WASHINGTON—As part of an ongoing push to get the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules that would strengthen local broadcasters and speed the transition to ATSC 3.0, Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley met this week with the agency’s Chair Brandan Carr, his chief of staff Greg Watson, and his senior counsel, Erin Boone, to discuss “the national television multiple ownership rule, as well as the National Association of Broadcasters’ petition for rulemaking asking the Commission to set a sunset date for ATSC 1.0 transmissions,” according to letter sent by Sinclair to the FCC.

In August 20 letter describing the August 19 meeting, Patrick McFadden, senior vice president, global public policy and communications at Sinclair, who also attended the meeting, noted they had reiterated their arguments for eliminating ownership caps in ways that “was consistent with our comments submitted in that proceeding.”

“With respect to the sunset of ATSC 1.0 transmissions, we discussed the emerging device market for ATSC 3.0 compatible receivers and consumers’ ability to purchase devices that allow them to continue to receive over-the-air signals after an ATSC 1.0 sunset,” McFadden wrote. “We emphasized the importance of the Commission continuing to move expeditiously in consideration of NAB’s petition for the benefit of consumers as well as broadcasters themselves.”

During the meeting, Sinclair executives also stressed that “the best way to spur the availability of more consumer devices is to provide certainty regarding a sunset. Further, as Sinclair noted in its comments in this proceeding, broadcasters are facing rapidly increasing competition from new platforms. ATSC 3.0 is a game-changing opportunity for broadcasters to diversify their revenue streams and ensure that they can continue to serve their viewers – but time is of the essence. We urge the Commission to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in this proceeding promptly, which will then allow the Commission to develop a fulsome record that will support the sunset of ATSC 1.0 signals in the top 55 markets in February 2028, and the remaining markets in February 2030.”

The full letter is available here.

At the 2025 NAB Show in April, four of the most prominent TV station groups announced the launch of EdgeBeam, a new datacasting service targeting the enterprise market. The four groups—Sinclair, Nexstar Media Group, Gray Media and E.W. Scripps—plan to use the ATSC 3.0 standard as a more efficient “one-to-many” data offload service that could be used, for instance, by the automotive industry for software updates.

In the following interview, TV Tech Editor in Chief Tom Butts talks with Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley about the joint venture.

TV Tech: What specific market demands led the four broadcast groups to form EdgeBeam Wireless as a joint venture rather than pursuing separate initiatives?
Chris Ripley: There’s a handful of reasons that we decided to do a joint venture. No. 1 is that currently no broadcaster on their own covers the entire country, but together the four of us cover 98% of the country [either 1.0 or 3.0] and then also spectrum density within each market is increased, so that allows for more services to be added in any one market. And the second reason is that these are new businesses we are going into. This is datacasting, and be it enhanced GPS streaming, offload, automotive, these are all areas that we don't currently have expertise in our companies today—or wireless systems as well.

So building a new company—and each one of us doing it on our own and building the same infrastructure from scratch that you would need to run a new core system and have a different set of customers and solutions—would be incredibly inefficient. It's sort of like the same reason why, in the early days of telecom, for instance, there was just one telecom provider in any one market, because it made sense to do all that work and buildout. That’s more of an extreme example, but it's a similar rationale. There is a certain amount of technology and infrastructure that needs to be built out, and it just wouldn't make sense for each of us to do it on our own.

TVT: When do you anticipate announcing your first customer and how important is it to have a marquee, household name?
CR: We already have trial customers. We haven't announced anything yet. We are very close to hiring a CEO to lead EdgeBeam and whether to announce customers, that's a decision for him.

TVT: Who would be your typical customers and how will EdgeBeam distinguish itself from competitors?
CR: There are several different ways that the system distinguishes itself. No. 1, it can do things that other systems can't do—a good example of that is stream and offload.

Once you get above a certain number of users or streamers in any one market, all viewing the same content like a big NFL game, for instance, or the Tyson fight [last fall], the quality has to go down in order to facilitate that same number of concurrent users. So I think there's a stat that one CDN player put out that if you were to aggregate all of the capacity of the internet and all the CDNs globally, they could only handle 10% of the peak broadcast mode—“broadcasts” used more generally in terms of content linear channels. And that's wired, not wireless, so there just simply isn't enough capacity to shift all of the viewing and take the peaks.

When you build a system, you don't have to build it for the peaks—and the peaks are quite large when you have big events, for instance. And if you're going to stream everything, which is quote the future video, unquote, you find out pretty quickly that, a) the infrastructure doesn't exist today, and b) the amount of money that would have to go in for it to exist doesn't make sense. So you need another solution, and broadcast is a great solution for that.

Broadcasters are also very good at delivering precise time within milliseconds—it's just as good as GPS at delivering precise time. And that's why you hear a lot about BPS, which is the backup system that NAB has been promoting to various government agencies that are looking for a directional backup to GPS. And that's just a capability built into ATSC 3.0—specifically the “bootstrap,” and that's where the precise time is put. And it's very durable for us to pick up, and it can operate with no connectivity to the internet and no connectivity to GPS. So that's a really unique characteristic of the system that gives it an advantage over other systems.

