MADISON, Wis.—Morgan Murphy has promoted Jill Shiroma to Vice President of Digital Strategy, effective immediately. Shiroma will lead the company's digital strategy initiatives in the newly created role, building on more than two decades of progressive leadership within the organization.

Shiroma joined Morgan Murphy Media in July 2003 and has assumed increasing responsibilities in the company’s digital operations over her 20-plus year tenure.

She began her career at the company's Madison station, WISC-TV, before transitioning to a corporate role where she has overseen digital operations encompassing both content and revenue generation across the organization.

In her new position, Shiroma will focus on advancing the company's digital strategy to better serve local audiences and advertisers. She has been instrumental in Morgan Murphy Media's artificial intelligence rollout and will continue to lead these innovative initiatives.

"I'm thankful for the opportunity to take on this role at a pivotal time for local media," said Shiroma. "We have a strong foundation, and I'm excited to help grow our digital strategy in ways that support sustainable journalism, our local advertisers and meaningful community connection."

Brian Burns, President and CEO of Morgan Murphy Media, emphasized the strategic importance of the new role. "Jill has consistently delivered results throughout her career here, and this promotion recognizes her leadership in transforming how we connect with our communities," Burns said. "Her vision for digital innovation will be crucial as we continue building solutions that serve both our viewers and business partners in an ever-changing marketplace."

The promotion reflects Morgan Murphy Media's commitment to strengthening its digital presence and capabilities as the company continues to serve communities across its local media footprint.

NEW YORK—Fox Television Stations is reporting that its digital properties finished May 2022 as the top-performing O&O station group in total minutes, unique visitors and total views, according to Comscore Media-Metrix data cited by the station group. 

Fox Television Stations closed out the month reaching 1.67 billion total minutes, 403 million total views, and 54 million unique visitors. 

This performance marked increases in all three key metrics versus prior month and year, with total minutes  up 143% from a month earlier and +313% from a year earlier, views (+61% MoM and +103% YoY), and unique visitors (+28% MoM and +41% YoY).

Fox Television Stations also cited data showing it was the most engaged brand on social media against the other O&O groups in May, with 17.1 million total social actions according to Shareablee. 

On YouTube, Fox Television Stations secured the overall #1 spot among all local station groups, with more than 531 million video views, the company said. 

In terms of multi-platform total minutes the company reported this data: 

• Fox Television Stations – 1.67B
• ABC Local – 271M
• NBC Television Stations Group – 209M
• CBS Local – 18M

In terms of multi-platform total views the company reported this data:  

• Fox Television Stations – 403M
• ABC Local – 170M
• NBC Television Stations Group – 129M
• CBS Local – 22M

 In terms of multi-platform unique visitors the company reported this data: 

• Fox Television Stations – 54M
• ABC Local – 36.6M
• NBC Television Stations Group – 37M
• CBS Local – 6.2M

Fox cited these sources for the data: Comscore Media Metrix Multi-Platform, Total Digital Audience, Custom-Defined List including [M] Fox Television Stations, [C] NBC Owned Television Stations, [S] ABC Local, and [C] CBS Local, May 2022, U.S.

Social media data was from May 2022 Shareablee, PowerRankings: Local Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube)

CINCINNATI, Ohio—Joseph Naylor has been hired as vice president of emerging products for The E.W. Scripps Company’s Local Media division. 

In this newly created position, he will be responsible for Local Media digital thought leadership, vision, strategy, development and execution of non-linear opportunities for Scripps’ 61 television stations in 41 markets. 

Naylor has been serving as executive director of product, programmatic and data for Cox Media Group, where he was a member of the organization’s senior leadership team. He has overseen strategy and operations for digital campaign attribution, data monetization, programmatic and digital product management.  

“Joe’s deep knowledge of the connection between local news, digital product creation and monetization will be a win for Scripps,” said Brian Lawlor, president of Local Media for Scripps. “Our company places a high priority on serving content to consumers on every platform, and Joe’s years of experience leading teams and building platforms that engage local audiences will help us capitalize on the latest technologies.”  

Naylor has 18+ years of experience in marketing and media, all with Cox Media Group (2013-present) and Cox Radio (2003-2013). Throughout his career, he has focused on product development and strategic partnerships in digital media, streaming and emerging advertising platforms. 

“Scripps is such a progressive-minded and forward-thinking organization,” Naylor said. “I’m thrilled to join a company that is leading the way in the broadcast industry.”  

Naylor is a native of York, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla.  

BRISTOL, Conn—The return of football has been good for ESPN Digital, with the operation leading the sports category in the month of September and reaching 116 million users in the U.S. That was ESPN Digital’s second-highest month ever behind January 2020 and best September on record, the company reported. 

ESPN also announced that its ESPN’s lead in total minutes increased from 946 million in August to 3.7 billion in September – the largest gap since October 2017. 

In addition, ESPN on YouTube reached 26.5 million unique visitors in September, the second-highest mark ever and the SportsNation YouTube channel nearly tripled its unique visitors from the previous month to 15.2 million.

In other usage data, ESPN reported that: 

• The ESPN App saw 25.3 million users in September, also the second-highest mark ever behind September 2019. The Fantasy App moved into the second slot in the rankings, with 10.2 million users, also its second-highest user count behind September 2019.
• ESPN Social ranked number one in sports media across every social platform – with the most followers and the most engagements. Over the past year, ESPN Social averaged 12 million engagements and 325 million impressions per day. ESPN Social led the sports media category in actions across Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook for 12 of the past 13 months (source: Shareablee).
• ESPN Digital Live Shows drew 16.5 million total views in September. The College Football Show presented by AT&T led the way with one million views per show, up 18 percent year-over-year. Fantasy Focus Live grew by 16 percent year-over-year on YouTube, boosting the livestream of the podcast to 2.8M total views and more than 44 million minutes watched for the month.

The data was based on an ESPN Fan & Media Intelligence analysis of comScore U.S. Media Metrix Multi-Platform. 

NEW YORK—Nielsen is working on the Nielsen ONE, a new single, cross-media system that is meant to drive more comparable and comprehensive metrics across platforms, the company has announced. Nielsen ONE is eyeing a Q4 2022 launch, with the intention to fully transition the industry to cross-media metrics by the fall 2024 season.

Viewers are watching video content across multiple different platforms, Nielsen has found. Between March and August 2020, Nielsen reports that U.S. adults spent 12.2 trillion minutes watching content on digital, 11.1 trillion minutes with linear and 2.8 trillion minutes streaming. As a result, advertisers and publishers are seeking a single view of audiences across all platforms and mediums.

