Television broadcasters sit on a resource of immense, untapped value that ATSC 3.0 will unlock in the form of wireless data delivery, according to two NextGen TV authorities speaking at the virtual SMPTE2020 conference.

During “How ATSC 3.0 Wireless Spectrum Will Become Broadcasters’ Most Valuable Asset,” Mark Aitken, senior vice president at Sinclair Broadcast Group, and John Hane, president of BitPath, formerly Spectrum Co, reminded broadcasters that there’s more to NextGen TV than TV.

“If you… think of ATSC 3 as a wireless IP distribution platform, suddenly, it's not just about television,” said Aitken. “There are new opportunities that align themselves well with… the rest of the IP world.” 

To illustrate his point, Aitken compared pricing of today’s wireless services to broadcasters’ cost of delivering wireless bits.

“When you look at the retail price of a gigabyte, you're looking at $12,” he said, referring to the average price charged by wireless companies.

“If you look at the wholesale price… the bulk discounting that's given to MVNOs, mobile virtual network operators, you're looking at a price valuation of about $2 per gigabyte.”

Consumers subscribing to an internet service provider pay about 1 cent per gigabyte monthly for wired delivery, he added.

“If you look at the valuation of… [broadcast] bits from the standpoint of the cash flow of a station, the valuation is like two one-hundredths of a cent per gigabyte. In other words, .02 cents per gigabyte based on… what we do today,” he said.

With ATSC 3.0’s far superior bandwidth efficiency, TV broadcasters can maintain their primary TV service while at the same time cashing in on 3.0 data delivery. To illustrate the point, Aitken laid out real-world numbers for Sinclair’s station in Cincinnati and how 3.0 data delivery could affect cash flow. 

Based on gigabytes of wireless data delivered on an annual basis, the number of homes in the market and a price of 1 cent per gigabyte, the base cash flow valuation of the Cincinnati station, which today stands at $10 million a year, leaps to $600 million a year, said Aitken.

“Maybe that’s [1 cent per gigabyte] an unrealistic expectation, but I’ll ask you the question. ‘What is the realistic expectation of the value of a broadcast bit in the world today?’” Aitken mused.

The Sinclair senior vice president of Advanced Technology urged his virtual audience to think of ATSC 3.0 as 5G broadcasting—a supplement to 5G operator’s unicast service. Based on how wireless bits are distributed today, there exists an opportunity for an interplay between unicast and broadcast delivery. “Not one versus another, but one in conjunction with the other,” he said.

Wireless services deploying 5G face a host of issues depending on the bandwidth they are using that ATSC 3.0 broadcasting can address. While sub-1GHz spectrum provides 5G operators with good reach, it is limited in available bandwidth. “Some of this is down to 1.5 MHz bandwidth that are paired in the unicast uplink-downlink fashion,” said Aitken.

In the 2GHz range, there is higher available bandwidth for 5G, but also problems having “to do with macro base stations to provide for coverage-related issues,” he said. At the higher 5G frequencies, bandwidth increases, but coverage diminishes further.

LEGACY REUSE RESTRICTIONS

To realize the full value of its spectrum for data delivery, the TV industry will need to shed legacy regulatory restrictions on the reuse of spectrum put in place to protect TV stations from harmful co-channel interference. 

In the days of analog TV, stations sharing the same channel assignment were prevented from interfering with each other by making sure the markets they served were spaced far apart. In essence, these fallow areas served as “geographical guard bands,” said Hane.

“This is a relic of a very old regulatory regime, which developed out of a specific technology [analog TV broadcasting]” he said. To which Aitken added there typically is a spectrum reuse factor of 4:1. 

The pair then began discussing what this means in terms of potential revenue. Television broadcasters in the UHF band alone occupy nearly 45 billion megahertz pops, explained Hane. [A megahertz pop is a measurement that refers to 1MHz of bandwidth passing a single person in a licensed coverage area.]