Another example is it's very high power, and it's not easily jammed. So there's other companies looking at how they can use our signals, our 3.0 signal wave forms, and bounce them off of aircraft and drones and use that to detect low lying small aircraft—that's another sort of capability that other systems just don't have.

And then the other advantage we have is cost and that’s because we're a one to many system. So if you've got a situation where you want to get a lot of the same data to a lot of people, then we're going to be just inherently more cost effective. A great example of that is software updates to cars. Those software updates are pretty much the same software that they want to send out to the entire fleet, and if you're paying cellular rates on a one to one basis, the other car manufacturers are just getting killed on that, so they're very interested in how they can send their software updates through our system.

And the other advantage is that we already have the existing infrastructure—this is a business that we're tacking on to our core business, and it doesn't use the excess capacity. It doesn't take away from our business; it uses the same infrastructure. There is an investment we have to do to overlay this business, but it's tiny compared to what wireless players had to pay to acquire spectrum, build towers, build the network. So our marginal cost and our ability to go one to many gives us a massive cost advantage.

TVT: And as the technology develops, the cost of deploying it will go down, correct?
CR: Right, we're either going to compete on capabilities or costs—those are the two vectors, and I think we have advantages of both and and I do think as as more capacity becomes available, and more stations are converted, costs can come down and EdgeBeam will potentially be the only game in town. For some of these solutions, I think that they will likely want to bring down costs over time, because as the market expands, that'll bring in more customers. And so there's a balance of cost vs. maximum revenue.

TVT: Would the four companies that make up EdgeBeam consider investing in getting 3.0 chips deployed for the service?
CR: Yes, the services that we're mainly focused on are more business to business than business to consumer. So obviously, chips are out there on TVs and we think that that market is going to grow quite robustly, especially now that we're setting up a sunset of 1.0 with the FCC, and the dongle market, I think, is going to be quite significant—that'll be driven out of that sunset.

Some of the services that we're looking at, like, for instance enhanced GPS which has been trialed, we have receive devices—they're bespoke, receive devices that people use, mainly other businesses, like utilities, etc. We think that a drone market will be a big, big, big market for precise GPS or enhanced GPS, and so those are going to be receivers that we've designed and obviously, they'll probably be built by someone else. We are investing in receivers, and in terms of moving into more broad consumer receive capability, like in phones—like what we're doing in India with the cooperation of our Indian partners and the public broadcaster, I think remains to be seen. Right now we're focused mainly on B2B.

TVT: In 2024, Sinclair announced the launch of the Broadspan datacasting service that you were doing with Edgio. What's the status of that?
CR: Broadspan is alive and well. It is the software that powers the network. So we're using it, other broadcasters are using it, and it is the traffic system that will allow data to flow through our stations. And you need something like that to actually make this work.

TVT: What is the role of the FCC in the deployment of EdgeBeam? Are there any technical issues that the FCC will have to deal with, or is it mainly regulatory in terms of the shutdown of 3.0 and ownership?
CR: What was submitted to the FCC by the NAB [in April] encapsulates what we need the FCC to do, which is draw a line in the sand for the industry and say that we know we're transitioning by Feb. 15 of 2028, that we—collectively as an industry—agreed to and so we really just need the FCC to follow through on that proposal.

TVT: What kind of conversations have you had with other broadcasters since you announced the launch? What have you heard from people outside of the joint venture?
CR: We've gotten a lot of interest from broadcasters about joining EdgeBeam but right now, we're focused on building the team. We expect to announce the CEO shortly, and so we've just told people, sit tight, we’re building the team but there will be opportunities for them to join.

TVT: Will you be able to announce customers before the end of the year?
CR: That strategy is going to be up to the new CEO, but I do think we will have customers before the end of the year.

TVT: What do you anticipate will be the first type of application EdgeBeam will be used for?
CR: It's already being used for enhanced GPS in several markets. So I think that’s going to be the first use case.

TVT: How do you think the development of BPS is going to impact EdgeBeam
CR: That’s a separate initiative but I think EdgeBeam will be incredibly helpful to getting BPS done. We're very involved in it as is Nexstar and other broadcasters with NAB. And we've lit up BPS in Baltimore and Nexstar has done it in Denver. So I think EdgeBeam can be very helpful if we get the order from the government to roll it out, which I think we will.

TVT: In what ways could the emergence of EdgeBeam impact the financial valuation of broadcasters spectrum holdings, and how might this shift investor perception in the industry?
CT: I think it could have a huge impact there. When you do the math on how much excess spectrum, or how much more we can do with our spectrum, once we transfer to 3.0, because it uses higher compression standards, you get a lot more capacity, and I suspect that many broadcasters will add more content—that's our core business.