Nielsen ONE will use a single metric across linear and digital to transact that will be the standard across the industry, Nielsen says. A single, deduplicated number will provide visibility into total video consumption regardless of platform device for marketers, as well as offering a better understanding of unique audiences; frequency and reduced double counting; inflated metrics; and advertising waste, per Nielsen.

“With Nielsen ONE we are delivering a single, comparable metric for TV and digital that will provide video consumption across all platforms, services and devices,” said Karthik Rao, COO, Nielsen. “For media buyers and sellers, this means better monetizing their assets and maximizing their investments.”

Nielsen has begun unifying its technology platform as part of its transition to Nielsen ONE. This includes:

• ONE Platform: A unified, cloud-based platform that allows integration and normalization of big data sets, including automatic content recognition (ACR) data and return path data (RPD), as well as direct integrations with digital platforms and connected TV (CTV) providers. It will also be underpinned by a flexible technology stack that enables large scale models using machine learning techniques to deliver comparability and consistency across sources. 
• ONE Panel: Nielsen panels and meters will combine into a single-source, geographically representative panel that gathers viewing across devices including TV, CTV, mobile devices and computers. The Nielsen ONE panel uses it ID resolution system to validate audiences and deduplicate exposures across ads and content. 
• ONE Product: A single cross-media product that provides reach and frequency metrics by delivering a holistic, deduplicated view of both content and ad performance regardless of screen, device or platform. ONE Product features technology that measures every single ad on linear TV at the subminute level to account for exact commercial minutes. 

Nielsen had previously announced it was future-proofing its digital measurement, evolving its national TV currency to include addressable measurement and expanding CTV coverage to include additional smart TV manufacturers and digital video platforms in 2021.

Starting in Q4 2022, Nielsen will release parallel cross-media ratings that will deliver metrics at subminute levels for individual ads and content. Nielsen expects this measurement to become the foundation of cross-media buying and selling process across the entire industry by the fall 2024 season.

“With the rapidly evolving landscape and on-going shifts in consumer behavior, it is no longer acceptable to take a siloed approach to our clients’ video plans,” said Doug Ray, CEO, Dentsu Media. “Cross-media measurement is paramount to maximize reach across platforms with the right frequency. We are encouraged by Nielsen’s commitment to single measurement solution and unified framework that will drive comparability across TV and digital video so that our clients can better allocate dollars and maximize ROI.”

For more information, visit Nielsen’s website. 

NEW YORK—While IAB reports “light at the end of the tunnel” for the likes of digital advertising, the outlook for traditional media does not look so rosy. Buyers expect an average estimated -8% ad spend across all media channels, with linear TV in particular down 24% in 2020.

IAB projects that overall U.S. traditional media ad spend is expected to be down 30% in 2020 from its 2019 numbers. Digital, on the other hand, is estimating a 6% increase year-over-year. As has been reported by other outlets, the amount of time and money spent on digital platforms during the pandemic has increased, likely helping push it to this growth.

IAB gives a specific focus to the rise in digital video consumption (OTT/CTV) during the height of the pandemic (March through May). The number of households that watched OTT daily went up from just over 44 million at the start of March to nearly 50 million by the end of May, per IAB. The average daily streaming hours rose from right around 240 million to more than 280 million as June started—it reached a height of 300 million hours a day during April.

As a result, while linear TV is expected to decline 24% in as spend, CTV and digital video ad spend is expected to increase 19% and 18%, respectively, over 2019 numbers.

There is still a lot of uncertainty about how the pandemic will continue to impact advertising as we head into 2021. At least 70% of buyers still have 2021 ad dollars in flux, according to IAB. However, there is an expectation that 2021 ad budgets will increase by 5.3% from that of 2020.

The full IAB report is available online. 

NEW YORK—Due in part to the proliferation of social media, the way people get their news continues to evolve, and broadcasters are embracing these changes in how the news is even disseminated. The linear broadcast that has been a staple of TV reporting—including the daily evening news—has given way to multiple delivery platforms. At the same time belt tightening means newsrooms increasingly have to do more with less, but here too technology is having a serious impact as audiences fragment in the evolving 24-hour news cycle. 

This has led to broadcasters adopting the “digital first” policy that was first championed by publishers, according to Warren Davis, senior product manager at Bitcentral in Newport Beach, Calif. 

"Digital curators are getting access to content as it is being created for live broadcast," he said. "This is being facilitated by new search, production and publishing tools in the newsroom being shared across the digital production teams. Additionally the push for earlier metadata enhancement of raw camera and finished content allows for the automated curation and assistance in creating new or re-versioned content for live and digital distribution."

This year could see significant changes, beginning with how news is produced, but more importantly how it is delivered or distributed and also in how it is consumed.

"There are many, many new things that are coming up," predicted Raoul Cospen, marketing director for news at Dalet, which has also adopted a “digital first” approach. "The first one is obviously the digital disruption and the fact that even televisions now have websites and digital ways of putting their news or posting their news. So, digital is becoming more pre-eminent in workflows."

This digital first approach addresses changes at the production level, and Dalet is among the companies leading the move to the next-generation, borderless multiplatform newsroom with Dalet Galaxy Five, which will leverage advanced cloud and AI technologies, Cospen said.

GOING WITH THE WORKFLOW

The work of producing news for viewer consumption has long been about the workflows, but in 2020 these will continue to evolve as part of that move to digital first. However, in many ways it could still be "business as usual," as the end result is about delivering the news in a timely manner.

"Editorially, there are new needs for the TV script but also the CMS script, but also the narrations that are going to go inside the video and so on," said Cospen. "Then on top, you will have broadcast video that sits on one side but also the digital version with multiple formats; obviously, 9:16, 4:3, [Instagram] square and so on. But that will embed some additional graphics, some captions, maybe some translations, maybe some narrations, some stuff that is going to make the video more compelling to the digital viewers, basically."

None of this is exclusive to news production, but it is the never-ending daily news cycle that presents the added challenges to the workflows. In addition, there is the fact that viewers aren't sitting around the TV to catch the evening news at a set time. As such, the traditional workflow is very much a work in progress.

"There is the move toward mobile journalism, user-generated content and we need to arm those journalists with the toolsets so that they can do everything they need to do over a phone or tablet," said Ray Thompson, director of broadcast & media solutions at Avid. "We're seeing a move away as well from the truck or even cameramen, and the new technologies enable broadcasters to become more nimble and operate with less."

Even within broadcast facilities the actual newsroom is undergoing significant changes, notably with the move to IP.

"This is extending the ability for anyone in the newsroom to work with reporters who are everywhere, and this can include editing of video and the adding of graphics," added Thompson. "We're also seeing a move to a cloud-based repository, which allows broadcasters to route video as a story breaks whether it is regionally, nationally or internationally, and to be shared to that audience."

