), where the interrelationships between over-the-top and over-the-air will be discussed; “What are MicroServices and Why Should We Care?” (Saturday, April 7, 11:05 a.m., N262-N264), which will explain how microservices could be the new software-based building blocks that could be utilized by the next generation of media creators and distributors; and “Cyber Security Hygiene in IP Broadcast Systems,” (Saturday, April 7, 11:30 a.m., N262-N264), which will offer a discussion on how cyber security can be implemented in a practical manner.

“These sessions answer the fundamental questions and issues that the industry is facing this year and beyond,” said Skip Pizzi, vice president of technolgy and outreach at NAB.

The sessions could also put some minds at ease, including those broadcasters who are still using legacy systems and may not be able to fully move to IP in 2018.

“The dirty little secret is that SDI works fine with IP,” said Moote. “You don’t have to panic if you can’t get every product in IP. That has been one of the scary points that people have been worried about.”

Attendees of the conference will be able to take in what IP can offer as there will be a full IP production studio at the show.

“This will highlight all aspects of IP,” added Moote. “We want to show the hybrid solutions of how IP and SDI can and do work together.”

EXPLORING ATSC 3.0

BEITC will also feature sessions devoted to the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, which combines over-the-air broadcast capabilities with IP, allowing TV stations to not only deliver higher-resolution video, but to also offer geo-targeted ads as well as video on demand and other interactive services.

Much of this functionality will be discussed in the panel session “ATSC 3.0 - Layers and Layers and Layers Oh My!” (Sunday, April 8, 1:30 p.m., N260-B).

[Read: 2018 NAB Show Marks Next Gen TV's Arrival]

“We’ll be pulling it back much like the layers of an onion,” said Ted Korte, session presenter and COO of Qligent, a Melbourne, Fla.-based developer of broadcast monitoring systems. “There is a lot on what you can do with it from the encoder to the end user.”

However, it is apparent already that this transition to ATSC 3.0 may not be a trivial task, nor is it likely that everyone will simply switch on every feature.

The hurdles and challenges that lay ahead will be discussed in other ATSC sessions on Sunday including: “The ATSC 3.0 Test Station in Cleveland Grows Up,” (10:40 a.m., N255), offering insight from WJW-TV and summarizing the activities at the station and the lessons learned to date; and “Transmitter Carrier and Timing Offset for Co-Channel Interference Mitigation,” (1:30 p.m., N260-A), which will discuss how carrier and timing offset techniques are proposed at the transmitter side to mitigate the co-channel interferences. “How the ATSC 3.0 Deployment Can be Better than that of ATSC 1.0” (1:30 p.m., N260-D), will compare how this transition will be different from the deployment of the nation’s first digital broadcast standard.

“[We’ll] be highlighting some of the issues that will be at the heart of channel-sharing agreements to effectuate the 3.0 deployment,” explained session presenter Jerald N. Fritz, executive vice president for strategic and legal affairs at ONEMedia. “We will point to both host and tenant issues that need to be reflected in these unique market-wide, mutistation agreements.”

Other panels on the subject include: “The Data Strategy Behind Harnessing ATSC 3.0 for Audience Targeting,” (Monday, April 9, 2:20 p.m., N256), which will discuss how NBCU will harness big data and machine learning infrastructure behind Audience Studio, the network’s data management technology platform and ad targeting system, to plan for the adoption of ATSC 3.0; and “ATSC 3.0 Ready – Designing Antennas for Higher OFDM PAPR (Tuesday, April 10, 9:20 a.m., N255), where new limitations in RF transmission system specifications will be addressed.

With all these different topics, one takeaway for broadcast engineers at the 2018 NAB Show is that with the standards process mostly completed, the road to ATSC 3.0 is just beginning.

“We shouldn’t expect everything to be resolved in ATSC 3.0 in 2018,”said Korte. “Even 2019 is looking ambitious as there is still too much distraction this year. We should expect a lot more trials to get us there.

“We can’t do this all at once,” he added. “It is like going to buffet and trying to eat it all—it might seem like a good idea but it isn't recommended.”

WASHINGTON—There is some extra time to get proposals for the 2018 NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology conference in, as the NAB has announced a deadline extension to Oct. 31.

The 2018 BEITC will base its series of presentations off these submissions, covering a wide range of topics. NAB says it looks favorably on proposals that feature engaging content, original research or highly regarded speakers. Proposals promoting specific products or services will not be accepted, although proposals explaining the underlying technologies used in broadcast products and services will be considered.

For accepted proposals, NAB encourages submission of written papers, which will be included in the Proceedings of the 2018 BEITC that will be published prior to the 2018 NAB Show.

For more information or to submit a proposal, click here.

The 2018 NAB Show will take place in Las Vegas from April 7-12.

Information technology is fundamentally changing how broadcast engineers do their jobs. In fact, IT is redefining the very meaning, nature and infrastructure of broadcasting itself.

This fact explains why the National Association of Broadcasters is embracing IT education at the 2017 NAB Show, at the Las Vegas Convention Center April 22-27. This embrace is reflected in the annual Broadcast Engineering Conference (BEC) being renamed the “Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference” (BEITC), since IT-themed topics are driving many of the 2017 event’s educational sessions.