That's what happened in the analog to digital transition; it was the same sized pipe, but we had a more efficient pipe and we ended up filling it with more content, more channels, and that's been great for the consumer. And I suspect that when we sunset 1.0 and we free up all the capacity that is wasted putting out two standards at the same time, more content will come, but also datacasting.

So it's a very significant expansion of the revenue opportunities for the industry. When you think about what can be done mathematically with this same spectrum we have today, we ultimately think some of these datacasting solutions could be more lucrative than the data for the core business. For streaming, offload, enhanced GPS and automotive, the total addressable market in those areas is like $50 billion; the total addressable market for broadcast is $40 billion. So we're going to be able to play in much bigger areas and diversify our revenue streams and have much more opportunity.

TVT: What types of partnerships do you anticipate having outside of the broadcast industry, and what kind of partnerships are important for the future of EdgeBeam?
CR: We've got a lot of those talks going on, especially as we are developing various use cases and then productizing those. Certain people that were developing those products with our partners, potential partners could be broader partners like with a CDN, for instance. I also think we’re very likely going to partner with a wireless player, like an AT&T or Verizon or an auto manufacturer.

There's a fine line between who's a customer and who's a partner, right? But I think that some will be customers and some will be more strategic partners that will help us expand the service throughout various target industries.

HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Earlier this month, Sinclair signed a memorandum of understanding with the Institute of Technology Bombay covering their collaboration on broadcast-to-everything (B2X). B2X is an ATSC 3.0-based effort that would relieve wireless-carrier network congestion and advance multiple applications, including India’s direct-to-mobile initiative, data and entertainment delivery to vehicles and even the distribution of more accurate positioning data.

While the focus is on technology and standards development, the business implications of B2X are numerous—not just in India but for NextGen TV broadcasters around the world.

TV Tech reached out to Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley to find out what the IIT Bombay arrangement might mean for broadcasters from a business perspective. What developed was a wide-ranging ATSC 3.0-themed conversation touching on everything from what new leadership at the Federal Communications Commission might mean for a ATSC 1.0 sunset to the streaming glitches Netflix experienced during the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight and the solution 3.0 offers. Here’s an edited transcript of that exchange.

TVTech: Let’s start off with the recent memorandum of understanding between Sinclair and IIT Bombay, under which both organizations will collaborate on the technology and standards needed to support Broadcast-to-Everything (B2X). I think often U.S. broadcasters see these sorts of announcements involving ATSC 3.0 outside the country and wonder whether they will see the fruits of these efforts having a domestic impact. Will this work affect U.S. broadcasters and, if so, how?

Chris Ripley: Yes. In terms of B2X, there really are three use cases right now that are under development. One is automotive, for things like firmware updates and infotainment directly to autos. Another is enhanced GPS, more specifically. BPS [or broadcast positioning system] would be a third. Enhanced GPS is sending an enhancement layer to any device that needs precise location, such as for a utility that needs the precise location of underground pipes. The enhancement layer will improve the accuracy of a GPS signal from 3 meters to 3 centimeters. We think automotive and drones will be the biggest market for enhanced GPS.

Then, BPS as a backup to time and positioning data that the government is looking into as the GPS system satellite signal is weak, easily jammed and very vulnerable to space-based attacks. Those are the three most developed use cases right now for broadcast-to-everything applications, and I think you are going to see those start popping up in 2025 and begin to grow into bigger applications.

The real gas gets thrown onto this when we are able to sunset 1.0 and convert the rest of the industry and all of our spectrum to 3.0. Today, we are limited by only having one stick in most markets.

There is excess capacity for these types of applications even today when one stick in most markets carries four 3.0 network affiliates. But it’s not a lot of capacity for these applications. That’s why initially we are focused on enhanced GPS and BPS that do not require a lot of capacity.

Automotive does require more but could be done in off-hours if you are talking about software updates. But the real promise will be unlocked when we get more spectrum availability, which will be tied to sunsetting 1.0.

TVT: With the election of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC chair, do you expect to see a workable 1.0 sunset plan to emerge?

CR: Well, look, anytime there is a change in Washington, it represents an opportunity for a fresh start. We’re very encouraged that commissioner Carr has been appointed as chairman. He’s been a strong proponent of broadcast innovation during his entire time at the FCC.

As you’ll probably remember, there was a very significant industry effort, the Future of Local TV initiative that was launched under Jessica Rosenworcel, and it made a lot of progress in terms of recommendations on what to do. One of the key recommendations was to eliminate the simulcast requirement and sunset 1.0 to make way for 3.0.

We think it's really a bipartisan issue, regardless of what party you are, because the benefits are so large—firstly for the viewers with higher quality video and audio, more content and additional services like enhanced GPS, that they’ll benefit from. You’ve got the benefits to the broadcasters, which you know, are new sets of business opportunities for them that will allow them to continue to invest in premium content and local news. And then you’ve got the benefits to the public interest, which you know, things like BPS backing up our vulnerable GPS system and enhanced alerting for storms and other emergencies.

The benefit set is so strong, we believe it will have bipartisan support and we’re quite optimistic with Carr coming in that things will start moving with some pace.