The evolving workflows will address this cross-media proliferation of news content delivery as well. "We can increase the number of output channels, and a lot of our existing customers are looking to be more efficient from these tools," said Trevor Spielmann, head of sales for newsroom solutions at SCISYS, which was acquired by CGI last year. 

However, there are also new challenges as a result.

"We are finding that it must be cost effective, easy to learn, easy to deploy and flexible when deployed," added Spielmann. "Our ‘Open Media’ [platform] can do all this and be customized, and integrated with third party applications, which provide that flexibility to our clients." 

AI FOR NEWS

While the newsroom may have to do more with less in terms of people, it will be getting help from artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, which can provide the ability to utilize content in the archives far faster than ever before. This could also result in a change in the general repurposing of archived content. 

"I would not call it ‘repurpose’ anymore because we used to repurpose before, but because of the ‘digital first’ aspect, it's not about repurposing," said Cospen. "It's about producing some content for many outputs, taking many outputs in consideration."

This is just one aspect of how AI could be utilized this year and beyond. AI has fully strategic uses, which include the calibration element as well as the ability to better collaborate across a story even as it has more contributors.

This will allow for a more collaborative working environment added Cospen, who noted this includes, "the ability to comment, the ability to do to-do lists, the ability to follow pieces of news and so on. The last point is adding a resource management on top of your newsroom, to optimize, to be more efficient and again to tell better news faster, cheaper and in a more efficient way."

Searching for just the right content, when it is needed most, could also be made easier via AI, and Dalet is offering its new automated “Discovery Search,” which works with the planning editor and story editor. "It is identifying potential matches for what you’re currently doing, for things that you didn't identify as potential material for your story," said Cospen. "It's going to help you to dig further in your archive and to bring some extra content that is going to make your story a bit more compelling."

AI can provide the way to pull the content from the archives via metatags and other metadata in a way that simply wasn't possible in the past, but it can also do searches far faster than a team of researchers.

"It can do facial, speech-to-text and use other algorithms to recognize a particular scene or even logo," said Thompson. "This is where the rubber meets the road in really being able to take advantage of the archives, but it can also determine the right content for a specific audience."

However, the full potential of AI will not come soon.

"AI is still a buzzword at the moment," cautioned Spielmann. "It is what everyone is talking about, even if a lot of it isn't really AI. There are plenty of third-party AI solutions as everyone has a different view and a different application in mind. So our view is to be as flexible as possible in how these can be integrated."

USER GENERATED

Today, thanks to our increasingly powerful smartphones, it isn't just the professional TV reporters that are doing the work of newsgathering. More and more content is being shot on those devices, and with the right toolsets this content can be used by teams in the physical newsrooms.

"TV news production has always had access to user generated content [UGC]," said Davis. "Stations are marketing it to be used with their apps and website UGC contribution portals directly from the user's mobile phone. Of course all of these consumer-level video contributions require transcoding since a variable frame rate is used for most all mobile phone recorders and must be converted into a fixed frame rate before going to air."

The quality of the actual content is just one part of a very complex equation, and here is another aspect that AI can streamline.

"The big challenge is about getting the rights to use that content, but we now have the toolsets that can allow you to scrap the social media feeds via hashtags and other metadata," said Avid’s Thompson. "User generated content is produced so quickly that users can beat the actual broadcasters to the story, so it is imperative that those news providers find that content and can get it posted."

MIAMI—Less than a year away from the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Noticias Telemundo is ramping up its election coverage with a particular increase in its digital operations. In a recent press release, the Hispanic-language network announced some of its planned digital programming as well as new hires for what it bills as its “biggest-ever electoral coverage.”

“Our web, app and social platforms will feature three times the volume of political content in comparison to 2016,” said Maria Luisa Tabares, director of Digital News Content.

Part of Noticias Telemundo’s digital strategy will include exclusive programming on popular and emerging digital platforms. One will be a daily YouTube native newscast done in English, while the network will also produce a news show for the new digital platform Quibi.

In addition, Noticias Telemundo has announced that it has doubled the size of its editorial team, bringing in multimedia journalists to produce stories specifically for digital, social and linear platforms.

Other efforts in the run-up to the 2020 election include partnerships with fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact and Animal Politico; a partnership with the Des Moines Register; and the previous actions of building a new studio and hirings that include Patsy Loris as senior vice president, elections 2020, and appointing Romina Rosado as the head of digital news.

“Latinos are increasingly consuming most of their political news online or via mobile devices,” said Rosado. “Our expanded digital operations will get us even closer to our audience during a critical electoral year.”

More information can be found at the newly redesigned Noticias Telemundo website.

When I was asked to review what had happened in television media over the past decade, the breadth and depth of changes in this industry reminded me of the changes I saw in my daughter as she moved from an adorable, wide-eyed 10-year- old to a more sophisticated young woman attending college and plotting out the course of her life. This analogy is further enhanced as I spend time with my 14-year-old grandson and try to comprehend the tumultuous times and “interesting” choices he makes as he navigates through adolescence. So let me welcome you to the end of the adolescent years of the first century of 2000 millennium. But where to start?

DIGITAL TELEVISION

While digital OTA technically began in the first decade of this century in the United States and a few other countries, it is really in this decade that we have seen terrestrial digital television become the primary standard and analog television service cease operation. The conversion to digital has enabled some very obvious benefits when it comes to the quality and quantity of services offered. Widescreen HD has become the baseline standard for content delivered to home receivers with pristine quality. Multicasts abound as even at my own Iowa Public Television we broadcast four independent program streams, two in high definition and two in standard definition, all with surround sound enabled, descriptive audio and closed captioning. I would venture the majority of OTA television platforms are now multicasts offering as wide a variety of content choices for over-the-air consumers as they may find in the basic subscription of the available MVPD’s.

But digital is not without its more subtle challenges. There are those who viewed the transition from analog to digital as a journey from one location to another location. However, digital was never a destination on a map but a continuum whose ultimate end is still beyond the perceivable horizon. I think the recognition of this fact by everyone involved in this industry is crucial because we have started on the path and we are accelerating. Case in point—NEXTGEN TV.

In 2009 as we joyfully shut off our aging analog transmitters, some here at Iowa Public Television were approaching 30 years old—how many of us were thinking that in 10 years we’d be contemplating shutting off our 15-year-old digital television transmitters? Not to mention convincing the entire viewing population to purchase new televisions because their “old sets” can’t receive the new OTA services. I’m not a big fan of quoting Moore’s Law because I believe the under-lying principle is an unsustainable growth pattern. However, I do believe there are corollaries that should be added if we are going to use it. One of these corollaries is that nothing digital is ever finished.

