Fred Baumgartner’s op-ed ("ATSC 3.0: 'I Can't Imagine Anyone Defending Our Current Adoption Strategy") on the broadcast industry’s transition to ATSC 3.0 drew several responses, which we’re publishing here:

Thank you!!!! The article by Fred Baumgartner was 100% right on. I've been bracing to watch/experience OTA go the way of CD stores and what the music industry did to itself.

If those in control of ATSC 3.0 are paying attention, there is still time to save themselves.

Thank you!
George McLam

Wow, OMG! I find it a real relief that someone speaks the truth! I’ve been following the progress of ATSC 3.0 for years from a technical standpoint. I’ve marveled at the technical advantages that are offered by 3.0.

But at the same time I’ve also noted the commercial and political wrangling occurring in the background to see who makes the most money from this transition. Almost 100% of this is aimed at the poor or disadvantaged consumer who happens to depend on OTA TV.

I have both a technical and a business degree. I understand that money drives almost all transitions like 3.0. But there is right and wrong way to make money. Mr. Baumgartner sums up the divide that is now taking place in this industry. I’m 100% in agreement with his assessment. Rural consumers are still struggling through the move to Digital OTA TV and now they are getting ready to be hit by something that will likely drive them back to AM radio (while that lasts).

There is so much potential in ATSC 3.0 for consumers! Let’s not forget that is who 3.0 serves.

Regards,
Allen Hill

The following response was penned by Mark Aitken, senior vice president of technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group and president of ONE Media.

“I will give readers a few points to consider or ponder, reflecting on this piece. Fred’s critique is essentially that the industry has done the technical work (standards, initial rollout) but neglected the go-to‐market, consumer value, device ecosystem, and regulatory guardrails part.

My view is that, YES, we have done the technical work and are finishing and fine tuning the technology implementations (all being done on a voluntary basis). Have there been hiccups? Yes, but I would add that there are few (if any) issues of great import that have not been taken care of.

Additionally, we have not NEGLECTED the go-to-market etc. but are awaiting the regulatory clarity that is required to build up our businesses with the investments required to fulfill the mission of better TV. Sunset certainty for 1.0 is important, essential.

Fred emphasizes two unique values of over-the-air (OTA) broadcasting that NextGen should preserve, and Fred knows that we are largely in agreement:

Reliability in emergencies: OTA broadcasting “has never failed in any emergency” while internet delivery has.

Universal access & democratic value: because broadcast is freely accessible and not filtered by algorithms, it plays a unique role in an informed public sphere.

But on the last of these two (Universal access & democratic value), I am afraid Fred misses the mark. Free, unencumbered access to the 3.0 primary and related television services is important. But encryption is not an encumbrance to free over-the-air TV when properly implemented. It is there to ensure that the high value/high quality programming Fred speaks of is available on a free basis to OTA TV viewers, not as a hindrance. Because of the “ALL-IP” nature of NextGen, content protection (safeguarding piracy) is essential. To say “Encryption must go” is ensuring all the high-quality programming that Fred says SHOULD be part of the programming mix WON’T exist.

I can guarantee there will be multiple reasons for OTA viewers to step up to ATSC 3.0 NextGen Broadcast/TV. Fred has spoken of many. There are plenty of enhanced capabilities that unconnected viewers will find of great value. As Fred well knows, I have personally fought for the coming days of greatness of OTA TV for almost 30 years.

I am NOT about to give up now. I know the best days for broadcasting television are ahead because we will meet and exceed the needs and expectations of an increasingly choosy local television audience. What is being asked and expected of the FCC is simply to allow a set of playing rules that allow those best days to come.

Just giving you and your readers more to consider and think about.”

Fred replies:

The responses, especially the handful I received confidentially, gives me hope that enough of us are ready to take a clear-eyed look at where we are and begin the climb up the “slope of enlightenment.” That is Gartner’s “hype cycle’s” next step after the “trough of disillusionment.” We have all experienced “paradigm shifts” – those things that describe a profound change in a fundamental business model and perception of events – best seen in the rearview mirror.

IP OTA Broadcast can and should go way beyond linear and streaming. It is a new and unique media. More than a modest modulation and encoder improvement, NextGen can become very beneficial and profitable if it is competently exploited. Geotargeting advertising revenues alone more than justify the investment I’m asking for.

So far, we’ve promoted (hyped) what we could do, which seems limitless. Our many, often-conflicting visions of what we should do, and lack of a tangible forward-looking implementation to experience and build upon has painted us into a dark corner. I’ll address some of our options after I address Mark’s comments. I’ve admired Mark since I heard his voice from the back of the room some 30 years ago pushing COFDM over 8VSB. And David Smith who made NextGen development a priority for Sinclair. What implementation that has been accomplished points back to them.

Pause Encryption
Encryption is very divisive. At launch, abrupt, poorly communicated, and unexpected blanket encryption alienated and infuriated our first adopters, influencers and several manufacturers. Encryption fundamentally and inherently changes broadcasting into narrowcasting. That is its purpose.

In May 2024, I wrote a five-page primer on NextGen encryption’s impact as part of a series on the adoption of NextGen for The Spectrum Monitor (TSM). As hard as I tried, I could not make a case where the benefits of encryption outweighed the detriments. And frankly some of the justifications offered for OTA encryption are, I judge, absurd. Like Mark, I noted that encryption, if used, needed to be properly implemented. OTA encryption yearns for guardrails and invites regulation to counteract abuse. OTA encryption (Internet encryption is different) should be paused. Properly implemented OTA encryption can be selectively triggered later if the use case makes sense.

Go Directly to OTA TV Button
In normal times, technology adoption is a multidisciplinary process that involves many stakeholders. NextGen is an ecosystem, the largest part by far being the receivers/devices. I think it has taken us all by surprise that we now have TVs that make watching OTA TV difficult, annoying, and as I learned this last weekend, sometimes impossible.

During an Internet outage, our new “locked in the circle of death,” “smart TV” required removal from the wall, cycling power, then fighting the user interface to watch OTA football. Our $3,000 first run NextGen TV isn’t much better (see TSM April 2025). NAB has pertinent experience with a similar challenge. Some cars make OTA listening difficult and may leave out the AM half of radio altogether. Sound familiar? One wonders why AM radio “revitalization” is a thing with NAB and (outside of mentions in NAB’s FCC “sunset 1.0” petition filing) TV revitalization is not?

We must nurture receivers that support our new businesses. They need persistent memory and storage, adequate processing power, multiple tuners, supporting hooks, and a frictionless user experience, etc., that they do not now possess. These are neither expensive nor difficult items to implement. Our yet to be delivered, desirable NextGen broadcast product and our promotional support is the incentive for manufacturers to offer the products we need and our mutual customers want to buy. Think of color TV’s adoption plan.

AEA&I First Opens Many Doors
A lot of resources have been put into datacasting (see TSM August 2025), BPS, encryption… things with uncertain ROIs. Nothing has been invested in implementing Advanced Emergency Alerting and Informing, which does have a ROI. Nothing would drive 3.0 adoption, solidify the industry, make friends in so many places, open as many doors to innovation, enable so many business models, and create so much buzz as well-done AEA&I interactivity.