TVT: How do you see the 1.0 sunset playing out? Do you envision a coupon program like the one that subsidized the purchase of analog-to-digital converters for the transition to DTV?

CR: There are already millions of TVs that are 3.0-capable in the marketplace. We’ve had years of sets being sold, and the upgrade marketplace is there. It’s not at high volume right now, but at higher volumes of demand we think the cheapest dongle to upgrade a TV is going to be $30 or $40.

So, it’s very affordable for the consumer to upgrade an old TV if that’s what they want to do—whether there’s any sort of subsidization of that or not. That’s to be determined. But at that price point, it’s really not a burden for the consumer, especially given the benefits to the consumer in the long run.

TVT: At NAB Show, you discussed 3.0-based datacasting as becoming a reality and that Sinclair and other broadcasters would soon begin cashing in on it. Has Sinclair begun to earn revenue from 3.0-based datacasting?

CR: Not yet, but I would say we’re very close on streaming offload and enhanced GPS. I didn’t mention streaming offload before, because I kind of consider that a video product. But we’re getting a lot of traction on streaming offload and we’re having discussions with people who are ready to start cutting checks to at least use our capacity to run tests to figure out how this will work. A classic example of how this would benefit the industry and consumers just materialized the other day with Netflix and the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight.

TVT: I can remember Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair and president of One Media Technologies, many, many years ago at a SMPTE tech conference explaining the concept of a broadcast offload network for streaming services. My impression at the time was that the concept was met with skepticism. I wonder if the $50 million class-action lawsuit over the streaming glitches during the Tyson-Paul fight will put the efficacy of offloading one-to-many content to broadcast into sharper focus.

CR: There were a lot of glitches. I think Netflix had over 16 million concurrent streamers in the U.S. That’s a huge load. There were a lot of complaints about the fight being unwatchable for some people.

This [ATSC 3.0 broadcast] is the perfect technology to solve the issue for live events where there’s lots of concurrent usage. It takes the burden off the wired and wireless streaming infrastructure, which was never designed for video. That infrastructure was really just jerry-rigged into doing video, especially for live events. That’s a product [streaming offload onto ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast] that we’ve already demonstrated.

At the 2024 NAB Show, we had a number of commercial discussions going on with CDN [content delivery network] players who are seeing this as not only a way to do things they can’t do, such as higher-quality video with a high number of concurrent users, but also as a way to reduce the costs of running a content delivery network, which is what all of these OTT players use to distribute their content.

TVT: The other side of that coin is BEST, or Broadcast-Enabled Streaming TV. That is Sinclair’s acronym for a clever 3.0 streaming service to address the shortage of broadcast spectrum devoted to 3.0 while broadcasters maintain 1.0 service. Working with America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), Sinclair is making BEST available in its markets to public broadcasters at no charge. Nebraska Public Media’s Omaha station was the first to take Sinclair up on its offer. How is BEST being received overall in the public broadcasting community?

CR: It’s been great. A lot of the PBS stations weren’t able to participate in our transitions to 3.0 because they were full in terms of spectrum. They had no excess spectrum. They had a lot of channels, and we didn't want to leave them unprovisioned.

Now that ultimately gets solved in this next step of the transition where we can start to sunset 1.0. But we’ve rolled out in Omaha, like you mentioned, for the PBS station there. We've also had a recent launch in Nashville, and we’ll have some other additional launches this month and beyond. It started to pick up, as we’ve figured out the model. But there’s been very good reaction so far—very positive—and there’s been a lot of interest from public stations.

TVT: Sinclair clearly is all in on ATSC 3.0, but recently there has been interest in some quarters in 5G Broadcast. What are your thoughts on 5G Broadcast?

CR: 5G Broadcast has been deployed by some wireless players, and they have abandoned it. It’s important to know that it’s been tried, and it’s basically failed and been shut off. So, it’s sort of an old technology that is looking for a reason to exist.

When you compare it head-to-head … ATSC 3.0 just vastly outperforms it on a technical basis. The wireless players don’t have a use for 5G Broadcast. Wherever it’s been deployed, it’s been abandoned. Why would broadcasters accept inferior technology when we already have adopted a superior technology?

You don't have to take my word for it. You know, Brazil just did a head-to-head comparison and said: “OK, let’s stack these up. Which one should we adopt?” They did extensive laboratory and field testing, and 3.0 came out on top. That was a very recent litmus test as to which is better.

And I think what is probably overlooked is the reception quality of 3.0 versus 5G Broadcast. The whole reason why as an industry we adopted 3.0 was we wanted to have mobility, and when you start moving over 3 km per hour, the quality of 5G Broadcast begins to drop significantly. Over 10 km it drops like a rock. That’s not very fast.

ATSC 3.0 has exceptionally good Doppler performance. It’s been tested on high-speed trains and it still comes in crystal clear. When you start to think about things like automotive for your applications, which I think is going to be a huge area for 3.0, ATSC 3.0 is the only way to go.