INFINITE CHANNEL UNIVERSE

While the internet certainly isn’t a product of the last decade, some of what it has enabled is. The internet has transitioned from an optional service to a utility, not unlike power and water. Technology has increased the speed and capacity of internet connectivity, both wired and wireless to enable a plethora of new over-the-top, streaming and on-demand services to be added to the over-the-air and MVPD subscription-based services available. The 500 channel universe that John Malone envisioned in the 1990s has morphed into an infinite selection.

Let’s not overlook another change, probably the most significant one of all: Mobility! I started my career as talent working in radio and back then we knew that the audience was mobile. I was never a good enough disc jockey to land one of the coveted drive time slots on the air but we knew that the vast majority of our audience was listening to us while they were on the go in their cars or laying on the beach on the weekends. The audience was taking the receiver with them and with an audio service it was pretty easy. Video services obviously presented a real challenge since one of the traditional driving forces in consumer television sales is increasing screen size and that the belief that the audience will opt to wait and watch content when they have access to the larger fixed screen.

In many cases however convenience trumps quality and just as people will skip going to see a movie in a theater and wait for it to come out on Netflix, they will likewise watch content on their smartphones while riding and sometimes even driving rather than wait to get home. The industry as a whole now has to come to grips with creating content that will be, not may be consumed on whatever device is most convenient for the audience. In my opinion, this nomadic consumption model is probably one of the most significant changes in our industry—not only bringing challenges to creating content but also new competition as wireless providers evolved, bringing 4G to market in the early part of this decade and the promise of 5G in the next decade.

COMMODITY CONTENT

Looking internally at the industry, the angst of the adolescence analogy still holds up as we adjust our business models, workflows and long-range plans to create content for audiences that have little knowledge or loyalty to the scheduled appointment, channel-based infrastructure of the past. An important concept to grasp is that the vast majority of consumption of preproduced content is still basically streaming in real time. What has fundamentally changed is that the scheduling of the stream has migrated from the content distributor to the content consumer.

Add to this environment the challenge of the ease of distribution and the growth of user-generated content. We saw this in its infancy when shows that took funny, cute and/or embarrassing home movies from VHS tapes and created hit television programs watched by mass audiences. Commoditized technology now allows anyone to purchase a 4K camera for under $100. While there are still “hit” shows based on user generated content easily found with a Google search, there are actually talented story tellers creating compelling content and making it available for free or by donation. This commoditization of the very content being created presents a whole raft of trials for the industry.

My friend and colleague Fred Baumgartner, director of NextGen TV Implication at ONEMedia once suggested I read the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen. It is a book I have actually read a few times because I want to be reminded that my mindset needs to be open to all possibilities.

One of the fundamental takeaways from the book is that when dealing with disruptive technologies, you cannot use the same metrics for success that are used to measure the success of the existing technology. The proof of that in our industry is apparent when you look at who is driving the market and who is struggling to survive. Companies that were barely blips on the radar of content creation and distribution at the beginning of this decade like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) are now the big dogs and the long established leaders are consolidating to try and stay relevant.

VIRTUALLY EVERYWHERE

Digital’s entrance into the world of television began decades ago with the first time-base correctors, character generators and still store that allowed analog tape to replace film chains, paper graphics superimposed over video and 35mm slide projectors. Analog tape became digital tape, character generators became graphic systems and still stores became clip stores.

So the transition was from proprietary, on-premise analog hardware running no software to proprietary, on-premise digital hardware running proprietary software to commodity off-the-shelf (COTS), on-premise digital hardware running proprietary software (exhale). They still require the content creators to make a significant investment in hardware that has a significantly shorter useful life and software that is never finished and undergoing constant updates and improvements. Improvements that while increasing the capabilities of the system are simultaneously accelerating the end of life of the very systems they run on.

Enter the cloud and virtualization. The cloud is basically remote hardware and virtualization is running software on that remote hardware. Initially the low hanging fruit in virtualization was storage. Who didn’t love the idea of having their content available to them from anywhere they were at any time they want as long as they had an internet connection?

Initially concerns about security moderated the charge forward including some well publicized hacks at the major film studios. However, we are currently seeing some significant improvements is securing access and making the idea of more permanent cloud storage pick up speed.

At IBC, MovieLabs discussed their 10- year vision for the future of production, post production and creative technologies. One of the key elements is that their pristine content is in the cloud and the applications and software they use work on the content in the virtualized space. So clearly some of the largest creators of content are committed to the concept of virtualized workflows.

My colleague Chris Lennon, CEO of MediAnswers has been talking about microservices for awhile. Microservices for me is somewhat reminiscent of my early days writing programs where the computers had limited memory and the largest program you could execute was 64 kilobits. Pathetically small by modern standards, it required us to write code efficiently to fit the program into the space available and we also had to learn to modularize our programs to allow for seamlessly running a module and then using the results to execute the next module and so on.

This is how complex programs were designed. The commoditization of memory allowed for programs to grow in size so that they were a single large complex of code rather than separate modules. A microservice architecture harkens us back to the original modular programming and therefore allows some modules to run on user equipment and other modules to run on virtualized equipment.

While this is a complex arrangement, if properly managed and executed it brings some of the most astounding and compelling tools into the hands of anyone who wants to use them in a “pay by the drink” arrangement. Chris and other colleagues at SMPTE are in the process of putting together a working group to develop the standards and recommended practices for the development and application of microservices.

THE ENEMY OF GOOD

One of the other key concepts that I picked up for “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is that within a business there is often the push to develop the quality of the product or service far past the expectations and pocketbooks of the end users.

In some ways I think we are seeing this in the home television display marketplace where 4K and 8K television displays are being marketed as the next big thing. I had a conversation with another friend and colleague about this, discussing the shift in what content creators were looking for and what manufacturers were working on, with John Ive, director of Strategic Insight for the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers.

“With technology I’m noticing that content image quality is maturing with small incremental improvements because we’ve reached the limits of perception,” he said. “So now more money is spent on the management of content and the business processes with image quality and content increasingly taken for granted.”

To an engineer or scientist who may believe that every improvement is worth the resource investment, this may sound a little like heresy but in the real world “good enough” is a valid metric that determination is made by the end user. The technologies needed to create and distribute content are mature and while they will improve and become even more affordable, that simply means that the sea of content will grow.

To be successful will require a focus on making content discoverable and available and this is why as the adolescent decade of this century comes to an end we are seeing a focus on business processes and content management.

So let’s raise a glass to a decade of change and upheaval. I hope that in 2029, I am asked and still capable of writing another decade in review. I wonder if I’ll even be able to recognize the business.

Bill Hayes is the director of engineering for Iowa Public Television.

The “D” word. Today in our industry, D stands for “Disruption.” Ten years ago, “the D word” meant something else to U.S. television broadcasters.

