IRVING, Texas—Nexstar Media Group, Inc. has announced that its television stations helped raise nearly $1.4 million to assist the victims of flooding in Central Texas earlier this month.

In addition, the Nexstar Media Charitable Foundation has donated $25,000 each to two organizations (The San Angelo Area Foundation and The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country), for a total of $50,000 to assist with relief efforts in Tom Green County, Kerr County, and the surrounding areas.

In addition to live around-the-clock news coverage of the catastrophic flooding provided by Nexstar’s Texas television stations and the company’s national cable news network, NewsNation, several of the company’s television stations across the country initiated fundraising drives to assist with relief efforts, the broadcaster reported.

Led by Nexstar stations in San Angelo, Abilene, and Austin, Texas, those fundraising efforts included an hour-long flood-relief telethon that aired simultaneously on KLST-TV in San Angelo and KTAB-TV in Abilene on July 10 and raised nearly $1.4 million.

In Austin, KXAN-TV aired continuous coverage of the flooding and its aftermath and launched a custom made microsite, KXAN.COM/FloodRelief, where viewers could find more information about a variety of resources and relief organizations aimed at helping those in need.

The station also developed and aired 22 different public service announcements spotlighting different relief organizations throughout the area, and directed viewers to ten different charitable entities assisting the residents of Central Texas. Throughout the crisis, KXAN-TV employees have volunteered with local relief organizations, helping to gather and distribute supplies. Finally, dozens of Nexstar TV stations across the country, including properties in Chicago; Buffalo, N.Y.; Las Vegas; Denver; and Bakersfield, Calif., aired a QR code linking viewers to the KXAN website and ways to donate to local relief and charitable organizations helping with the recovery in Central Texas.

“This is what being a local broadcasting company is all about—continuous live news coverage of an event affecting tens of thousands of people, assisting in the recovery efforts, bringing people together, and giving back to the communities we serve,” Nexstar Chairman and CEO Perry Sook said. “In addition to the fundraising and volunteer efforts of our television stations, the Nexstar Media Charitable Foundation is honored to be contributing $50,000 to two organizations directly involved in helping the residents of Central Texas to rebuild their lives.”

As the death toll continues to mount, with at least 120 killed and more than 170 people still missing on July 10 from devastating Texas floods, a number of broadcast station groups have announced efforts to raise money for those impacted by the disaster.

Gray Media, Graham Media Group, E.W. Scripps and Sinclar are among the broadcast station group owners who have announced efforts to raise and donate money as their stations and other broadcasters continue to provide critical information about the disaster.

A few highlights of those efforts include:

• Sinclair has launched Sinclair Cares: Texas Tragedy Relief, a national fundraising campaign in partnership with the Salvation Army, to support those affected by the devastating flooding across Texas. It said 100% of funds raised will provide critical emergency assistance including mobile feeding units, meals, hydration, shelter, clean up kits, hygiene kits and emotional care to survivors and first responders. Sinclair noted that its stations in San Antonio (KABB and WOAI) and Austin (KEYE) have been reporting on the story since the flooding began on July 4, delivering continuous coverage on Friday and Saturday, expanding newscasts into Sunday, with KABB and WOAI airing 52 hours of live coverage and KEYE also adding extended live coverage. To further support the ongoing effort, Sinclair has deployed 10 journalists and additional resources from other markets to assist with comprehensive coverage across all platforms. More information is available at SinclairCares.com.
• In response to the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas and the Hill Country, Graham Media Group and Gray Media have joined forces to launch an urgent donation drive supporting local relief and recovery efforts. The campaign raised more than $120,000 in donations in its first 24 hours, including a $25,000 donation from Gray. Graham is making an additional $15,000 donation to the campaign. Through this collaborative campaign, Graham ’s KSAT in San Antonio and KPRC in Houston and Gray stations across 113 U.S. markets aim to generate donations that deliver vital resources—including food, housing and financial aid—to impacted communities. The station groups said 100% of funds raised will support on-the-ground efforts in flood-affected regions Donate at www.togetherfortx.com
• The Scripps News Group and the Scripps Howard Fund have raised more than $75,000 to provide relief for those impacted by the devastating floods in Central Texas. Scripps reported that since its campaign launched on July 7, support has poured in from across the nation, with more than $50,000 donated by hundreds of people from more than 25 states. E.W. Scripps has also contributed $25,000 to bolster the relief efforts. Scripps reported that the floods are now the deadliest instance of inland flooding in the U.S. since 1976, when Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flooded, killing 144 people, according to a new report. To give: Text FLOODING to 50155 or visit scrippsnews.com/relief.
• The Broadcasters Foundation of America is also making one-time, emergency grants to broadcasters who need financial help recovering from a natural disaster or acute emergency is extending that help to broadcasters impacted by the Texas flood. It said there are two ways to apply for an emergency grant: Personal Application - Broadcaster applying for themselves following an emergency or an Employer Application - General Manager, Market Manager, or HR representative applying on behalf of your employees following an emergency. Applications can be submitted here.