Many erroneously conflate AEA&I with EAS. EAS on TV has been notably superseded, become ineffective and always had a negative ROI. TV broadcasters will be able to free themselves of EAS in the NextGen. Developing demonstrable AEA&I is cheap – especially when compared to what has been spent elsewhere. Launching AEA&I would completely change the course of ATSC 3.0 adoption and the trajectory of NextGen development, not to mention how it empowers TV news. Even if you could care less about saving lives and property or social contracts, there is no magical thinking or hype in this paragraph.

Changing the Rules
I don’t have the same sense of victimization as Mark does when it comes to regulation. Mark knows well and has often effectively used the power of the STA (Special Temporary Authorization). I posit that the reason the FCC rules get in the way is that we haven’t shared any vision of an implementation nor have we asked, for example, for an unrestricted NextGen national demo “channel” in lieu of the pointless, redundant simulcasts we now have. I can’t imagine an FCC that wouldn’t support a well thought out adoption and transition plan that benefits the public… or at least grant STAs so we can show the world what NextGen can do and develop and beta-test the product.

If the adoption plan is to have a sympathetic government quickly and quietly shut down 1.0, forcing viewers to MVPDs, streaming, or yet to be productized “converters” and OTA TVs that support little more than OFDM and HEVC… the optics are not good. Recently I have been to several state broadcasters conventions and engineering seminars where NextGen isn’t even mentioned any more.

Our industry is the handful of group owners who cooperated to cover most of the nation with lighthouse stations and would most benefit. My request is that they kick in what little is necessary to productize NextGen and support a realistic and lovable adoption plan. Launching an impressive implementation of AEA&I is the equivalent of Steve Jobs flaunting the first iPhone.

Innovator’s Dilemma
Much of the industry will likely focus on sweeping up the last pennies in the parking lot of what they see as a dying business. Others have some vague fleeting, cautious sense that NextGen Broadcast might become something interesting, exciting, and profitable. I think we are ready for sessions at NAB and articles in TVT and “summits” on NextGen implementation issues replacing the hype, confusion, power plays and magical thinking.

If I were an “owner” under the pressure of constant cash flow growth, I might be more interested in cannibalizing the presumed corpse and see what non-broadcast use I can divert my assets to. Mature industries struggle and frequently fail to reinvent themselves. The leaders we admire and the investments that pay off are the ones that successfully pivot.

Ultimately, this is in the hands of the half dozen or so people who oversee today’s consolidated broadcasting. If they risk making the investment, the worst-case scenario is that they fail at empowering the few people with the right stuff to lead and make NextGen happen, and they collectively lose another few million dollars. At worst, this is a small mistake.

Personally, I think broadcasting is too important to fail. If we are not ready to implement NextGen, let us pause and not squander what we have. But I’d much rather see broadcasting become an even bigger and better piece of the media mix.

What do you think? Share us your thoughts by emailing us at tvtechnology@futurenet.com.

When asked about NextGen Broadcast (aka ATSC 3.0), I have two answers. If NextGen becomes better pictures and sound, smartly distributes emergency information and extends broadcasting to mobile, I am its biggest devotee. If NextGen places broadcast behind a paywall, diverts significant broadcast spectrum to non-broadcast use, and/or relegates over-the-air (OTA) TV to a tributary of the internet—and offers nothing of value to viewers—I am a reluctant opponent.

We dodged a bullet when the FCC didn’t agree to mandate the cessation of ATSC 1.0. This gives us time to develop NextGen into what it should be.

There are two things of very high value to society that suggests “free, unencumbered” OTA broadcasting should not only survive but be thoughtfully upgraded.

Reliable in Emergencies
First, OTA broadcast is the only means of information distribution that has never failed in any emergency. Somehow, most broadcasters stay on the air… and we only need one. On the other hand, Internet delivery, without exaggeration, has failed in every disaster. “Wireless” infrastructure is inherently fragile—the loss of a single tower or fiber blacks out everyone it serves—and the system gridlocks as manifold smartphones desperately seek escape maps and the like.

There is all manner of outstanding apps for emergencies—what is lacking is reliable distribution. NextGen can deliver many pages of detailed information (that current broadcast technology cannot) to an infinite number of people, instantly, without friction or irritation. That’s not just nice, it will save more lives and property.

Second, it is easy to make the case that broadcast serves a unique role—some say critical—in a democracy. Legacy broadcast is not algorithmically controlled, access is universal, and everyone sees and hears the same message. We are seriously threatened by TV manufacturers that make it difficult to get to OTA broadcast without Internet intervention that drives viewers from broadcast to their streaming products. The information bubbles that social media creates with ever more powerful algorithms are unsuited to broadcasting. There is great value in having one mass medium that is free of such manipulation.

Encryption Must Go
So, what should NextGen Broadcast look like? It must be free to all. Encryption must go. TVs should have a “TV” button that takes you to OTA with ease and without interruption. Grandma should be able to watch TV on her own. TVs should be quite functional without Internet dependence. TVs should block unauthorized capture of user data.

OTA TVs should automatically scan the spectrum to build an elegant and expansive electronic program guide that lists everything the antenna picks up. Manual re-scans should never be required. Devices should have storage and processing to support NextGen functionality. Misguided crap like hiding the 1.0 signals when a 3.0 is received (I can go on) needs to stop.

The Advanced Emergency Alerting and Informing function must be implemented. Our current fragmented, ancient and archaic emergency alerting systems have lots of problems and, seriously, NextGen AEI can solve them. Just as importantly, this provides basic internal functions to support further developments. No one should see “no bars” when evacuating or sit through endless tests and irrelevant alerts.

Rolling out NextGen as a poor copy of "LastGen" has achieved the public—and now regulatory—response it deserves. “Lighthouse” stations should be showing top notch demo product. The Super Bowl needs to be 4K, HDR, HFR with great sound and interactive enhancements.

The 1.0 simulcast of that main 3.0 content is a good idea for now, but it should be 480i with promos and NextGen customer education. The NextGen TV in the store should look better than the LastGen and be at least as good as high bandwidth streaming… and say, “buy me!” Stop modulating with something that emulates LastGen. Do both a robust mobile and a high data rate gorgeous interactive video. We have what we need to build what we need.

Two Ways to Go
Our UHF spectrum is an incredible gift. ATSC gave us an amazing set of tools. The same tools that will allow PBS Passport members to skip on-air fundraising and commercial stations to run hyper local advertising, also allows us to create information bubbles and division. NextGen can be an excellent advancement with real world benefits in viewer behavior. It can also become incredibly destructive and hurtful. Or we can do nothing at all and see how ridged 8-VSB, MPEG, braindead purely linear broadcast ages out. Let’s not find out how long before TV manufacturers smother or abandon OTA.

I can’t imagine anyone defending our current adoption strategy. We just learned a lesson we needed. That in no way takes away from the accomplishments of getting to a standard and lighting up most of the nation with at least one 3.0 signal. But it is time for a real adoption plan, and real product development. It’s not easy work.

The tasks of defining and socializing NextGen’s vision, the regulatory changes that need to be made both to allow NextGen to progress and provide guardrails against abuse, building functions like AEI, ad insertion, interactive, etc. and working with the device manufacturers, MVPDs, and content producers… require a “break glass” resolve we haven’t seen or needed in a while.