No, I’m not talking about “Digital”—I’m talking about “Dread.”

On June 12, 2009, broadcasters took the big step that had caused so much consternation and fear since it had been proposed several decades before—the industry shut down its analog signals after more than 60 years of broadcasting in the U.S. Digital was now the norm.

I think I can speak for my other fellow journalists when I say that, despite all the angst, we loved covering the DTV transition because it created so much of another “D” word: Drama.

The original shutoff date was Dec. 31, 2006. I remember it well because of a warning from one Congressman who feared the worst when viewers realized that they would lose TV the way it always was.

“If we impose a strict, hard return of spectrum of December 31, 2006, one can be sure that we will all be impeached on January 1, 2007,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY).

Clearly the industry wasn’t ready by then and it’s hard to say whose feet got colder: broadcasters or the government, (and more specifically the FCC).

Realizing this, in 2005, Congress moved the deadline to February 2009. A number of problems were still unresolved, in particular, issues over how the controversial converter box program was being handled, so the deadline was moved to June, (when it was more likely that Congress would be on break, natch).

So as the industry held its collective breath and at midnight on the evening of Friday, June 12, 2009, the end came for analog TV in the U.S.

The transition went better than expected. Yes, stations, particularly along the urban areas on the east coast lost viewers as they moved from UHF to VHF and a number of consumers still hadn’t gotten the word despite millions of dollars in public education campaigns.

The total cost of the government’s share of the transition ended up nearly $3 billion. During the first week after the shutoff, the FCC logged nearly 900,000 calls to a DTV hotline it had set up to respond to complaints and concerns. A month later, Nielsen reported that 98.9% of U.S. homes were able to receive a digital signal.

Was it worth the expense? There was very little debate that the industry had to go digital—with increasing pressure from the wireless industry over spectrum availability, broadcasters’ hands were forced to make the transition.

Rick Ducey, managing director at BIA Advisory Services, had the unique perspective of looking at the transition from several sides—first as the senior vice president of research and info group at the NAB and then as an advisor to broadcast stations when he moved to BIA nearly 20 years ago.

Ducey helped establish Spectra Rep two decades ago to take advantage of the datacasting capabilities of digital television.

“We wanted to see if there was a way to monetize the new capabilities of the digital infrastructure,” he said. Based in Chantilly, Spectra Rep today works with public broadcasters to use datacasting enabled by DTV for public safety operations.

As a long-time contributor to TV Technology, Doug Lung had a front seat to the transition, chronicling the progress of the transition from when the first DTV station went on air in 1996 to today.

Lung’s assessment of how the industry has fared in the decade since can probably be described as a “glass half-full” approach.

“Once TV stations boosted their power [many had minimal facilities prior to the cut-over] and the quality of TV sets tuners improved, interest in over the air TV rose,” he said.

Lung commented that some of the transmitters used for increased power after analog was shut down were converted analog transmitters, but that the work surrounding the current channel realignment, prompted by the 2017 spectrum auctions provides new upgrade opportunities.

“The repack is giving us the opportunity to replace these ancient transmitters with more modern transmitters with solid state amplifiers and a relatively easy conversion to ATSC 3.0,” he said.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is at the forefront of the transition to ATSC 3.0, was a prominent opponent of the 8-VSB modulation standard and spent numerous hours on Capitol Hill and in the halls of the FCC pressing their case for using COFDM, which they said was better at handling mobile reception.

Now with ATSC 3.0 adopting the OFDM scheme, Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair and president of ONE Media, couldn’t help but feel vindicated.

“We actually hate having to be the folks that were right,” he said, adding that the “lessons learned” about the transition include the importance of mobility, IP and maximizing broadcasters’ use of their spectrum.

Today, ATSC is focused on what is perhaps even a bigger transition to 3.0 and an IP and mobile future designed to compete with telcos. Madeleine Noland, the new president of the association hailed the benefits of ATSC 1.0, including enhanced HD picture quality, improved sound and advanced closed captioning features, to name a few.

“The 10 year anniversary of the analog shutoff shines a light on one of the major milestones in the history of terrestrial broadcasting, and we look forward to many more with the bright future of ATSC 3.0 ahead of us.”

So do we.

WASHINGTON—Local TV stations across the country are making sure they aren’t getting left behind in the digital revolution, putting digital at the front of new innovations they are implementing. This comes from the 25th edition of the annual RTDNA/Hofstra University Newsroom Survey.

The 2019 survey asked for just the second time what’s the most innovative thing a newsroom started doing in the last year. Out of the more than 200 responses that answered the question, digital was the top choice. Nearly half, 45.3%, of respondents said they did something that involved digital, with streaming and OTT being the most popular upgrade. Some responses were also given for digital platforms, digital first and digital specific programming. Alexa and AR technology were also mentioned.

Management was the next popular response at 35.8%, though it covered a wide range of answers. Drones was one of the most popular answers from this group, with many stations saying they increased their drone program or added new licensed drone pilots to their staff. Staffing and technical issues rounded out the top three answers under management. Some other answers addressed the addition of new equipment to the station’s toolbox.

Content rounded out the remainder of the responses (18.9%), but there was still a heavier focus on digital content rather than innovation for on-air content.

The survey also asked how these new innovations were working for stations, which touched on the in progress status of stations going digital first; mixed, but positive, results for OTT and streaming; but ultimately that stations were getting out of digital what was put into it.

To read the full RTDNA survey, including how local TV stations improved journalism at their station in the last year, click here.

The Oscars were over the weekend, and as we celebrate the latest top-of-the class movie productions, let’s not forget the innovative technologies that create today’s movie magic. The film industry is in the throes of an exciting digital transformation, revolutionizing the creation and consumption of our favorite films.

The 91st Academy Awards took place on Sunday in Los Angeles, but this year’s ceremony had already made history. The video streaming platform Netflix was up for its first ever Best Picture Oscar nomination, with Alfonso Cuarón’s film "Roma" pegged for the coveted award. Not to mention nine other nominations (it won three). Meanwhile, another Netflix original "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," directed by the Coen Brothers, scooped three nominations—and competitor platform Hulu garnered a nomination in the Best Documentary section for "Mind the Gap."

This is a milestone moment for film, underscoring the shift in consumer consumption and the impact of nimble digital platforms on the content consumed. Ofcom reported that U.K. subscriptions to the three most popular online streaming services—Netflix, Amazon Prime and Sky’s Now TV—reached 15.4 million in the first quarter of 2018, overtaking the number of traditional pay TV subscriptions at 15.1 million. Viewers aged 16-34 watched more online streamed content (2 hours 37 minutes a day on average) than traditional broadcast content (2 hours 11 minutes). These stats might be impressive, but with 5G developments on the horizon, our streaming habits are about to be turbocharged.