TV Tech will add more examples as we collect them.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton have proven to be two of the deadliest storms in recent history in the U.S., causing unimaginable pain and suffering. The economic impact on the affected regions will be in the billions of dollars. Although Helene hit North Carolina as a tropical storm, it still packed wind gusts of 100-plus miles per hour and dumped unprecedented amounts of rain resulting in a hundred or more fatalities.

This event touched us personally as our daughter, living in Asheville, was in the middle of the event and lost power, means of communication and even water. The storm wreaked havoc with roadways, bridges, water and electrical utilities, fuel delivery and food supplies. Relief teams of compassionate, dedicated people are doing their best to restore normalcy to the region. All should be applauded for their dedication during this trying time.

Cellular Vulnerability
Radio and television broadcasters have for decades provided critical information to viewers and listeners during times of crisis through their newscasts, live feeds and, more recently, their web/app/social media services. From the early days of the Emergency Broadcast System to the Emergency Alert System (now tied to FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System), we have utilized a robust network that provides state and local emergency management officials an avenue to provide critical information to the public.

But we live in a world now highly dependent on cellular communications. In these types of disasters, cellular and wireline communications are often affected significantly. Depending on the population served, cellular communications systems can require multiple cell tower sites. The higher the population, the more sites are needed. And, with 5G technologies, their higher operating transmission frequencies and shorter reception range, even more towers are needed.

Broadcast television utilizes tall-tower, high-power transmission facilities that cover a large area from a single site in a frequency range that is optimal for small receivers. Comparing cellular and broadcast, a friend in the public safety communications community once commented to me, “You have far fewer tower sites to defend in an emergency.” Broadcast television facilities can be affected by weather, but with careful planning and maintenance they have proven to be very dependable. The same goes for radio broadcasters. Although more than 1.5 million customers lost power in the Carolinas, very few broadcast facilities failed.

Better Tech on the Horizon
TV broadcasters around the country are in the process of upgrading systems to NextGen TV technology, powered by ATSC 3.0. Along with better pictures, sound and reception, it has other new features. Television news departments, utilizing NextGen TV broadcasting, will have the ability to issue far more detailed notifications to viewers to help them navigate through these difficult times through lifesaving “AWARN” advanced emergency alerting and messaging with rich multimedia content and geotargeting.

Also Read: PBS North Carolina CTO Fred Engel Discusses ATSC 3.0-Based First Responder Pager System

NextGen TV allows for data delivery independent from audio or video streams. PBS North Carolina has shown how this datacasting capability can be used to improve communications to first responders. Through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant, technology partners Device Solutions Inc. and Triveni Digital built a very robust system that can cover over 10,000 square miles.