All industries require occasional refreshment and upgrading to meet fluid market demands that both preserve revenue and unlock new opportunities. Our special loan of increasingly scarce spectrum comes with a responsibility to both our customers and investors. Thoughtfully developing NextGen is an opportunity way better than the dark alternatives.

Even if broadcast becomes all MVPDs and internet—and we never use those big-power, tall towers again—they still hold high value for society. For broadcasters, they are either an expensive burden or a big opportunity.

For a century, we have enjoyed a social contract where we entertain and inform, especially in crisis, for anyone and everyone who has access to a receiver; in return for spectrum and the authorization to monetize it. How this works and the technology underpinning it has transformed in a thousand ways. Once, transmitters and a channel number were foundational. Today, few would notice if OTA vanished. This is not an existential crisis. However, it is disruptive. Done well, it will be very good in many ways.

If there were no other reasons for a next generation of broadcasting, Emergency Mass Communications would be more than enough. ATSC’s 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting and Informing (AEI) would cement OTA broadcasting’s relevance. Further, there is a good argument that AEI could reinvigorate NextGen development.

Further, as we have become exceedingly dependent on GPS, the world has been searching for a backup. Broadcast Positioning System (an alternative that could supplement GPS in case of failure) is doubtless the best of the alternatives.

Everything we might do with our transmitters depends on the number of receivers. Expanding our reach into phones, home routers/gateways, cars, etc. is far more imperative than TVs. Metcalfe’s law states that “the financial value or influence of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.” Today, broadcasters should be more motivated to “put 3.0 chips” in devices than attracting eyeballs.

If we want to keep our transmitters and spectrum—and there is no technical reason we can’t survive with only MVPDs and streaming—we should be steering to a favorable recasting of the social contract and infrastructure.

The idea that the wireless cell network is reliable enough for Emergency Mass Communications is absurd. The fragile wireless network collapses in any modest emergency. Even on a very bad day, scraped Earth incident, there has always—each and every time—been broadcast signals continuously relaying critical information. WEA and the wireless network is literally the fire extinguisher that doesn’t work in the presence of smoke.

No one is happy with EAS or WEA. AEI/BPS is the opportunity to bring Emergency Mass Communications in line with current technology and expectations, all the while increasing our relevance and reach. There isn’t a broadcast newsroom that doesn’t crave being the universal gateway to critical information.

Both BPS and basic AEI signaling are easy lifts that consume trivial spectrum. To us, this is nothing. To the world, this is huge. If we do our part and the FCC/FEMA pursues AEI/BPS we become more relevant.

With little drama, we should open the door to put ATSC 3.0 in more devices. It is that rare win-win all around.

Fred Baumgartner is a retired broadcast engineer. He once took time off to develop and promote EAS.

An open letter to American broadcasters:

Whether serendipity or luck; we seem to be in an exceptional place. As the following article summarizes, it seems that we have the only combination of assets and technologies that make for effective Emergency Mass Communications. There are no practical alternatives.

 With NVISA and FEMA in the lab, and what we hear from several milieus about the interest and willingness to invest in public safety, we are at a tipping point.

 Acting as if our goal is to return TV to its bygone role as primary alerting and informing appliance is not helping. Smartphones dominate and “mobile first” is a respectable adoption strategy.

 Everything good and bad with emergency communications occurs at the user interface. No one is happy with the current brain-dead, inconsistently alerting everyone everywhere, test it until no one listens state of affairs.

 Sure, with 3.0 we have vastly better distribution and IP support, and presently broadcast news is uniquely the highpoint of electronic mass communications in crisis—but none of that matters without a national, universal, quality app and first-rate user experience.

 It’s time to ask Congress/FEMA/FCC… the people who represent and protect us from invasion to tornadoes… to build what saves lives and property with our 3.0/broadcast assets. Intentionally or accidentally, broadcasters have already done their part. We have coverage and a protocol begging to be used.

The field piece of development is probably best done in the "Switzerland" of PBS/CPB. The lab should be FEMA’s. The broadcaster’s role going forward is to make sure this works with and enhances our news and our other assets.

 Or maybe there is a better path?

Fred Baumgartner

This article originally appeared in The Spectrum Monitor and is the third in a series about NextGen Broadcasting:

Radio and public safety have always and forever been bound together. The lives radio has saved and the reduction in human suffering is colossal. The Spectrum Monitor (TSM) readers, especially first responders, know this in ways others do not.

Mass communications during an emergency has been broadcasting’s highest calling. For the most part, outside of weekly (or more often) testing of the Emergency Alert System (EAS), broadcast isn’t about emergencies—until it is. A major fire, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, eruption, industrial accident, etc., does tend to completely consume broadcast media’s attention when it occurs. 

Historically, both amateur radio and broadcast justify their spectrum grants with the public role they play when things go badly. The FCC takes this very seriously, issuing more notices of violation and fines for EAS than any other infraction.

In 1990, AM radio was king, the World Wide Web was born, a radio telephone call needed an operator to assist, local TV news was an hour a day, and NOAA weather radio (NWR) was sparse. When EAS was launched in 1997, we were just learning that simply ringing the alarm bell was not enough, and frequently unintentionally deadly. Our world, threats and especially our behaviors have changed since then.

The Digital Era
Smartphones... Emergency Mass Communications (EMC) is smartphones. When people evacuate, they do not take their TVs with them. Only a very few scramble for their wind-up AM radio. People in danger take their purses/wallets and… phones.

The singular and growing dependance on smartphones for most human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions is fact.

Humans over the age of five have their smartphones with them at all times. If you need your phone to start your car, park, open a hotel room door, order a hamburger, shop, or your location is being tracked by friends, family and advertisers, you know the disconnected, helpless, empty feeling of having misplaced or discharged your phone.

There is some investigation that suggests that smartphone dependency has the unintended consequence of increasing milling time. AEA/AEI on the other hand, directly ties critical information to the alert, thus eliminating search time and one would think reduce milling saving lives.

Natural Hazards Center Director Dennis Mileti (1945-2021) defined and studied “milling” as EAS was being developed. It is human nature for people to want to validate and spread the word of an emergency following an alert. Milling wastes valuable time and is often fatal. 

It’s not all bad; spreading the word quickly is probably why survival rates are highest in tight/dense communities. Milling ends, and survival activities begin, when the crisis “becomes real,” to the participants. In a world of two-minute emergencies, there is no time to search or text, just time to act.

WEA predates the smart in smartphone. About five years into WEA, several emergency alerting apps made bids to intelligently fill the information gap. FEMA, the Red Cross, some schools, companies, and many local emergency management offices, and much of social media, offer many apps that residents can subscribe to… so many that there are posts and sites dedicated to advising which emergency apps and how many anyone should have on their phone. This fragmented EMC delivery.

By their nature, these apps address pieces of EMC, not the whole of EMC. The apps that focus on a few threats, where there is some intelligence (usually in the form of a local emergency management office or weather service) work well for their sphere of emergencies. The local or county emergency management office that invested in an app to deal with wildfires and has diligently marketed their app to citizens with the time and patience to download and the skills to configure the apps and maintain them, does well in their narrow circumstance. 