Automotive is the ultimate mobile device, especially as vehicles start becoming more autonomous and self-driving.

TVT: Hasn’t Sinclair participated in mobile ATSC 3.0 reception testing in South Korea?

CR: That’s the one country we’ve left out of this discussion. Korea was the first to adopt 3.0, but they did not adopt it for mobile. However, there is a lot of activity going on in Korea and a push by Korean broadcasters to activate mobility. It’s not currently in the regulations that they can do so.

We are supporting activities on Jeju Island where there is a 3.0 test bed, where they are taking our Broadspan datacasting platform, which we’re using here in the U.S., and they’re testing it for data distribution.

So, some of these other markets are smaller, nimbler and have fewer legacy issues. Potentially, they will move faster. Korea could move really fast if they decide to turn on mobile, and India could move really fast if they move forward what we call DTM, direct to mobile, and leave the U.S. in the dust. But we look forward to that day because it will benefit the U.S. market as devices get produced for these other markets.

Amid much commentary about the negative impact high-valued sports streaming initiatives could have on local TV stations and MVPDs there’s another much more optimistic view emerging from the ranks of several publicly traded station groups.In sharp contrast to those who feel threatened by sports rights owners’ surging embrace of streaming, these station owners contend they are making significant headway with opportunistic adjustments to the new reality.

Even in the case of “Spulu,”—the unofficial name of the mega sports streaming joint venture between ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery scheduled to launch later this year—there’s a big split between those who are shrugging it off and the entities ringing alarm bells. According to a report in the Wall St. Journal, the service—which promises to offer feeds from ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS and truTV—could cost up to $50 per month.

A skeptic might see recent “what-me-worry?” sports-related stances taken by big station groups like Nexstar, Gray, Tegna, Sinclair and E.W. Scripps as posturing meant to allay Wall Street concerns. After all, there’s plenty of fuel for apprehension in the raw statistics surrounding the surge in sports streaming.

Unlevel Playing Field
In the U.S., 80% of sports fans, including 76% who watch NFL games and 89% of the soccer fan base, sometimes or regularly view the action online, according to Nielsen Fan Insights. As for sports rights revenues flowing to sports producers from streamers, research by Ampere Analysis found the global total jumped 64% to hit $8.5 billion in 2023, representing 21% of all sports rights revenues compared to 13% the year before.

Nonetheless, there’s a widening gap between station groups and Tier 1 multichannel video  programming distributors (MVPDs) who can turn developments to their advantage and other station owners and smaller pay-TV systems who feel they’re trapped on an unlevel playing field. It makes for a cacophony of messages hitting regulators and investors at a moment when everyone is looking for a more coherent, predictable business environment to work and invest in.

“If you could figure out whether there’s one unified voice from either the broadcast side or the cable side, I’d love to read your article,” says Grant Spellmeyer, president of ACA Connects, the lobbying organization representing smaller cable companies. “It is fractured all over the place.”

Brian Lawlor, president of Scripps Sports, offers several reasons for his company’s upbeat perspective on the role sports will continue to play in drawing audiences not only to its stations but, in some respects, to most other local broadcasters as well. “Even though some stuff has moved to streaming, most premier sports remain on linear television,” Lawlor says.

Streaming may bring some additional revenue to rights owners, but discussions with teams and leagues reveal “they’re all concerned about reach and their ability to put games in front of fans,” Lawlor adds. “At the end of the day, local broadcast continues to reach 100% of households.”

Indeed, as Lawlor and other station group executives note, free over-the-air exposure has become even more important to sports producers in light of the reversal in regional sports network (RSN) fortunes, including most prominently those of Diamond Sports Group, which is pursuing a Chapter 11 restructuring deal that would give Amazon Prime streaming rights to its sports partners’ games. “A decade ago, a lot of us had partnerships with RSNs reaching 80 percent of their markets, and now it’s down to just 35 or 40 percent,” Lawlor says.

Scripps, like other station groups, is capitalizing on sports teams’ desires to maintain broad local coverage, in this case with new deals involving the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights and Phoenix Coyotes. Other recent high-profile local station sports partnerships include Tegna’s with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and Milwaukee Bucks, and Gray Television’s with that league’s Phoenix Suns, Atlanta Hawks, and New Orleans Pelicans.

Market Overreaction?
Along with citing such deals to quell Wall Street anxieties, some station group executives have been addressing what Nexstar President/CEO Mike Biard recently referred to as “a significant misinterpretation in market overreaction” to the proposed JV streaming service.

During the company’s Q4 2023 report to investors in late February, Biard said, “We have confirmation that it will function in the same manner as other vMVPDs that distribute over Fox and ABC affiliated stations,” meaning he expects the new service to join other online providers of MVPD-like lineups in payment of what amounts to retransmission consent fees.