Digital innovations are re-writing the rulebook for film on screen and behind the camera. In 2017, "Beauty and the Beast" was brought to life with a live-action re-make, and this year a string of Disney favorites will get the same treatment. Whether combining traditional and digital visual effects or going the full hog with feature length animations, a tremendous amount of data is processed in their making.

Every single element of a CG animation film is digitally crafted down to the finest detail. Whether it’s thousands of dragons flying over the ocean or exotic parrots falling in love in South America, production companies, at their core, are manufacturers of data. A single movie contains as many as half a billion files, which become digital assets that can be repurposed for future sequels.

• DreamWorks productions provide the perfect case in point. It takes hundreds of artists to work on any given DreamWorks feature, each of which takes three to four years to create. With a release target of two features per year, this means that there are, on average, 10 films in production simultaneously. This equates to an average of 400TB to 500TB of data spread across 500 million or more files. Creating characters such as Hiccup, Toothless and Astrid, and environments such as the Hidden World in the third "How to Train Your Dragon" film, requires some pretty heavy lifting, from a data and computation perspective.
• What do "Kung-Fu Panda" and "Shrek" have in common? They’re data-driven. But what does that really mean—and how has this evolved? When the first "Shrek" movie was produced in 2001, it required 6TB of data in total. In contrast, a single animated sequence from the current release of "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" draws on up to 50TB of data.
• DreamWorks relies on sophisticated data management solutions to ensure 100 percent up-time—and as it grows its multimedia content creation empire, enabling engineers to focus on creative and production teams continues to be critical.

This means that optimal data storage and management is the key to keeping the production line moving, artists in progress and ultimately bringing stories to life on the silver screen. With the exponential growth of data in the movie making process, optimizing data center space, guaranteeing no downtime and reducing latency is essential for an award-winning performance.

As we celebrate another great year of innovations in film, we are certainly provided with the perfect point at which to pause and reflect on just how far we have come. While data nerds look ahead to the next-steps for data-driven film—from AI powered animations to 3D film capture and 5G charged viewing—the majority of film lovers are blissfully unaware of the magic taking place behind the screen, within the data fabric. Without it, our animations would be delayed or sub-par and our nightly Netflix binges would be peppered with frustrating downtime. This year, perhaps an Oscar should have gone to the data-driven technologies that make our favorite films possible?

LAS VEGAS—Skinny bundles, new business opportunities stemming from ATSC 3.0, UHD and High Dynamic Range, metadata, the SMPTE ST 2110 standard for professional media over IP, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and machine learning are among the hot topics that will take center stage during PBS TechCon 2018 at The Mirage in Las Vegas, April 4-6.

This year’s TechCon sessions fall into five general categories: traffic, I.T., station management and professional development, digital and broadcast.

“As usual, ATSC 3 is running out ahead of the pack in terms of the broadcast side of things,” said Kevin Rupenthall, PBS director, Technology Communications & Engagement, during a webinar this week to examine the upcoming event.

[Putting Next Gen TV to the [Full] Test]

The broadcast program will include a couple of sessions on new business models and opportunities made possible by the Next-Gen TV standard. The “Dr. Lovestrange, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love ATSC 3.0,” session by consultant Chris Homer, Mark Corl, SVP of Emergent Technology Development at Triveni Digital, and Walid Hamri, VP Solutions & Business Development at ATEME, will cover the latest ATSC 3.0 standard developments. There will also be a presentation on ATSC 3.0-ready antennas.

For those interested in the nitty-gritty of building out UHD, Alan Popkin, director of engineering at KLCS, will present “Building a UHD Production Workflow, Studio, Post and Beyond.” Sessions devoted to UHD and HDR standards developments as well as standards work in in MXF with AAC for next-generation interconnect, SMPTE ST 2110, the Precision Time Protocol and the AMWA Networked Media Open Specification (NMOS) are planned. The “When Meta Met Data” not only will examine how stations can use and benefit from metadata, but also may be the TechCon session with the catchiest name.

“This year we have a really strong data and analytics track related to digital analytics,” said Max Duke of PBS Digital during the webinar. Jim Sterne, chairman of the Digital Analytics Association, will discuss the latest developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning during his “Digital Transformation Through Data.”

Dan Haggerty, PBS director of Digital Analytics, will present the “How To Think About Data, Not Just Access It” session. “He is a favorite in the metrics area for his presentations just being filled with takeaways,” said Duke. Other digital track sessions of note include “Data Visualization Tools and How To Use Them,” “The World Isn’t Flat, Why Is Our Video?,” which will examine 360, VR and 3D TV, and “Digital Infrastructure and Strategic Collaboration,” a tech-heavy session discussing a project involving CPB, NPR and PBS.

The traffic track will address three general areas, including workflow, technology and networking, said Nick Agresti, PBS Scheduling Implementation. Network sessions will focus on Service Interconnection (sIX), including “sIX Overview and Update” and the “sIX Alpha Panel Session” with traffic and engineering representatives discussing their experience with deployment. Workflow sessions will examine the general break structure and how breaks are created, said Agresti. Wendy Ross, of the PBS Traffic Advisory Committee, will present “Raising Your Visibility-Welcome to Traffic Brandcamp.”

The IT program will give attendees the chance to have their enterprise and broadcast IT questions answered during the “IT Roundtable Discussion” hosted by Josh Winterrowd of MontanaPBS and Rhonda Holt, PBS head of enterprise technology. Cybersecurity will be the focus of a 90-minute supersession, “Cybersecurity: Ransomware, Hacking and the Aftermath” by representatives from KQED and WGBH who will share their experiences, as well as “Broadcast Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” presented by Wayne Pecena, director of engineering for Educational Broadcast Services at Texas A&M University.

[CES 2018: Big, Thin and Very Smart is TV Theme]

The station management and professional development track also will offer sessions with a technology focus, including “PBS TV Translator Relocation and Grant Program: Strategies for Success.” Representatives from T-Mobile will be on hand presenting. The “Managing Tech Teams: Creating NextGen Broadcast Teams” session will be led by Shadi Sabra from Ideastream—WVIZ in Cleveland, who will discuss his experience.

However, there is more to TechCon than sessions. The event will open Wednesday, April 4, with a presentation from PBS CTO Mario Vecchi and PBS Chief Digital & Marketing Officer Ira Rubenstein. On Thursday, April 5, Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer will present a keynote in which he will take a deep dive into platform usage and audience behavior by platform as well as examine how audiences are changing the way they consume content.

There are other extras as well, including an ETAC meeting and Station Rapid Innovation Lab gathering on Tuesday, April 3. Both will continue the next day. Wednesday, April 4, will begin GM day with a breakfast. There will also be a Digital Immersion Project workshop.