Social media that scrape other sources for the grist that they warp into the attention-grabbing notifications that fuel and package EMC in click bait, might be notably delayed, unreliable, and soaked in crowd sourced misinformation… but they do work.

Bottom line? The state of EMC is a fragmented mix of the ancient and many emerging apps.

Missing Platform
It seems logical that that EMC should use every distribution platform it can. Radio, TV, Wireless, and social media (for better or worse) are ubiquitous. Signage and sirens (the ones with voice message speakers being most useful). However, streaming and satellite don’t help and cable support ranges from nonexistent to rather mature and well developed.

Arguably, smartphone dependence is so domineering that no other platform is required. As our dependence on smartphones continues to increase, soon enough the people reached by broadcast radio, etc., will become insignificant. But, if life is precious, and not everyone has their smartphone on their person, and wireless isn’t 100% reliable, it makes sense to alert on all platforms simultaneously… if for no other reason than to alert people to check their phones.

In addition to smartphones, NextGen Broadcast’s AEA/AEI (Advanced Emergency Alerting and Advanced Emergency Informing) is a good fit for cable, satellite, and internet.

Smart is Good
Some think that technology constantly pushes intelligence to the edge. Nowhere does this make more sense than in EMC. In EAS, and WEA, the radio, TV or device is dumb. It simply makes noise or displays the messages that are broadcast to it and every other receiver. In EAS, there is “where, what, when” information encoded in the FSK signaling we hear at the start of every alert. 

This information allows EAS decoding receivers—a small brain is required—to activate when wanted. Most people might own an automatic NWS radio, but home EAS receivers are rare. The only people who directly receive an EAS activation are those watching or listening to a participating station where everyone gets everything because unlike AEA/AEI, EAS supersedes programming. 

This forces the broadcast station into a “Sophie’s choice” situation as to what alerts are passed on. Is a tornado on the edge of the coverage area worth interrupting the Dallas Cowboys game? WEA is somewhat better, but the practical installations are still challenged to effectively target EMC. Occasionally waking to a 2 AM Amber alert for an adjacent state is where the state of WEA is after 10-years.

For EMC, a smart, location aware device that is always with us is a godsend. The smartphone has already displaced weather radios… along with cameras, watches, cash… 

Want the same functions on a TV? There are only man-made barriers to this. Developing AEA/AEI on smartphones and gateways is fairly straightforward. These are well known mature and stable environments. Porting AEA/AEI to TVs is fairly easy for those TVs that have the memory, processing power, hooks, and storage to support it. Developing on multiple TVs from multiple manufacturers? … no one has that much money or patience.

Smartphones have an amazing user interface with incredible flexibility and full bidirectional connection. TV remotes are inflexible molded plastic devices with a few or many molded buttons. The best you can say about TV remotes is that navigating information is ugly. Some TVs use smartphones as a remote control (so called “second screen”). In this case, the TV becomes superfluous.

Assuming the code isn’t written with the same process that gave us healthcare.gov and is more like the low friction apps you find while online shopping (and there is adequate intelligence behind it) AEA/AEI solves all the problems we’ve substantiated since EAS was adopted. 

First and foremost, AEA/AEI stops over-testing, over-alerting and mistargeting. Second is the availability of critical follow-on information. Having to search on an overloaded network for life and death information kills people. Language and disability access are no longer obstacles.

Bottom line? EMC is about smartphones. With a smart, well-designed, self-configuring, pre-installed app—AEA/AEI resolves the human behavior issues and user limitations—even the ones we inadvertently created.

UHF High Power
Smartphones on the wireless network have one serious, fatal, but resolvable limitation. In any medium to major crisis, the wireless network collapses.

While broadcast supports an infinite number of simultaneous users, common carrier wireless cannot support the flood of individual demands for information typical in an emergency. The capacity required does not exist. Intuitively, one would think that when the network chokes, the milling time increases dramatically and of course the lost information would have often been lifesaving. 

Wireless requires multiple towers with often single-thread interconnect. This wireless architecture is far more fragile than broadcast which tends to be hardened, staffed and secured with backup power and everything else. When a wireless carrier or a tower fails, the people it serves are disconnected. When a high-power UHF broadcaster fails… the receiver simply retunes to the next strongest signal of many.

UHF is vital. UHF is necessary for building penetration and its big service area. It also needs to be built into the smartphone. Qualcomm put UHF TV into cellphones a decade ago, but no one has been able to do acceptable AM or FM reception. TSM readers know well the laws of physics and the inferiority of VHF and MW transmission in an urban or indoor environment.

In an emergency, you want to “carpet bomb” the population with a multitude of resilient high power RF. Wireless is extremely useful as events evolve, but EMC distribution shouldn’t rely on a low power, countless single-points-of-failure system that can’t survive a “scraped earth event.” 

Further, the complex and exposed wireless network is vulnerable to cyber-attack and instabilities. Consider that AT&T, including Firstnet (the wireless service that AT&T contracts to independently serve first responders) failed nationally on Feb. 22, 2024 for hours. In July 2022, KDDI in Japan and it’s 39 million customers experienced, “…the biggest glitch in our history,” according to KDDI chief Makoto Takahashi, taking the entire system down for two full days. Rogers Canada has had multiple outages over the last three years impacting all of its Canadian customers. 

And it’s not just wireless carriers. CenturyLink took three states of their internet customers “off the air” pre-Covid.

The unfailing and simple architecture of broadcast makes it much less likely to fail or fall victim to cyberattack. There has never ever been a time or event where more than one broadcast signal didn’t survive.

Intelligence
EMC is only as good as the information disseminated.

“Rich media,” beyond simple text, audio and video, is valuable. Searchable data, maps and visuals are very useful, expected, and rare. Emergency management organizations generally have neither the staff, equipment, nor expertise to prepare much more than simple text alerts. 

TV news organizations are the American machine that aggregates information from all of the stakeholders, federal, state, and local governments, power companies, utilities, first responders, and the scene itself. Broadcast news can put cameras on the ground and in the air and put authorities in front of a microphone. Nothing new here. Broadcasters routinely forgo advertising revenues to cover major news of emergencies. However, legacy alerting is at best loosely attached to news.

Indispensably, broadcast news has the relationships to validate information.

NextGen AEA/AEI
Conelrad, EBS, EAS, WEA, sirens, signage, are or were all alerting systems under the control of broadcasters and to some degree emergency management, that could interrupt programming so that sometimes on-air talent or automated weather service speech synthesis can speak to the situation. 

AEA/AEI directly connects all of emergency management to a user’s smartphone where the decisions of what to alert for and in what manner are made under the user’s control. AEA/AEI can share information in the manner that we are used to, without pre-NextGen broadcasting’s analog era limitations.

NextGen AEA/AEI smartphones (and other equipped devices like TVs) periodically check for AEA/AEI messages in addition to alerts via native WEA. For the OTA part, there is a balance between battery life and urgency. When a pair of bits in the ATSC 3.0 bootstrap (the lowest most secure data path) indicate that there is a message, the smartphone grabs it and runs it through filters. 