Skip PizziLynn Claudy

“The name change is really just formalizing what has been happening to the job description of the broadcast engineer over the past several years,” said Lynn D. Claudy, senior vice president of technology for NAB. “Pretty much every broadcast system has a strong IT component now. So in renaming the conference to the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference, it’s the word ‘and’ that is the most important; connecting the historical core expertise in broadcast engineering with the newer imperative of IT competence.”

“Although our conference programming has reflected a multidisciplinary broadcast/IT approach for some time, we felt it made sense to attest to this in the actual name of the conference going forward,” added Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach for NAB. Pizzi is coordinating the technical education and showcase programs at the 2017 NAB Show. They include the BEITC, Global TV Tech Day, technical SuperSessions and the Futures Park powered by PILOT, NAB’s technology incubator program.

ELECTRONIC POSTER
The tightening interplay between broadcast engineering and information technology is certainly reflected in the 2017 BEITC’s topic lineup. This is in line with the convergence between broadcasting and IT that is occurring in the real world.

Hundreds of broadcast engineers from around the world descend on the Las Vegas Convention Center for the annual conference.

“As broadcasters move into streaming, over-the-top offerings, social media sites and other IP delivery platforms, we need to adapt our representation efforts to address those new business models as well as the traditional broadcast spectrum-based distribution path,” said Claudy. “We’ve definitely expanded our view of what it means to be a broadcaster.”

With 173 sessions to choose from, the 2017 BEITC has something for everyone. So what’s hot? “If I had to pick some top 2017 BEITC themes, I’d say next-gen TV—including ATSC 3.0 and Ultra HD—along with conversion to IP workflows, and cybersecurity,” said Pizzi. “Also of high interest on this year’s program are advanced newsgathering technologies, OTT, and evolving broadcast facility design.” (The full lineup of the 2017 BEITC’s session lineup can be found by logging onto www.nabshow.com and entering ‘Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology’ in the search engine.)

A new presentation delivery style for 2017 is the addition of “electronic poster” sessions called BEIT ENGAGE! on Saturday, April 22, according to Pizzi. There are three BEIT ENGAGE! sessions scheduled that day on the respective subjects of IP for broadcast, emerging broadcast delivery systems, and media facilities design. Each of these 90-minute BEIT ENGAGE! sessions will feature several simultaneous presentation stations distributed around the meeting room, at which attendees can informally interact with the presenters.

“Think of the BEIT ENGAGE! sessions as being like conventional roundtable sessions, but with people discussing a topic around a PowerPoint screen rather than seated at a table,” Pizzi said. “We think it will be a fun, dynamic and interactive way for attendees to exchange information on important topics.”

EMERGING TRENDS
As always, the educational goals of the annual BEITC are highly ambitious. But they have to be if the NAB is to provide its broadcast engineer attendees with the fast-track, high-level knowledge they require to stay abreast of new and emerging technology.

“Next-gen TV is upon us, and over the next few years our services and the facilities in which they are produced and delivered will change to accommodate it,” said Pizzi. “Part of that transition will include Ultra HD video, immersive and personalizable audio, and new levels of audience interaction—all on an increasingly IP-based core.”

“Security of these facilities has also never been more important,” he continued. “A new regulatory environment for TV services in the U.S. may also be emerging, along with the already burgeoning marketplace of new competitors. The 2017 BEITC will address all of these topics, presented by the world’s top experts, in a single conference like no other.”

It seems fair to say that the 2017 BEITC is the most far-ranging, content-rich broadcast engineering conference ever offered by the NAB.

For his part, Pizzi prefers to state the BEITC’s goals in modest terms. “We’d like every BEITC attendee to leave Las Vegas knowing more than they did when they arrived, hopefully in numerous areas,” he said. “We also hope those BEITC attendees who are affected by the repack will come away a bit better prepared for it.”

To help lock in this knowledge, or for access to papers that attendees might miss when presented during the 2017 BEITC, proceedings will be made available on a USB drive offered at the convention in the NAB Store, and afterwards at www.nabstore.com.

Taking a ‘big picture’ view, “we hope BEITC attendees leave Las Vegas with some expanded knowledge, and an expanded network of contacts and information resources,” said Lynn Claudy. “We also hope they internalize an expanded appreciation for the value of in-person meetings with colleagues and friends. You shouldn’t live life just on the internet.”

For more information on the conference, visit the BEITC homepage.

WASHINGTON—Those who would like to submit speaking proposals for the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference at the 2017 NAB Show are now eligible to do so, per a press release from the NAB. The NAB has also announced it will begin accepting proposals for all other conferences and signature sessions as of Sept. 22.

The BEITC is for broadcast engineers and technicians, contract engineers, broadcast equipment manufacturers, distributors, engineering consultants and R&D engineers. The conference offers technical papers on the challenges and opportunities in the broadcast industry.

NAB said in its press release that it is seeking “presenters with fresh ideas and unique perspectives on key trends and technologies driving the future of media and entertainment.” Topics that BEITC is looking to address include multiplatform distribution, emerging technologies, production and post-production workflows, social and mobile applications, new storytelling techniques, and changing advertising and business models.

The deadline for submission for all speaking proposals is going to be Oct. 31. Click here for more information.

The 2017 NAB Show will take place in Las Vegas from April 22-27.