For those who couldn’t get enough of the TechCon daytime program, this year’s event will offer two Night Owl sessions on Thursday, April 5. “Skinny Bundles: A Night Owl Session,” will be a conversation-style session on various opportunities presented by virtual MVPDs and how best to leverage them. The other is “Why Can’t We Just Use iPhones? A Night Owl Production Roundtable.”

On Friday, April 6, there will be two breakfasts, one each for the Public Media Women in Leadership and the NETA Technology Council. There will also be an Interconnection Committee Meeting lunch. The day will close with a TechCon Town Hall where attendees can share what they’ve learned and ask any last-minute questions.

On Saturday, April 7, the day after the official close of the event, Amazon Web Services will conduct a boot camp from 9 a.m. till noon for TechCon attendees focused on cloud services and the new AWS portal.

More information is available on PBS TechCon 2018 website.

COLUMBUS, OHIO—Today’s TV newsrooms are increasingly being tasked with serving the web and mobile first, and broadcast second.

This is a natural consequence of the “always-on” nature of internet-based news: Although regularly-scheduled TV newscasts still matter, viewers are expecting their local broadcasters to be on top of stories at all times, and have that information available online as soon as news breaks.

In response to this online-driven reality, Columbus, Ohio CBS affiliate WBNS-10TV has radically rebuilt their newsroom. “We have replaced a dimly-lit, divided-up old school newsroom—all that was missing were manual typewriters—with a circular, multi-ringed layout that allows for the free flow of information between all news team members,” said Kelly Frank, director of news and digital content for the station, which is owned by Dispatch Broadcast Group. “The change in layout has created a constant back-and-forth between the online and broadcast elements of our news team; resulting in better content for viewers, and better morale for our staff.”

At the center of WBNS-10TV’s new digital news facility is “The Hub,” a raised half-walled circular platform, whose digital/assignment editors look outwards towards the rest of the newsroom.IT ALL STARTS AT THE HUB

Walk into the WBNS-10TV newsroom, and you might think you’d stepped onto the bridge of the next Starship Enterprise. That’s how big a departure this facility is from the desks-and-cubicles layout of most current TV newsrooms.

At the center of it all is “The Hub,” a raised half-walled circular platform, whose digital/assignment editors look outwards towards the rest of the newsroom.

Set directly against the other side of The Hub’s walls is a desktop surface that encircles the structure: This is where WBNS-10TV’s assignment-only and digital-only producers work.

On one side of the wall behind them is a 24’x7’ monitor video wall with 18 monitors. On the other side are outer rings of desks assigned to the various AM and PM TV newscast teams, plus desktop-based edit bays. (WBNS-10TV uses Grass Valley EDIUS ENPS newsroom system for editing and playout.)

All these work spaces are open to each other, as are the floor-to-ceiling glass walled conference room and news director office at the room’s periphery. The only areas that are isolated are three edit bays specifically set aside for WBNS-10TV’s investigative news unit.

There are also two rings of ceiling-encompassing 14 HDTV monitors. One faces into The Hub, and the other faces out into the newsroom. Content from various news sites, 24/7 TV news networks, and other sources are rotated across these screens every 20 seconds, so that viewers have a true up-to-date sense of what news consumers are seeing in real time.

As stylistic as this layout looks, WBNS-10TV’s newsroom is entirely functional. “The Hub is the central source for information monitoring—including social media in all its forms—and for driving coverage decisions that work their way into the various news teams, and back again,” said Tim Moushey, WBNS-10TV’s news operations manager. “We think of The Hub as being ‘Media Central,’ it is the core of our newsgathering operation,” added Frank.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE

Set directly against the other side of The Hub’s walls is a desktop surface that encircles the structure: This is where WBNS-10TV’s assignment-only and digital-only producers work. The reason The Hub is so vital to WBNS-10TV’s new-style newsroom is because The Hub’s staff is constantly monitoring online news sources, and populating the station’s own web and social media sites in response.

“We keep a close eye on what people are saying online, plus what’s being posted on our competition’s TV and newspaper web sites,” Moushey said. “The producers at The Hub do all of this, in addition to monitoring the scanner and other older news information sources.”

The Hub’s role as Media Central also ensures that WBNS-10TV’s news teams are constantly informed on what is happening, and communicating to each other about it. “In our old newsroom, the anchors were isolated in one area, the reporters in another, and the photographers in a third,” said Frank. “In our new model, each news team is grouped together. This makes it easy for a producer to grab their news anchor and get their feedback on what is being put together as it happens.”

Beyond being functional, WBNS-10TV’s modern newsroom is meant to impress. “We have a controllable camera based at The Hub that can be used to shoot an anchor or reporter in front of our video wall, while switching between video sources as required,” said Moushey. “This gives us a profoundly powerful informational and visual source to use for breaking news, or for special events such as our November 2016 election coverage, which is the first time our viewers saw our new facility.”

Most importantly, WBNS-10TV’s newsroom has revolutionised how the station’s journalists produce the news. “It’s not just that we have brought everybody together, but that they have embraced this new model whole-heartedly,” said Frank. “There is a new enthusiasm for newsgathering at our station; not just because we have cool new technology to present the news with, but also because our approach works so well in the online multimedia world we live in. At WBNS-10TV, we have the tools we need to do the job right in 2016; not when we signed on in 1949.”

CULVER CITY, CALIF.—The march toward a multiplatform digital future is well on its way, but what form it will eventually take is still up for debate. VFX Technologies, a provider of computer rentals and tech services, got a peek at one possibilitywhen it was hired by AMV Digital Media, an online broadcast, managed and production services company, to provide a custom solution to capture broadcast feeds at the Emmys.

Sarote Tabcum

The digital side of its Emmy production consisted of providing connectivity help between the production trucks and teams from IMDb, Amazon and the TV Academy to transcode and use fresh media as web content on their sites and social media profiles. With the VFX systems, editors were able to cut together footage from real-time cues and events to keep up with the live broadcast. “Our system tied everything together and provided a high-speed, 10GB fiber backbone between the two locations and to the editing,” said Sarote Tabcum, founder of VFX Technologies.

According to Tabcum, this was VFX’s first project where it provided editing support for a live production. The company has worked with other companies with a more digital focus in recent years, and Tabcum believes that these types of productions are only going to become more frequent.

“I see digital media is taking off at a very fast speed and the demand is there,” he explained. The ability for multiple broadcasters to share the same content instantly among their own social media accounts is a big shift from the past traditions of a single broadcaster having primary access to content. This new accessibility also allows broadcasters to quickly edit and make the content their own.