The filter asks if this affects my location and if this is a situation where people should be notified or awakened. An Amber alert might wait until people wake up. An F-5 tornado in the neighborhood demands immediate attention.

No television station has to decide whether to interrupt programming, because AEA/AEI unlike EAS… doesn’t interrupt programming. On a TV, the video squeezes back, and there are three loud “attention” beeps with a text crawl. A viewer can dismiss, dig deeper… or grab the smartphone, which is doing the same things, and run for cover.

Every AEA alert is on every transmitter nearly simultaneously and goes to every phone without delay. Following the “in emergencies, all delivery methods are used” guidance, the internet and wireless are also useful paths. Ideally, the phone sees the same message from many places—and filters out the redundancies.

Where are We?
Both EAS and WEA have devolved into systems that neither broadcasters nor wireless providers have a positive incentive to maintain or improve. The public and emergency community complain about both. The last time we heard anything about EAS, broadcasters through the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) got Congress to force car manufacturers to continue support of AM radios, claiming that AM/EAS plays a critical role. 

The reality is somewhat nuanced. 

Today, “full service” radio stations are almost always AM/FM or FM only; only larger metropolitan areas support the necessary full-service station. While radio news operations have declined, TV and digital news has boomed. Radio on the dashboard is far more difficult and distracting to tune than the days of five buttons and a tuning knob. When you see “tune to 1610” traveler information signs while driving a rental car, you are unlikely to figure out how to listen safely without first pulling over.

My own experience is that I have not received a useful emergency message via my AM radio in many years. On the other hand, my cellphone has warned me of bad weather and with the help of the smartphone, I have navigated around hail, etc. at least a few times each year. AM radio used to do that, but not anymore—which is OK because the smartphone does this so much better—WEA messages are even displayed on my dashboard via the car/phone handsfree Bluetooth link.

As you might expect, most of broadcaster’s activities surround reducing their investment in EAS (including NAB and largely iHeart’s move to virtualize EAS to avoid replacing hardware), news and other staff intensive programming.

EAS does little good for broadcast news, sometimes interrupting live tornado coverage with a less informed and often delayed NWS issued tornado warning. Broadcasters, especially the ones that embrace the vision of a broadcast digital news operation that is ubiquitous, interactive, and low friction, do have motivation to develop AEA/AEI. 

It expands the news department’s reach and gives them a lower friction platform for disseminating information from the trivial to the ultra-critical. AEA/AEI builds on and can deepen a station’s relationship with its viewers. Unfortunately, EAS drives viewers and listeners away with constant false alarms, tests and untargeted use.

So Where is the NextGen EMC Application?
The broadcast app that supports AEA/AEI has yet to be written. There have been several starts, each of which stalled at the mockup stage. We’ve seen what it might look like, but not how it works.

Unfortunately, vaporware is impossible to demonstrate and very difficult to describe outside of abstractions. If you want to show emergency management, broadcasters, regulators, or the general population AEA/AEI, we will have to build it.

Within ATSC is the “I-team.” The only implementation effort under the ATSC umbrella is to develop AEA/AEI. In the I-team’s long history, they have only had access to BAs (aka "Broadcast Apps" installed on the smartphone by the broadcasters) that function on an EAS level, meaning that they have yet to experience a BA that does the advanced filtering functions, or supports rich media information dissemination. ATSC and their I-team have nothing close to a deployable AEA/AEI app.

As this is written, NVISA and FEMA have set up a NextGen Emergency Mass Communications laboratory in Maryland. This is all very good. For now, without an AEA/AEI app and mobile devices, all that can be done here is to play with TVs and basic prototype BAs able to do little more than alarm. When we do have a BA, this is the place to test it and make it work before it is released into the real world. FEMA has a test version of IPAWs very useful for this.

3.0 Enabled Smartphones
NextGen AEA/AEI depends on a smartphone running an AEA/AEI app that receives information via the wireless network when available, and information embedded in NextGen UHF Broadcast high power, big tower transmission when wireless access becomes impossible.

India seems to be the place where NextGen smartphones are taking off. Not so much in America.

Next Step
Without a BA and 3.0 chips in smartphones, we do not have resilient, intelligent EMC.

For broadcasters, what revenue potential there is in funding the BA is maybe from licensing what has never been licensed before (EAS is public domain) and/or betting that broadcast news can someday benefit from the AEA/AEI platform. It is also uncomfortable for broadcasters to depend on a competitor for a critical piece of broadcast architecture. 

There have been rumors of various players crafting a proprietary BA, usually more focused on monetization issues than AEA/AEI. So far, there is no AEA/AEI progress. There have been two efforts to cooperatively advance this endeavor within the industry. 

NAB Pilot’s effort ended quietly, apparently lacking broadcaster support and some member opposition to NAB supplying a universal “free” app. Later, NVISA invited broadcasters and vendors to cooperatively do such. NVISA (NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance) received no response from the major players.

As mentioned above, ATSC’s I-team dedicated to AEA/AEI implementation has no resources beyond the power of the regularly scheduled meeting. Also, ATSC is a standards organization, so as one would expect, implementation—as much as it is needed—is well outside ATSC’s tradition and resources.

AEA/AEI serves the public good. As a nation, we do invest in our security and safety. In 2006, Congress put $106 million into the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act. This funded Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) as well as other upgrades to EMC. More recently, congress has designated funds to upgrade EMC, in several different “buckets.” While AEA/AEI is likely the most important thing we should do, a lot more expensive and less important things seem to be on current agenda.

This is also close to the charter of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who with PBS, have a history of nurturing similar technologies such as closed caption in the early 1970s. That lead to the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990. PBS has been active in the EMC field with WARN, a system that backs up IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert & Warning System) internet delivery. There have been several NextGen proof-of-concept demos within public broadcasting for the benefit of first responders and EMC.

It is also better that there be just one AEA/AEI BA that operates in a manner where everyone everywhere can easily understand it and navigate. Competing BAs can create unnecessary friction. This is software and NextGen is “extensible,” meaning that the system can be updated and fine-tuned over time.

The bottom line is, that if we want reliable and powerful Emergency Mass Communications, FEMA and the FCC, if not congress, have to say so.

INDIANAPOLIS—The winner of the 2020 Robert W. Flanders SBE Engineer of the Year award is RJ Russell, CPBE. The 2020 James C. Wulliman SBE Educator of the Year award has been awarded to two recipients: Fred Baumgartner, CPBE, CBNT and Roland Robinson, CBTE, CBNT, CTO.

Robert “RJ” Russell has been an SBE member for 21 years and has served in several positions on the National Board of Directors as well as serving on several national committees. Russell also has held officer positions in various local chapters. Along with his time in the U.S. Marine Corps, he worked for several stations, including those owned by Media General, Sinclair, Cordillera, Catamount, Sunbelt, Univision, E.W. Scripps and Fox. Russell worked as a broadcast engineering manager on the Sprint Nextel Project from 2004–2008, assisting many television stations with the 2 GHz repack and reimbursement program; and Brigham Young University, where he was instrumental in the design and construction of a new 100,000 square foot BYU broadcast center. He worked on the ATSC 3.0 project station in Cleveland, and most recently accepted the position of SBE frequency coordination manager as an independent contractor through his company, TBSI.