Interestingly, the question of legally mandating retransmission payments from “virtual” MVPDs (i.e., YouTube TV, Hulu Live+, Sling TV), remains outstanding in an unresolved FCC notice of proposed rulemaking first issued in 2014, which the NAB has been pressing the commission to address since late last year. vMVPDs’ willingness to pay voluntarily while joining forces with the big four broadcast networks to oppose FCC action serves as another demonstration of market clout wielded by some station groups.

During their own Q4 conferences, Sinclair President/CEO Christopher Ripley and Scripps President/CEO Adam Symson agreed with Biard that the sports JV doesn’t look so bad, assuming it survives to generate payments to stations affiliated with broadcast networks carrying sports targeted by the JV. But as Ripley sees it, that’s a “big if.”

Citing missing Olympics and incomplete NFL and March Madness coverage, he said, “If this is all about attracting the sports fanatic, it’s hard to say it’s a slam dunk.” Instead, the JV “will be yet another virtual MVPD in an already crowded and somewhat established marketplace…competing with and likely cannibalizing other streaming products from the very same companies that make up the partnership.”

Such sanguinity is a far cry from the responses emanating from other sources. Along with crying foul over what they see as the JV’s antitrust implications, they assert high-profile exclusive pro sports deals like those cut by Amazon, Apple, and Comcast’s Peacock service are the tip of an unchecked spear coming right at them.

Initial Opposition
Opinions vary as to which business model constitutes the larger threat.

Unlike the big exclusive streaming deals, “Spulu’s” plans face court and Justice Department scrutiny. Coming to light in mid-February were the antitrust suit filed in New York by sports streamer FuboTV and an as-yet-unconfirmed investigation Bloomberg reported was getting underway at the DOJ.

ACA Connects’ Spellmeyer echoes widely held sentiments expressed by skeptics. Looking at what little is known about the partners’ plans as a “continuing deterioration of the linear programming model,” Spellmeyer says the JV is especially notable as a harbinger of what could be in store.

“This is a bigger deal than the movement of one baseball playoff game to Peacock or even moving Thursday Night NFL games to Amazon,” Spellmeyer says. The JV is doing this “to further exploit their market power and put it together collectively and leverage it.”

But a source voicing the concerns of a large station group owner says the amounts big streamers are willing to pay for sports rights represent an even bigger anticompetitive threat to broadcasters, MVPDs and even Silicon Valley vMVPDs.

“They are all in the same sinking boat with the great white Amazon shark circling,” the person said. “These big tech streamers are willing to spend stupid amounts of money to take rights away from the broadcast networks and broadcast stations—when it comes to sports—are at the mercy of the networks.”

In addition to the courts, observers are also keeping an eye on Congress, which has cast a skeptical eye on sports streaming, and in particular, garnering swift criticism from politicians when NBC broadcast an NFL playoff game exclusively on Peacock in January.

“I think our job here is to protect the American consumer to ensure that they’re able to easily access the content that they pay for,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), during a Congressional hearing on the subject in February. Referring to professional sports and media (with no pun intended), she said “I just think it’s a racket. It’s a racket.” 

SIDEBAR:

NextGen TV Could Bring Sports Coverage ‘On Par’ With Streamers
Beyond the debate over the immediate impact of sports streaming there’s another story to be told that’s opening a new chapter on broadcast stations’ plays in sports programming. With ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV), leaping to 75% market coverage over the past year on a trajectory to near blanket coverage by year’s end, NextGen TV will give stations an opportunity to greatly enhance sports viewing experiences as well as to bring more local sports coverage to their audiences.

As explained by Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV consortium of eight large station groups operating 820 TV stations nationwide, Pearl TV affiliated stations and others rolling out NextGen TV services are putting a lot of stock in the appeal of what they can do with sports programming. Indeed, she notes, sports broadcasting is a big focus of the ATSC 3.0 exhibit at this month’s NAB Show.

One big aspect to what can be done with NextGen TV has to do with enabling 4K UHD with HDR when games are broadcast in 4K along with HDR enhancements to HD when technology supporting upscaling to HDR from SDR is in play. With 20 million households in reach of HDR-enabled signals at the start of the year, the goal is to hit 50 million this spring, 80 million by the Summer Olympics, “and then it becomes pretty ubiquitous by year’s end,” Schelle says.

Another sports-related advancement involves setting up a “virtual TV station” to stream the contents of a sports-rich station not equipped for ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. Schelle notes this allows these stations to deliver sports programming to connected TVs and personal devices with the full benefits of NextGen TV sports viewing experiences.

ATSC 3.0 support for HTML5 overlays that can be synched for display on OTA channels delivered to connected TVs adds still another dimension to sports viewing experience. Schelle says Pearl TV has partnered with Run3TV to use its platform as an abstraction layer that allows Pearl members’ HTML5 NextGen TV apps to run on all the operating systems used by their OEM partners.

“NextGen TV brings broadcasters on par with innovations we see on streaming services,” Schelle adds. She notes the ATSC 3.0 display at this month’s NAB Show includes demonstrations of joint efforts of Run3TV and Play Anywhere, a rights clearinghouse that facilitates interactive apps for advertising, betting, e-commerce and much else by ensuring all rights holders tied to a given app get the share due them from revenues generated by the app.