For VFX, and other companies like it, this means that they will have to quickly adjust to this new capability and others that could emerge down the road. “We’re at the forefront of any new technology and it’s our job to know how best to utilize that for our clients,” said Tabcum. This includes the shift to IP that is underway and will change the infrastructure of how baseband, video and broadcast delivers video signals.

Tabcum found the experience at the Emmy broadcast to be a positive one for his company, because it set them up to be an ally to companies looking to do similar digital experiments in the future. “We want to be a very solid stepping stone for many of these clients that are testing the waters and as these projects come live I hope they will rely on our expertise so they don’t have to be a Guinea pig,” he said. 

In Part I, we looked at how the definition of broadcast quality has evolved over the decades and the FCC’s attempts to enforce standards. In Part II, we look at several more past examples and examine how broadcast quality is determined in the digital age.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—What really defines “broadcast quality” and has such a thing ever really existed?

Even though television gear has become a lot more reliable over the years, on-air slippages in performance do occur. If this happens during peak viewing hours and there's no backup equipment, the only choices are to shut down and make immediate repairs, or limp along with a somewhat less than "broadcast quality" signal until signoff (or in the case of today's 24-hour operations, a time when viewership is low) and then fix the problem. Such a decision has never been difficult, as "the show must go on" philosophy almost always trumps degraded signal quality.

Let me give you an example involving a 1950s low-budget small-market TV station in a southwestern state. It was described as really a “shoestring” operation by its former owner (the person who related the story to me). One evening the station got a call from a viewer who was very excited about a particular program being transmitted. It seems that individual had won a color TV (a big-ticket item then) in a raffle and the network show the station was carrying was the first time the set had displayed color (1950s network offerings were mostly monochrome). The station’s then-owner and chief engineer was also excited, admitting to me that he didn’t know that his rather antique Dumont transmitter could even pass color. When I asked if he couldn’t see off-air burst and chroma information on a waveform monitor, he replied, “at that time we didn’t even own one.”

Strike another blow for maintaining “broadcast quality.”

There’s also the story from a couple of decades earlier involving a network affiliated radio station in a medium-sized market. The station was getting complaints about a “squeal” in the audio on network programs. However, as the audio sounded fine in the control room, station engineering chalked it up to listeners’ set problems or maybe some sort of interference in their neighborhoods. Finally, the number of complaints increased to the point that it was apparent something just might be wrong with their signal. The problem was eventually traced to an oscillating amplifier used by the local phone company to deliver the network audio. It seems that the speaker used for control room monitoring had such poor high frequency response that operators couldn’t hear the “squeal.” “Broadcast quality” I have to wonder?

‘RELAXED’ QC MONITORING

Fast forward to the 21st century. I visit quite a few broadcast facilities, and during the past few years have observed that more and more master control rooms are now monitoring everything on consumer-grade large screen displays driven by multiviewers. In other areas (graphics production) I also no longer see the broadcast grade “critical” and expensive CRT monitors, but rather garden-variety computer displays.

The same sort of “relaxed” QC monitoring is also happening in camera control rooms. Yes, there are plenty of “critical” monitors available (Dolby Labs, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Plura, and a number of others all come to mind), but I don’t see nearly as many “broadcast quality” monitors deployed where color and overall image quality assessment is taking place as I did when the CRT was king. And speaking of monitoring, how about the multichannel “surround” sound that we can transmit now that we’ve gone to digital—5.1 and maybe even 7.1-channel audio? Come on—show of hands—how many of you have created a 5.1 or 7.1 listening environment in your master control room so that operators can ascertain that the correct audio is where it ought to be? (I thought so.)

What I see in my visits is most often a control room display indicating presence and relative amplitudes of various channels. Also, the monitor speakers, however many or few, are usually potted down; and in some cases there’s no one there to listen to or look at a surround display. I even visited one new major market facility that was constructed without a master control at all. Everything was running on automatic pilot and MC operations (such as they were—transmitter remote control point/logging and news microwave monitors) were contained in an alcove at the end of the newsroom.

CONTENT TRUMPS QUALITY

So back to my original rhetorical question: was there ever really such a thing as “broadcast quality?”

Yes, when I was moving through the professional TV ranks in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and even a few years into the new millennium, we certainly had plenty of paper with ink on it describing how things ought to be done. And we tried really hard to keep reasonably good looking (and sounding) signals on the air. However, if you worked during this period you might recall that there were also three stock “excuses” when things didn’t go exactly by the book: (1) It looks good leaving here, (2) We can live with it, and (3) The trouble must be “west of Denver” or “east of Denver” depending on where you were and whether New York or L.A. was feeding the network. (For those of you not old enough to remember, Denver was the location of a major AT&T Long Lines switching center).

We tried to keep a “broadcast quality” signal on the air; honest to Pete we did, but sometimes things slipped a little bit (or even a lot). However, content always trumps quality and as long as we had the ball game or soap opera or whatever up at its scheduled time, the phone didn’t ring much, even if the quality slipped a little.

I recently asked the chief engineer of a modern-day TV station about consumer complaints and he responded without hesitation that the few received dealt almost entirely with aspect ratio and loudness issues, and in working with the complainants, in virtually every case the problems were traced to consumers having monkeyed around with their remote controls. (“It looks good leaving here!”) He added that complaints about color, resolution (even when SD was intercut with HD), and other video attributes were almost non-existent.

So, back to my questions: (1) what is “broadcast quality” and (2) did it ever exist?

Based on my nearly 50 years of involvement in broadcasting, I would have to answer that (1) no one is really 100 percent sure and (2) no, I don’t think it ever really did. However, we always tried to put out a quality signal and I hope that broadcasters always will!

James O'Neal is a retired broadcast engineer who worked in that field for some 37 years before joiningRadio World’ssister publication,TV Technology, where he served as technology editor for nearly a decade. He is a regular contributor to both publications, as well as a number of others. He can be reached via TV Technology.

MUNICH—With Albanian public broadcaster RTSH converting its nationwide broadcast network to DVB-T2, Rohde & Schwarz has been tapped to deliver a turnkey system to help with the conversion. Once completed, analog TV will be turned off in Albania, and 96.5 percent of the population will receive digital DVB-T2 signals.

AVHE100

The delivery of the two DVB-T2 multiplexes includes R&S TMU9 medium-power transmitters, R&S AVHE100 headends, R&S ETL TV analyzers and R&S XLx UHF/VHF transposers as gap fillers. The headend for the first multiplex encodes several HD and SD channels in H.264. The second multiplex transmits regionally recorded channels over IP to the broadcasting center. Combined, these generate 11 different regional service bouquets.

Rohde & Schwarz will equip 59 transmitter stations, 33 of which will be newly established using container systems for coverage to remote areas. New coverage gap filler stations will be installed at 15 additional sites.

The estimated time for completion for this rollout is expected to be two years.