Fred Baumgartner has been an SBE member for 47 years and given countless hours to furthering the education of today’s broadcast engineers through his work with the Ennes Educational Foundation Trust for 17 years, he spearheaded the annual Ennes Workshop during the NAB Show, and recently produced the SBE presentation on NextGen TV during the 2019 PBS TechCon.

Roland Robinson has been an SBE member for 24 years. He is an instructor of broadcasting and video production classes at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash., and during his tenure has implemented an SBE-approved certification curriculum in his broadcast classes. Robinson also serves on the Washington State Emergency Communications Committee (SECC).

The SBE 2020 Awards Program also recognizes other achievements from SBE members, chapters and SBE sustaining member companies.

This year, seven SBE chapters highlighted the achievements of members within their chapters with Chapter Engineer of the Year Awards. The seven chapter winners also were automatically nominated for the national Robert W. Flanders SBE Engineer of the Year Award.

MultiCAM Systems won the SBE Technology Award for the Air Bridge, a new video solution for including remote guests in shows or conferences.

Washington, D.C.’s Chapter 37 won the Best Educational Event for the NextGEN TV Summit held Jan. 16, 2020. The event was held in conjunction with SMPTE.

STATISTICAL AWARDS

Percentage Growth of New Members:

Class A: 106 Florida Panhandle; Chapter Chair Mark Johnson, CSRE

Class B: 103 Nashville; Chapter Chair James Campbell, CPBE

Highest Percentage of Certified Members:

Class A: 115 Southern Idaho; Chapter Chair Thomas Kettwi, CBT

Class B: 131 Inland Empire; Chapter Chair James Alexander, CPBE, CBNT; Certification Chair Paul Claxton, CPBE, CBNT

Highest Percentage of Member Attendance at Meetings:

Class A: 112 Western Wisconsin; Chapter Chair Todd Zschernitz, CBTE

Class B: 69 Alamo Area; Chapter Chair Christopher Anderson

All the winners will be recognized at the SBE Membership Meeting and Awards Ceremony, held online on Sept. 23. Nominations for the 2021 awards will open in February.

NEW YORK—TV Technology's sister publication Broadcasting & Cable has announced five of the 10 executives who will receive its annual Technology Leadership Awards.

B&C has been giving these awards since 1999 to honor individuals who have made important and innovative contributions to the way TV, digital and streaming media companies use technology in their businesses.

“This year’s winners highlight the growing importance of tech innovation in helping media companies navigate rapid changes in their businesses,” said Kent Gibbons, content director, B&C. “The 2020 award winners have been tech leaders in deploying new technologies and infrastructures that have helped companies build new businesses and strengthen existing ones while helping consumers access TV series, news, sports and streaming media in new ways.”

Each year, B&C honors 10 Tech Leadership Award Winners. This year, it is announcing the winners in two stages.

The first five are: Fred Baumgartner, director of next gen TV implementation, ONE Media 3.0 - Sinclair Broadcast Group; Renard Jenkins, vice president, production, media and distribution operations, PBS Technology and Operations; Stephanie Lone, senior VP, engineering, CBS Sports Digital, CBS Interactive; Jeff Mayzurk, senior VP of operations and technology, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises; and Lisa Pedrogo, VP of NY engineering & strategic initiatives, WarnerMedia Technology and Operations.

Their full bios can be found at: https://www.technologyleadershipsummit.com/awards.

The honorees will be profiled in the Feb. 17 issue of B&C and receive their awards at an awards dinner on March 5 during the annual Technology Leadership Summit in Atlanta, Georgia.

For the first time, the awards will be presented at this year’s Technology Leadership Summit, which is produced by Broadcasting & Cable, TV Technology and Multichannel News.

In addition to receiving their awards at the March 5 dinner, the winners will sit on panels at the summit.

With panels on the newest developments on cloud, AI and IP technologies as well as discussions of news, sports and streaming operations, this conference is designed to help executives at stations, networks and digital companies deploy new technologies and strategies for the future of their businesses.

During the summit, leading technologists, including the honorees, will share their expertise on new technologies and explain how they are using new technologies to build new business, cut costs and boost profits.

In addition to the panels, attendees will have complementary access to the awards dinner, where they can meet and mingle with the winners and colleagues, as well as free hotel rooms and meals. Attendees must be approved by the organizers and attendance is limited.

To apply for access to the summit or to get more information on the agenda or sponsorship opportunities see: https://www.technologyleadershipsummit.com/ 

ARLINGTON, VA.--Broadcast engineers from around the globe converged here for three days last week to exchange information about the industry and broadcast technology developments at the annual IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Fall Symposium.

In spite of the demands of the ongoing television spectrum repack, some 160 engineering consultants, equipment manufacturers, and broadcast group personnel took time away from their duties to join academics and others from as far away as Russia, Brazil and South Korea at the Oct. 9-11 tech con.

Next-Gen TV was the hot topic this year, with nearly half of the presentations falling into this category and nine directly focused on ATSC 3.0’s potential, field testing, deployment, business models, and evaluation metrics. Presentations even included some “one step beyond” views into the future television experiences. One described methodology for transmitting information to provide sensory stimulation beyond sight and sound, and a lunchtime keynote presenter described taking virtual reality out to the ball game.

BRINGING BACK THE ACTION WITH VR

In her presentation, Uma Jayaram, engineering director for Intel Sports True VR division, described why her company decided to launch a virtual reality TV sports production element, and discussed some of the technical issues that had to be resolved to make it possible.

“The timeline for [introduction and acceptance] of new use cases is dramatically shortening,” Jayaram said. “The telephone took 75 years to reach the 50 million user mark; ‘Angry Birds’ took just over a month to reach this mark.

“Companies such as Intel realize that you cannot afford to join the party after it’s well underway and things are moving really fast," she continued. "So, you place some bets, you get into the ecosystem, you play with it, you try to move it, and essentially see what’s going on in a more involved manner.

“When you think of Intel, you ordinarily think of the more traditional segments—CPUs, graphics and so on, but some of the big bets we are making have to do with artificial intelligence, VR, hygiene, and automated driving” observing that all of these emerging technologies involved moving and processing massive amounts of data, an Intel specialty.

“These areas are moving so fast that you want to be in that ecosystem,” said Jayram in explaining Intel’s decision to launch the sports business unit two years ago.

“On ‘game day’ we show up with our cameras, we set up alongside the networks and stream VR experiences in near real time,” she said. “We provide [feeds] to about 10 right’s-holding broadcasters.”

In her presentation, Jayaram did flag some VR limitations, noting that perhaps the biggest centers on the cumbersome headgear that consumers must don.

“I can’t watch with a headset for more than a few hours,” she said.

As one solution, her unit is creating shorter duration or “snackable content” sports highlights packages. “We’re also working to provide a better user interface…something that would allow a person to do VR viewing while still interacting with friends,” she said.

She also described some technical considerations in VR that don’t really exist in ordinary television coverage.

“Time synchronization is very important when you have six separate cameras that all have to be synched together along with the audio," she said. "Seamless ‘stitching’ of the multiple views is also very important.”