“If you use the incentive auction valuation of 93 cents… call it $1 a megahertz pop, then the broadcasters are, not the exclusive, but the primary occupants of … $45 billion worth of megahertz pops,” said Hane.

Interference mitigation available in digital broadcasting, however, offers the opportunity to provide better reuse of spectrum and “approach a reuse factor of one, where all of that becomes available,” said Aitken. “Suddenly, that $45 billion… is $180 billion in a reuse one factor.”

Hane echoed Aitken’s observation. “There’s an awful lot [of spectrum] left on the table that is not being put to productive use,” he said.

“…[W]ith new technology, particularly ATSC 3.0 and OFDM and … DTS, distributed  transmission facilities and other techniques, we can actually provide useful service … into all those areas, using those bands that are essentially just geographic preclusion zones now,” he said.

Calling the value of the bands used by broadcasters “very under appreciated,” Hanes spoke of extracting greater value in terms of public service. “The value of those bands—the intrinsic value—is so great, that we have to provide the public more service with the capacity that is allocated to broadcasters, but not all of it is used because of an old regulatory regime.”

NEW YORK—With the seemingly endless string of ATSC 3.0 announcements regarding technological advancements, markets launched and partnerships made, it’s easy at times to lose sight of the fact that at the core of it all is the audience—reaching it, serving it in all manner of new and better ways and ultimately monetizing it so that this massive effort proves to be worthwhile.

John Hane, president of BitPath, and Mark Aitken, senior vice president of Advanced Technology for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, focused on how the new broadcast standard is being prepped and positioned to deliver a better product and make the cash registers ring during their “Fireside Chat: Accelerating Change & The Case For NextGen TV” on Oct. 21, part of the TV2025 Monetizing the Future track at the virtual NAB Show New York conference.

“You know [Sinclair/ONE Media] has been engaged in this … for a long time. But now it’s becoming very real. We’ve got deployments under way ... tied to a very real expectation of monetizing not based on the fact that it is great technology but based upon the technology’s ability to grab a hold of new audience segments and revitalize the industry,” said Aitken.

The session, which more or less was a Q&A with Hane serving as the questioner, focused on how ATSC 3.0 as a delivery vehicle for IP data—as opposed to data wrapped in the MPEG-TS container format—brings broadcast into the mainstream of data flows, which in turn creates a variety of new opportunities for broadcasters and audience members alike.

For example, Sinclair last week took delivery of the first production samples of its Mark One ATSC 3.0-enabled smartphone, which will make it possible for broadcasters to reach audiences outside their homes and to blend linear TV and OTT content in a seamless way.

“We’ve got the first of our broadcast-enabled smartphones,” Aitken said as he held a Mark One smartphone for viewers to see.

Pointing out that the phone is not a finished product, Aitken said these sorts of devices fundamentally transform broadcasting. “You add on top of a device like this, which becomes a television much more than a phone … all that internet kind of interactivity that draws people in [and] engages people,” he said.

Not only does ATSC 3.0 become an application environment riding on a wireless IP platform, but also it redefines how broadcasters and viewers connect, he said.

“… [I]t’s a real game changer in terms of where we meet our viewers, where we meet people who consume that data. And that data ... you know, is broadcast out but it’s also our OTT content that gets published to the web first on the part of a broadcast station today. That gets tied together almost seamlessly. For the consumer it is seamless, right?” said Aitken.

PLUS: ATSC 3.0 Offers Broadcasters Substantial Revenue Growth Opportunities, Says Ducey

Hane added that the two-way connectivity supported in 3.0 and integral to the new Mark One smartphone also positions broadcasters to compete with digital media that from the get-go has had a back channel.

“I think about this all the time, Mark, as I watch broadcast: How would you realistically compete today? Over the longer term, right? If you have no direct data from the viewers, from the consumers. It’s almost incomprehensible,” said Hane, who added that back channel data can help guide programming and budgeting decisions and inform broadcasters and marketers alike about changing things such as placement. “I mean [at the moment], our return path is Nielsen.”