Critically, the HTML5 feed can also be used to bring complete coverage of sports events to CTV screens. “It allows broadcasters to do pop-up channels covering lots of things they couldn’t do on air in the past,” Schelle says. Pop-up tie-ins with stations’ EPGs can expose options to viewing local college and high school sports, enabling an unprecedented level of localized TV engagement. “There’s so much power in local sports coverage,” she notes.

Mentioning efforts along these lines by Pearl TV members’ Gray Television and Scripps, Schelle adds, “They’re recognizing it. Their ratings are super high with local audiences that have an affinity for these teams. This is helping them to pull in ‘Z-generation’ viewers.”

NEW YORK—A favorable shift in the winds buffeting TV broadcasters lent some much-needed optimism to a candid front-office discussion at NAB New York that underscored the gravity of the challenges faced by station owners.

Fresh on everyone’s mind was the potential for an improved outlook resulting from the recent bundling agreement worked out in early September between Charter Communications and The Walt Disney Co. The deal, among other things, provides Charter’s Spectrum TV Select subscribers free access to Disney+ Basic and the ESPN direct-to-consumer (DTC) service when it launches sometime over the next two or three years.

The agreement was widely welcomed as a win/win for both companies by M&E analysts at UBS, Bank of America, MoffettNathanson, and other Wall St. firms, most of whom viewed it as a sign of things to come on a broader scale. As noted by Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley during TV Newscheck's "TV25: Monetizing the Future" conference at NAB Show New York last week, TV station owners see the precedent set by the deal as a win for them as well. 

Ripley suggested the agreement portends movement toward “a great re-bundling” that could counter the marginalization of local broadcasting threatened by over-the-top (OTT) disruption. With a shift back to an emphasis on “a communal offering” where linear and on-demand services with and without ad support “all have a place,” everyone “benefits from being inside that bundle,” Ripley said.

Moreover, he added, the cross-platform bundling gets away from the DTC exclusivity that has drawn some of the best in episodic entertainment away from broadcast lineups. It’s important that serialized dramas “be put back into the bundle,” he said.

In fact, he noted, broadening access to such content isn’t just beneficial to broadcasters and their viewers. “DTC is a very expensive business model,” he said, which means getting into the communal flow is a boon to the OTT distributors as well.

These views echoed the take on the Disney/Charter pact expressed by Nextstar, the revenue leader in the station O&O market. In an investor report issued shortly after the agreement was announced, Nextstar said, “With DTC re-bundled, networks will be incentivized to add content to the broadcast network to maximize audience and advertising revenues versus making it exclusively available on DTC.” And TV stations will benefit from the likelihood that “providing more content that viewers want at a competitive/better price than the DTC bundle” will reduce cord cutting and high churn.

Disney also figures in another broadcast-affirming development involving the potential sale of the company’s eight ABC-affiliated TV stations, which stirred interest in the summer after Disney CEO Bob Iger publicly suggested Disney’s linear TV assets “may not be core” at a moment when the company is falling well short of investor expectations. Disney has since said it’s keeping its strategic options open but isn’t ready to commit to a sale.

Allen Media founder and CEO Byron Allen has confirmed his firm is willing to pay $10 billion for the stations packaged with Disney’s FX and National Geographic channels. “We believe broadcast is still a very viable business,” said Allen Media Broadcasting president Princell Hair, another participant in the NAB New York discussion. 

Indeed, since launching the broadcasting division in 2019, Allen Media has acquired 27 ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox network station affiliates in 21 markets. But Hair, like the other speakers, wasn’t shy about enumerating the challenges station owners are confronting. 

Top of mind is the need to add broader appeal to the programming lineup, especially when it comes to reaching younger viewers. Catherine Badalamente, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, which supports programming operations at seven stations in four states, cited a shortage of good syndicated content as a key issue during the NAB panel discussion. 

“We have to figure out new ways to program stations,” Badalamente said. “Adding more news isn’t the solution.” Getting better programming into the mix might require new partnerships with other broadcasters, she added, commenting, “Nothing is off the table.”

While more news as currently presented may not be the answer, Chris Ripley said he sees a need for local news programming that has greater appeal to younger audiences with availability through a diversity of platforms. While “there’s nothing wrong” with Sinclair’s approach to delivering news to people who grew up watching television, “the reality is our audiences have changed over time,” he said. Young people want news, but they don’t “want to consume it the way we’re producing it.” 

As for Allen Media Broadcasting, “The level of engagement is not what I’d like it to be in our markets,” Hair said. Like Ripley, he said the answer isn’t just a matter of battling for eyeballs with tweaks to the traditional programming lineup. “We have to keep an eye on where the consumer is,” he said, which means creating content that’s “unique to specific platforms.”