Branding of the viewing apps for consumers is also something of a challenge as Intel's Sports unit is dealing with multiple broadcast entities operating in several countries. “In the U.S., NBC has the rights, so we have to have an NBC app with the 'NBC look and feel' and colors. We now have to put out about 33 of these apps [to accommodate the various broadcast entities and viewing devices].”

Jayaram also noted that a business model has to be established before widespread deployment of VR sports coverage can take place.

“We’re looking at subscription models,” she said. “In the end you have to make money. This is still being worked out.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT IN THE [3.0] FIELD?

Status reports on ATSC 3.0 rollouts in three U.S. markets were part of the conference program, with WRAL-TV’s Transmitter Supervisor Matt Brandes describing activities at his company’s Raleigh-Durham, N.C. test facility. Fred Baumgartner, director of Next Gen TV implementation for Sinclair Broadcast Group, provided an update on the station group's Dallas-Ft. Worth ATSC 3.0 single-frequency network initiative, and Pearl TV’s Dave Folsom described goings-on in connection with the "Phoenix Model Market project.

All offered some lessons learned and dos and don’ts takeaways.

“If you’re a person blessed with the privilege of setting up a brand new ATSC 3.0, please download and read the ATSC recommended practices on the Physical Layer, go play with your toys, and then come back and read the recommended practices again,” said Brandes. “Also, buying a new encoder might do more for your coverage than putting in two transmitters. If you can get three dB improvement [in encoding], this is equivalent to doubling your power.

Speaking for Pearl TV, Folsom noted that early equipment implementations are still not complete and software versioning is a big issue

“Anytime someone makes a software upgrade, everything downstream quits working, including the receivers," he said. 

Folsom added that the ability to interchange encoding, packaging and encapsulation units isn’t fully developed yet. “You should be able to connect up the unit and it should work, but it doesn’t," he said. "The standards are clear, [but] there’s a lot of misunderstanding among manufacturers about what needs to be there.”

Baumgartner observed that monitoring and control in connection with SFN transmitter sites is a potentially big issue. “We’re just starting to put our toes in that water and we can run [the Dallas-Ft. Worth installations] from our handheld devices, but at some point, it’s going to start to look like MediaFLO and then you’re got 300 transmitters out there and you have to start thinking about trucks, spare parts, and support infrastructure," he said. "You have to figure out how to make it all run economically.”

‘HACKING’ NEXT-GENERATION TELEVISION

Although the ATSC 3.0 racehorse is barely out of the stable, due to its hybrid broadcast/internet delivery, concerns are already surfacing about vulnerability of signals to manipulation by pranksters or others with darker agendas. Broadcast cybersecurity expert Wayne Pecena examined this in his presentation, “Hacking ATSC 3.0.”

He noted that the broadcast community was not exactly a stranger to nefarious intercepts of program streams, citing the 1986 takeover of HBO’s satellite transponder by “Captain Midnight,” and the “Max Headroom” incident the following year in which the studio-to-transmitter feeds of Chicago stations WGN-TV and WTTW were breached and third-party content aired.

Pecena observed that those incidents had required a lot of technical savvy and large equipment costing many thousands of dollars. “Now someone with a tablet computer sitting in a coffee shop can wreak a lot more havoc,” he said.

He cited the potential risks to broadcasters of ATSC 3.0 stream hijacking, including dead air, loss of revenue, public embarrassment, data breaches, potential legal liability, loss of public trust, and impact on station resources.

Pecena urged station operators to gain a thorough understanding of their IP systems and think about ways in which they might be compromised, observing that “the Internet of Things really provides only minimal, if any, safeguards against hacks, with security often being an afterthought or a ‘neverthought.’”

He said that even with the security components inherent in ATSC 3.0 and a tightening of security at broadcast facilities, there still could be breaches occurring within the home environment.

“The consumer industry must adopt stronger IoT security features,” he said. “The weakest link determines the overall security of any system.”

During the gathering the society also recognized Merrill Weiss with its highest honor, the Jules Cohen award for excellence in broadcast engineering. 

The BTS Symposium moves to Hartford, Conn. in 2019. Conference dates are Oct. 1-3.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

GARLAND, TEXAS AND HUNT VALLEY, MD.—Earlier this year, TV Technology first reported on the combined effort of several broadcast related organizations, including Sinclair Broadcast Group, its ONE Media innovations division, and American Tower, in building the world’s first single frequency network (SFN) using ATSC 3.0 technology in the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) television market. The plan—which was devised last fall—is to deploy the new transmission technology initially on an experimental basis, and when the last bit of data has been gleaned and reports prepared, to move forward on finalizing the SFN as a permanent component of the television delivery infrastructure for viewers in that market.

The original projection was to have the entire system operational by NAB Show, but as this is a “first initiative” there were the and “lessons learned” associated with such a pioneering venture.

However, the project continues to roll out, and a visit to one of the SFN sites in late April revealed that the physical infrastructure is almost completely in place and ready to take to the air.

Peter Starke, American Tower’s vice president of broadcast, and Jerry Folk, the company’s broadcast construction manager, hosted the tour of the Garland, Texas SFN facility and offered insight about the project.

VERY DIVERSE TRANSMISSION FACILITIES

“American Tower and Sinclair feel like this site is probably going to be typical of installations for wireless sites where you have a shelter with limited space and power,” said Folk. “We purposely picked three different types of existing tower sites for this trial installation. The tower in Garland is a small guyed tower with a 40-inch face [and home to cellular service and a low-power FM station]. There is also a 1,000-foot high 11-foot face guyed tower, [a former TV broadcast tower] in Ft. Worth, and an old 200-foot self-supporter in Denton that was originally an AT&T wireline site, built in the 1950’s [and] capable of withstanding an atomic blast.”

Folk further explained that the trial sites were also selected on the basis of electrical power available, as each has a different source, ranging from single-phase 240V to three-phase 208/120 and 480/277V supplies.

“This was a factor, as we wanted to see what might work best for the ATSC 3.0 equipment and Comark transmitters chosen for the trial, although we expect that single-phase 240V power will be the most commonly available service for SFN sites,” said Folk.

The test sites also reflect a full range of equipment containment structures.

“There’s [this pre-fab] shelter here in Garland, an existing TV transmitter building in Ft. Worth, and an old AT&T ‘bomb shelter’ with nine-inch concrete walls in Denton [Texas]. With the tower, shelter and electrical service differences, this adds up to three totally different scenarios,” said Folk. “An important element of this project [is] to define the many variables and resulting requirements to be able to anticipate needs across a wide variety of sites.”

Starke noted that all three facilities were under American Tower ownership or jurisdiction.

“We own two of them and have management rights for the third—the former WBAP-TV transmission site in Ft. Worth,” he said.

READY BY THE FOURTH

When asked about the project’s progress, Fred Baumgartner, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s director of next-generation implementation, observed that while the “brick and mortar” elements had come together nicely and on schedule, clearing regulatory hurdles and making sure all the necessary paperwork reached the right people took time.

“The transmission gear is pretty well in place,” he said, noting the Garland facility was ready for turn-on. “The Ft. Worth site installation was also just finished and that only leaves Denton.”

Baumgartner noted that of the three sites, Denton had been the most challenging.