In 2023, after the widespread cellular communications failures in the California and Hawaii wildfires, when hundreds of people lost their lives, the FCC issued a request for methods to deliver Wireless Emergency Alerts through alternative means, including the use of satellites, when cellphone tower sites are down. PBS North Carolina responded to this request, describing how the NextGen TV technology developed for first responders could easily be adapted for civilian notifications.

We are still reeling from the effects of Helene. We can never replace those lost. We will struggle to rebuild, but we will. The broadcast industry will soon have the tools to provide critical emergency communications to civilians driven by NextGen TV. We must accelerate the adoption of this technology to bring lifesaving applications to the public.

Back in the early 1980s when I started my career, I worked for a publisher who was fond of telling potential advertisers that it didn’t make sense to carpet the same room twice.

His point: all things being equal, buying ads in two or more magazines targeting the same audience was wasteful. In many ways, his argument was logical.

But that’s not always the case. Often, multiple layers actually come in handy. Just ask anyone who works outside for a living, a skydiver or even an astronaut. In certain situations, having multiple, redundant layers can mean the difference between pain and comfort or even life and death.

Or ask Dan Gitro, an amateur radio operator in Mooresville, North Carolina. For his article “How old tech is being used to remotely help in wake of Helene,” QCNews.com reporter Stewart Pittman asked Gitro why ham radio is important in today’s modern world of communications.

“The key difference is technology fails, and we have seen that in this situation,” Pittman quotes Gitro as saying about the role of amateur radio.

Gitro and fellow ham radio operators stepped up in a big way in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, relaying vital information and messages to loved ones from family members in areas stripped of cell service.

Even as Elon Musk was preparing to step into the breach with Starlink service to help, ham radio operators were on the air doing all they could to assist.

Why bring this up to readers in the television industry? Besides the fact that many TV engineers are amateur radio operators themselves, the real reason speaks to the importance of layers in communications.

Reading about the ham radio operators, I couldn’t help but think back to the FCC panel put together in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack, which among other things took down the broadcast tower atop the North Tower.

One key point of the panel was that the presence of multiple layers of mass communication in New York City—TV and radio broadcasters on other towers, cable TV and satellite TV—ensured local residents could continue to receive news and emergency information despite the loss of the broadcast tower.

I also couldn’t help but think about the DTV tuner mandate that originally excluded smaller sets, but later was revised after Hurricane Katrina when a post-hurricane investigation by the FCC revealed just how important portable TV sets were in helping the public stay informed following the disaster.

So here we are again. While cellular crews work to restore service in hard-hit areas, amateur radio operators—some transmitting and others receiving and relaying vital information—stepped up with “old tech” to make a difference.

I wonder what other “old tech” in new clothing might one day help millions upon millions of people with mobile phones receive life-saving information in an emergency—even when the cell networks go down.

PARIS—Ukrainian pay-TV and cable broadband service provider Voila went live in May with a disaster recovery (DR) solution from Ateme for its packaging and CDN platform.

Voila is using Ateme’s NEA packaging and CDN solutions for its DR headend. The service provider is committed to continuing to offer robust connectivity to Ukrainian customers, even in the face of hostilities, it said.

The flexible Ateme DR solution is hardware-agnostic. It offers the flexibility Voila required because M&E businesses in Ukraine cannot readily secure exact hardware or equipment, it said. 

“We welcome Ateme as a long-standing partner of Volia Cable and are more than happy to renew our confidence in their service and the quality of the software,” said Voila CTO Andrii Val. “We specifically selected Ateme for disaster recovery because we needed a reliable and flexible solution that could be adapted to our needs in difficult circumstances. In addition, we didn’t just want a black-box integration but a true partner to work with us and meet our objectives.”

More information is available on the company’s website. 

SOFIA, Bulgaria—bTV Media Group, one of Bulgaria’s leading providers of television, radio and digital media services, has invested in automated playout servers from PlayBox Neo for integration into a disaster recovery facility at Plana Teleport located 60 km from the network’s Sofia headquarters. 