Both Sinclair and Allen Media are forging ahead along several paths in the multi-platform space, including new programming ventures and online services that offer news tied to local markets along with dozens of free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and on-demand access to movie archives. Sinclair, which operates in 86 markets through 185 owned or affiliated stations, also runs NewsOn, a streaming service solely devoted to offering aggregations of local news content.

But anxieties centered on the core business persist as, in Ripley’s words, “every distributor becomes a virtual distributor.” With the marginalization of local TV threatened as MVPDs go to cloud-based national distribution, “we’re worried about getting knocked out of the bundle,” Badalamente said.

The panelists were unanimous in calling for stronger FCC support for preserving the role of local TV stations in the face of what Ripley described as the inevitable MVPD transition to virtualization. “This needs to be figured out,” Ripley said. Without federal support, he asserted, “there will be no broadcast industry in a world where every distributor is virtual.” 

Hair called for more NAB lobbying pressure on behalf of protecting local TV against virtualization. “The NAB is the voice of the industry,” he said. “It has to be involved to help us resolve that.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group has announced a reorganization in which a new holding company, Sinclair, Inc. will become the publicly-traded parent of Sinclair Broadcast and its subsidiaries.

The Baltimore-based company, which was founded in 1986 and at 193 TV stations, is the second largest TV station group in the country, has greatly expanded beyond its traditional broadcast base to now include real estate, venture capital, private equity, and direct investments. Among its subsidiaries is ONE Media LLC, a technology division focused on business opportunities from the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, as well as Compulse, a marketing technology and managed services company, and the Tennis Channel. As part of the reorganization, these other businesses and assets will be held by New Sinclair through a new subsidiary to be known as “Sinclair Ventures.”

“We believe the new structure will provide greater flexibility for creating value within the company. The new structure simplifies the corporate structure and improves the transparency of financial disclosures on the value drivers of the company,” commented Christopher S. Ripley, President and CEO of the company. “We believe these other assets, some of which are currently buried in the broadcast division, can receive greater visibility outside the ‘broadcast’ umbrella, while Sinclair Broadcast will become a broadcast-focused subsidiary for which stockholders can better value its true performance. In short, we believe a holding company structure can unlock unrecognized value and provide structural flexibility for the growth and monetization of our current and potential future media and non-media businesses.”

In the Reorganization, each outstanding share of Sinclair Broadcast’s Class A common stock and Class B common stock would be exchanged automatically on a one-for-one basis for a share of Class A common stock and Class B common stock, respectively, of New Sinclair. New Sinclair’s Class A common stock is expected to continue to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select stock market under the ticker symbol “SBGI” just as Sinclair Broadcast’s Class A common stock does today. 

Under applicable law, the Reorganization will be accomplished through a share exchange and is subject to the affirmative vote of two-thirds of all the votes entitled to be cast on the matter at a special meeting of Sinclair Broadcast’s stockholders expected to be held in the second quarter of 2023.

WASHINGTON—Results of the 2021 NAB Television and Radio Board elections have been announced, which included Byron Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group/Entertainment Studios, as a newly elected board member.

Allen was one of six individuals elected to the NAB TV Board, with the other five re-elected, as they are currently serving on the board. This includes Chris Ripley, president and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group; David Bradley, chairman and CEO of News-Press & Gazette Co.; David Hanna, president Lockwood Broadcasting; Chris Cornelius, vice president, Business Development, at Morgan Murphy Broadcasting; and Robert Hubbard, president/CEO, Hubbard Television Group, and vice president of Hubbard Broadcasting Inc.

In addition, the NAB Radio Board held elections for its odd-numbered districts. The elected board members include Allen Power (District 1 - New England), Collin Jones (District 3 - Pa.), Mike Tarter (District 5 - WVa., Ky.), David Hoxeng (District 7 - Fla., Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands), Nick Martin (District 9 - Ga., Ala.), Matt Mnich (District 11 - Ohio), Chris Ornelas (District 13 - Mich.), Bradford Caldwell (District 15 - Tenn., Ark.), Dana Withers (District 17 - Ill.), Roger Harris (District 19 - Okla., Northern Texas), Carolyn Becker (District 21 - Minn., N.D., S.D.) and Trila Bumstead (District 23 - Ore., Wash.).

David Bevins, COO of Connoisseur Media, was also appointed to a designated seat on the NAB Radio Board.

All elected board members will begin a two-year term in June 2021.

BALTIMORE—During Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Q2 2017 earning call, CEO Chris Ripley made the case that consolidating news operations in a market would lead to “significant savings.” “Right now there are three to five local players, and to us that doesn’t make sense,” Ripley said.

To read the full story, visit TVT’s sister publication B&C.

LAS VEGAS—In a panel Wednesday, Jan. 5, at CES, Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO and President Chris Ripley explained why he was a big believer in the next-gen standard ATSC 3.0, which is currently on pace for completion in the spring. Ripley outlined five "tenets" of the new platform that he believed will "super charge" the broadcast business.

To read the full story, visit TVT's sister publication Multichannel News.

For more TV Technology coverage, see our ATSC 3.0 silo.