“We encountered a zoning issue there,” he said. “We wanted to put the antenna on top of the old AT&T microwave tower, but local ordinances wouldn’t allow us to go far enough above the top deck to place an antenna there. Also, we found we’d have to run reduced power at this site to stay within the primary station’s signal contour. It even required a last-minute change in antennas.”

In commenting on the non-physical aspects of the project, Baumgartner observed that this is where “The long pole in the tent is getting the various transmission agreements in place with the stations involved and in getting notifications out to the various Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) involved. We have to get the message to the front line technicians, and that means we have to call these folks and speak directly to the engineering departments, as the notification that says they need to retune and make service changes goes to the front office, but usually doesn’t reach the engineers who have to make the system changes.”

Baumgartner observed that the final transmission gear should be in place in Denton by the end of June and ready to go. “Everything seems on track, and we expect to light the SFN up on the Fourth of July when we have the connectivity.”

And out of all the technical challenges encountered, lack of connectivity to the transmission sites appears to be the largest one. “We don’t have all of the fiber that’s needed in place yet,” said Baumgartner. “And that’s something you really can’t do yourself. We are putting an interim microwave system online to ensure timely connectivity.”

In elaborating on the requirement for backbone connectivity, American Tower’s Starke stressed its importance in setting up a realistic test of ATSC 3.0’s capabilities. 

A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY ON ALL FRONTS

And while this unanticipated difficulty in obtaining site connectivity seems at first to be a big hurdle, it’s almost fortuitous that it did occur, as that’s what this first implementation of a real-world ATSC 3.0 SFN is all about—a learning laboratory for determining where the hurdles are and how to head them off in other such rollouts of this technology.

American Tower’s Starke elaborated on some of the other information to be gleaned in this trial installation.

“The trial test has different facets to it; it’s not all about driving the van around and figuring out what the signal strength increase and signal strength density is, it’s also about site construction—what’s it going to cost for broadcasters to go out and build SFN sites. We’re looking at efficiencies of scale, because it’s going to be difficult and costly, especially at the beginning of the 3.0 rollout, for stations to build out SFN sites on their own. We’re looking at how you can convert existing towers—wireless towers—into broadcast towers, and a lot of wireless sites have a limited amount of land. A wireless site typically has a 100 by 100-foot compound and that’s it. Most of the wireless carriers drop in their own shelters and mechanicals, So, there’s really no infrastructure to support broadcast and we know broadcast transmission is a lot different in terms of what’s needed. That’s the other trial here—you can’t go out and build new towers all over the place. The regulatory cost on the wireless side of the business has created a lot of regulations in a lot of municipalities. One of the things that municipalities look for before they approve a new tower is whether you can collocate on an existing tower, so we have to look at that too.”

Starke also noted that such technical items as determination of optimum SFN operating power was also a checklist item.

“Sinclair and Univision haven’t filed for final ERPs yet, but there is a consulting engineer working to determine what power levels are needed,” he said. “Part of a trial is the ability to turn up and turn down ERPs. The licenses that Sinclair is filing for will improve coverage within the licensed contour as provided for by current DTS regulations. The concept here is to figure out what the optimal ERPis for each of the SFN areas to achieve a proper contribution for the individual SFNs.”

He said a preliminary determination of operational ERP has indicated it would fall in the neighborhood of 100 kW Horizontal, with approximately 30 kW additional delivered in the vertical plane.

So, what happens when all the operating points have been optimized, data collected and the final reports issued? Will the sites be dismantled and written off as just another page in TV history?

“Not so” say both Starke and Baumgartner, pointing to the very considerable amount of money and time being invested in the project. When the repack phase hits the DFW market, these sites will simply be returned for their final channel. All the SFN site components have been constructed as “All UHF Band”, and can be easily optimized for final channel assignments.

READY FOR COMPANY

As constructed, in addition to a transmitter and ATSC 3.0 encoder/exciter, there’s also a large combiner/filter network to allow multiple TV carriers to share the broadband antenna.

“We keep talking about these sites as a trial test, but we’re actually building them out to go commercial,” said Starke. “It isn’t going to be build, test, and then tear down. They will eventually go commercial. Depending on ERP or antenna input power, each could handle up to possibly 10 to 12 stations.”

He observed the initial DFW SFN trial calls for the airing of programming from Cunningham Communication’s KTXD-TV outlet (RF Ch. 46) and UniMás’s KSTR-DT (RF Ch. 48). (Sinclair has no broadcast properties in the DFW market). Starke noted that since both stations fall above the latest TV broadcast spectrum upper bound, they will be moving to lower channels (RF Ch. 34 & 23) as the nationwide repack initiative reaches the DFW market. (Interestingly, there’s another television operation mixed into the broadband antenna shared by the KTXD-TV and KSTR-DT SFN transmitters, and this one—Ch. 56 (722-728 MHz)—will not be moving as it’s owned by Dish Network, which secured this slot in the earlier 700 MHz spectrum auction.)

“These will be the stations converting to 3.0, and we’ll have a hosting station down in Cedar Hill [the principle DFW TV transmitter location] to keep their 1.0 signals on the air,” said Starke.

THE CHANGING TV BROADCAST LANDSCAPE

So, what will be the future of over-the-air television? Will the tall stick and high-power model established some 80-years ago prevail, or will broadcasting move to a low-power distributed transmission platform?

Starke thinks it will be combined set of existing tall towers augmented by smaller sites for the near future; and as American Tower now owns and maintains a large number of U.S. cellular and broadcast tower sites, one of the reasons for partnering with broadcasters in this seminal ATSC 3.0 SFN Pilot.

“People [describe] towers as wireless towers and broadcast towers, but at the end of the day, it’s what’s being operated there,” said Starke. “Here we are taking this wireless site and turning it into a broadcast tower. Part of this trial involves how you can convert existing towers—wireless sites—into broadcast towers. So that’s the other trial here—you can’t just go out and build new towers all over the place [to accommodate new broadcast operations].”

“Another thing is that back in the day, TV stations used to brag about who had the tallest tower, the highest ERP, and the largest coverage. You really don’t see that anymore. Now [with cable and satellite distribution], it’s all about distribution of content. In the future, with ATSC 3.0 it will be all about high QoS service area and advanced services.”

Starke noted another factor that may drive the future chapters in the over-the-air television operations guide.

“If you think about the industry and the role of RF engineers in this industry, we all know it’s an industry where graduates coming out of college today aren’t saying ‘hey, I want to be an RF engineer,’” said Starke. “It’s been a challenge for the last 10 years or so to find qualified staff to run transmitters. Previously, RF engineers may have been running only one transmitter in a market and now, all of a sudden, RF engineers have many transmitter sites to operate. American Tower sees this as something we may want to investigate down the road—actually providing a complete transmission service.”

Even though the current repack is playing heavy on the minds of TV station engineering and management personnel right now, a lot of industry eyes and ears will be glued on this DFW ATSC 3.0 SFN deployment project as it continues to roll out.

“We are very open to working with just about anyone and sharing what we know and learn,” remarks Baumgartner in closing. “As much as our schedules will allow, we would be happy to show broadcasters what we are doing here and at the ONE Media NextGen labs outside Baltimore.”

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

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