The facility will safeguard bTV’s broadcast channels against any discontinuity in the main transmission feeds.

“PlayBox Neo was a logical partner for this project as its ProductionAirBox Neo-20 playout servers operate very effectively in our news, studio productions and outside broadcast operations,” explained Peter Dimitrov, technical director of bTV Media Group. “We were keen to provide full 1:1 protection for our main channel which carries a polythematic mix of programs plus a hot spare playout feed for our other five channels: bTV Action, bTV Cinema, bTV Comedy, bTV Lady and RING. All are produced and transmitted in HD. The new installation integrated easily with our existing traffic management software.”

“The PlayBox Neo team recommended a solution comprising four HD dual channel Channel-in-a Box playout servers with SDI and streaming inputs and outputs,” added Ivailo Pashov, bTV broadcast IT manager. “Integrated into the system is TitleBox Neo-20 graphics preparation software which allows efficient management of fixed and rolling text as well as static or animated channel branding images. We also have SafeBox Neo to manage content and playlists moving between our central storage at the DR center and the playout servers. Our headquarters are connected to the DR site by a dedicated fiber link.“

PlayBox Neo Channel-in-a-Box is a turnkey playout server solution for broadcasting a single or multi TV channel both available in HD or UHD, the company said. 

It provides a seamless workflow to keep a channel on-air by combining scheduling, ingest, playout, CG and interactive graphics within one box and remote tools to enhance QC checks, preparation and monitoring. The output can be SDI or IP streaming and is suitable for a variety of applications including traditional broadcast TV, pay-TV, playout centers and satellite operators. PlayBox Neo Channel-in-a-Box offers media ingest with Capture Suite, playout automation with AirBox Neo-20, interactive CG and graphics with TitleBox Neo-20, and scheduling with ListBox Neo-20, the company said. 

TitleBox Neo-20 allows multiple layers of very high quality graphics to be created and manipulated during live transmission.

SafeBox Neo is designed to replicate remote content to local playout server folders for safe playback. 

ITV Sport, premier UK sports producer for the ITV network, has turned to LiveU to provide an enhanced viewer experience at the 2019 Rugby World Cup (RWC) and as a tertiary disaster recovery (DR) solution, backing up satellite and fibre feeds.  

ITV Sport is using portable LU600 HEVC units around the country in three teams, each providing a range of additional material beyond match coverage. These roving teams, with embedded reporters, send their material direct to ITV Sport in the UK for both edits and live reports. This enables the producer to concentrate on the content without having to worry about how the material gets back to the UK. Additionally, highlights presentation links are also sometimes fed via LiveU.  

Roger Pearce, Technical Director, Sport, ITV Sport Productions, said, “We’ve used LiveU with our reporting teams for a number of years successfully to enhance coverage. At this year’s RWC we have two separate jobs for LiveU: live/store/forward material from our reporting teams and DR feeds from our presentation studios and OBs.” 

Pearce explains that the idea to use it as a traditional contribution path only came to the forefront when they were looking at low-cost options to provide high-quality DR feeds that are completely diverse to normal fibre and satellite delivery. After testing using existing LiveU infrastructure, it proved a simple and cost-effective solution, according to Pearce. 

The LiveU DR setup is two-fold. ITV Sport has deployed an LU600 and LiveU Xtender active external antenna (the first time in Japan) for the tertiary backup direct to their playout provider Red Bee Media in the UK. Secondly, at ITV Sport’s Maidstone Central Apparatus Room, a receiving LU600 and another Xtender can be used to send a feed from there to their playout provider should they be unable to use traditional links. 

Pearce added, “The transmission DR feeds workflow is important to us as it provides a usable feed at a reasonable cost. For events like the RWC where failure is not an option, it’s a valuable tool to ensure we deliver our coverage reliably to the viewer. For our roving teams LiveU gives them the freedom to roam, and flexibility to get material quickly to air. The opportunity to use LiveU to provide cost-effective contribution feeds has been very successful and we look forward to their future developments.” 

LiveU’s UK partner, Garland Partners, assisted ITV Sport by upgrading their units to full international specification and provided a pool of cellular data from local access Japanese operator SIM cards for the whole tournament. Garland also supplied an additional UK SIM card data pool for the UK Maidstone Xtender. 

Paul Shepherd, Regional Sales Director, LiveU, said, “We’re very pleased to support ITV Sport across this Rugby World Cup. We are beginning to see an increased use of our technology for disaster recovery and it’s especially exciting to see that it’s being used for a high reliability requirement at such a major sports event.”

A prologue and a handover: It is with great pleasure that I am taking the reins of the Cloudspotter’s Journal from longtime friend and fellow TV Technology contributor Al Kovalick. With the help and support of the TV Technology editorial staff, it is my hope and goal to continue Al’s vision of this technology sector. I will continue, with alternate issues, to cover topics in my long-running Storage Technology column.

Cloud service-provider offerings continue to grow rapidly, among which are those for disaster recovery (DR) services. Disaster recovery practices began long before the founding of the term “cloud”—so this is nothing new to industry and business. Many methodologies have evolved over the years, beginning with making copies of data to floppy disks or cassette tape, which were then stored in an offsite location. As data grew, DR practices migrated to massive robotic-managed tape libraries that also copied the data to magnetic media for storage at alternative, protected locations.

The state and practices of DR are still evolving as our industry finds that the total costs and upkeep for on-premises tape—optical or other mediums, which are still quite prevalent—keep growing in sync with storage systems and the data sets themselves. Steadily these practices are moving to the cloud; with that being any of the cloud-flavors from private onsite systems to third-party managed offsite solutions, or any of the various public cloud solutions.

The driving forces moving DR to the cloud are many, and the cloud services available to support DR are just as vast. Historically, DR meant finding an alternative location to store data or operate from when or if disaster struck. Our industry realized that the planning and budgeting for a second site to either operate from or store and maintain critical operational components had, until recent times, been addressed by putting those assets (both physical and soft) in another building owned and operated by the enterprise.

Alternatives to the “owned and operated” method include third-party resources (e.g., Iron Mountain), a “co-lo” (co-located) data center also operated by a third party, or by completely replicating operations at another purpose-built site, which might be shared with others or kept in the dark until needed. Those, and variations on those solutions, now have yet another equally effective solution with a pay-as-you-go approach that is essentially a hands-off model once up and running. That model is today’s cloud.

ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT

Risk to the enterprise is one of the highest priority business continuity issues an organization can face. Data has become the heart of most organizations, whether in the trade and commerce world or in the media and entertainment space. Beyond direct security issues (i.e., the compromise of the enterprise’s data), the loss of its assets—as data—ranks a close second.

To protect these business assets, most organizations will, at the very least, adopt relatively simple and often inconsistent methodologies for media asset backups. The simpler approach is no longer wise or practical in today’s business environment. Scenarios implemented for data protection and business continuity are usually left to the IT department. In the past these methods may have consisted of linear data tapes managed by a third-party software-based backup solution which replicates, in a compressed format, the data added to the storage drives since the last full backup.

Today, given the huge volumes of data being accumulated, irrespective of the business model, this is a cumbersome solution steeped in manual steps that can easily overwhelm IT administration roles.

Automated, unattended methods are becoming the norm and those solutions are best implemented using cloud services technologies.

PROTECTING THE ASSETS

For any IT department charged with protecting the company’s data assets there should be some fundamental common practices employed to provide sufficient levels of data protection enterprise-wide.

Disruptions caused by an inability to get at its data, wherever it is, can cost thousands of dollars per day, per hour or per minute. If you’re a content distributor, the loss of some materials could cause irreparable harm, especially if it is a highly promoted program with a high dollar revenue return expectation.

To prevent such disruptions, IT departments should maintain an updated, tested and monitored DR solution with verifiable backups that can be executed rapidly—regardless of how or where the backups are executed or located. If the organization prefers to use conventional “digital tape” methodologies, at least one, and preferably two, regular sets of “full backups,” augmented by incremental backups, should be maintained.

DR CANNOT BE IGNORED

When it comes to a serious data compromise that causes a near total loss of assets, the disaster may be irrecoverable. Statistics indicate that 43 percent of businesses that experience a disaster will never reopen (per VMware, “Disaster Recovery: Any way you want it,” McGladrey and Pullen).

DR requires a prescribed level of labor and services, which is often incomplete or sometimes ignored. Besides having the data sets replicated, all your applications, configurations and operating systems should be included in the overall DR processes. Traditional DR comprised of setting up and maintaining a separate site, is expensive, complicated and time consuming. And the best test of whether your DR solution is adequate is based on how quickly the organization can fully recover when or if the requirements present itself.

Questions to fully understand include: When disaster strikes, who handles the reconstruction of the network and the re-enablement of the protected data? Do the administrators have the capability to accurately estimate the time to partial and then execute a full recovery?

Does the organization have a simulation or test drill of process to identify gaps, holes or unexpected issues? How often is this simulation tested and does it have a means to grow from (i.e., expand as services expand)?

These previously described practices are fraught with complicated and often impractical implementation issues. In the case where the facility was heavily compromised because of an extended power loss, fire, forced evacuation, physical vandalism or even ransomware, then the DR process—no matter how complete or well thought out—is valueless if there is not a secondary data center or technical site available from which to operate from.

Today’s business environments mandate that alternatives be developed. Looking to a cloud solution can be a game saver for any organization.

Cloud-based disaster recovery practices emerged well over a decade ago. As the sophistication of cloud technologies expanded, so did the viability of DRaaS or “disaster recovery as a service.”

DRaaS, in the cloud, can be a standalone provision and may be configured for near-instant recovery. In similar fashion to the ACO switch (automatic change over) on a broadcast master sync generator—a fully engaged, standby-ready DR system can essentially transition to an operational environment nearly seamlessly.

DRaaS typically will run in your own private-cloud or in a third-party private-cloud. DRaaS may be a part of a number of other cloud-based services already utilized by your organization at a local or enterprise level. If the organization is a playout or content prep center that routinely depends upon the cloud for other services (e.g., ingest collections, transcoding or preparation for CDN or OTT), then linear playout from a master control could be switched to provide the DRaaS option simply by a manual or automated command.

FULL-TIME MONITORING

For third-party DRaaS operations, monitoring of the services should be provided on a 24/7/365 basis. Under a managed service contract, DR execution can be manual or automatic and is usually based on rules governed as a BPM (business process management) solution set. Pricing is based on the platform count, what is protected, if there is long-term deep asset archival included, and on the amount of storage needed and accessibility to the storage (data) itself.

Services can include straightforward IP backup, tape alternative data protection, on-site and offsite backup, and replication of data to a public cloud if part of the business plan.

DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

Understanding the details of a complete implementation requires levels of analysis outside what many organizations typically do—and the analysis methodology is outside the scope of this column. Employing an outside entity that offers the bridging technologies to address DRaaS are well worth the added incremental costs.

IDC Research recommends that DRaaS suppliers be ready and capable to help potential DRaaS clients with their other “DR and business continuity requirements.” Such assistance includes helping with risk analysis, migration planning and process development. Other aids and benefits include those summarized in Fig. 1.

Nonetheless, the possibilities embedded into cloud services for DRaaS are endless, making it an intelligent choice for your data assets’ future.

Karl Paulsen is CTO at Diversified (www.diversifiedus.com) and a SMPTE Fellow. Contact Karl atkpaulsen@diversifiedus.com.