Traditionally, television is simply that thing hanging on the wall, but with the advent of NextGen TV and ATSC 3.0-enabled smartphones, the industry will transition from counting TV households to impressions, said Aitken.

“You move to an environment where you have a one-on-one relationship with individuals,” he said. “It’s individuals—and specifically different individuals—and the ability to personalize both in terms of real-time content, [and] as you said you’ve got a measurement media that says … how is that audience moving.”

The ability to personalize the television experience also will drive innovation in quarters outside of broadcasting. “Now is the time to open up the innovators’ paradigm,” said Aitken. 

Just as Android apps are available from the Google Store and iOS apps from the Apple Store, broadcast apps should be available from a broadcast store, he said.

“You are going to have innovators coming in and saying, ‘Oh, wow, we’ve never had one-to-many [broadcasting before]. We’ve never had the ability to reach everybody at once with a device that’s got a return channel,’” said Aitken.

Hane interjected that he has a similar vision for BitPath. “We can create APIs, and we can transmit data. And we can allow third-party app developers to access that data and collect subscription revenue for us and remit a portion of it over,” said Hane.

The discussion concluded with how Sinclair has already begun upgrading the experience of TV viewers with 3.0 deployments around the country. Aitken laid out the first of the enhancements to reach viewers, including: transmitting a robust tier of data to deliver linear television, which makes easy for OTA viewers to receive service; high dynamic range (HDR) programming to enhance the visual experience; and the availability of a broadcast app that melds broadcast, OTT and the internet, making it simple for viewers to navigate the hybrid service. “These are exciting times, you know,” said Aitken.

WASHINGTON—The hype around the next generation of television, or ATSC 3.0 as it is formerly known, continues to grow. With the standards nearly finalized and examples of it in use in South Korea, a number of broadcasters that have been experimenting with the standard are eager to share what they are cooking up for the viewers, and some of them took the stage to do so as part of a panel at the 2019 Public Media Summit put on by APTS.

“It’s not often that you get a chance to have the wholesale revision of a communication system, and so this is a really exciting time to try and do this and bring it forward for the industry here in the U.S. and perhaps other places of the world,” said Skip Pizzi, vice president, technology education and outreach for the NAB, who moderated the panel.

Pizzi was joined by four public broadcasters—Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager for WKAR in East Lansing, Mich.; Fred Engel, chief technology officer at Public Media North Carolina/UNC-TV; John Hane, president of Spectrum Co LLC; and Mary Mazur, general manager of Arizona PBS in Phoenix. Each broadcaster gave a brief presentation on what their station or company was working on.

This was the second year in a row that Elkins participated in the Public Media Summit, so she was able to showcase the progress that her station has made. This includes the launch of its experimental license for ATSC 3.0 prior to September this past fall and development of its Media Innovation Lab, scheduled for March. The station is currently trying to extend its license for ATSC 3.0 and move to a new channel as part of the repack.

Elkins also showed a demo of what ATSC 3.0 capabilities would add to a program like one of the station’s children’s show, in this case, an interactive graphic that corresponds with the show. The example was something that Elkins says her engineers were underwhelmed by, but she sees it differently.

“The thing to remember is that almost everything that we take for granted in a rich, enhanced, exciting media world is something we can’t really do yet,” she said. “So this looks sort of rudimentary what we’ve been able to do, but I think the backend side of it is revolutionary what it will allow us as broadcasters to do in terms of … our own ability to manage the user, viewer, listener experience.”

Engel elaborated on last week's announcement of a partnership between UNC-TV and a public safety research center that focuses on ATSC 3.0 and its uses for first responders and other public safety needs. Eyeing a three-year rollout, the partnership hopes to develop technology and standards that will help cut down on the time that it takes for first responders to receive emergency information.

“We have to know that ATSC 3.0 will work,” said Engel. “We cannot guess, we cannot assume. We have to test in a laboratory environment to make sure that this indeed will work. That’s the idea behind what the research center is.”

Mazur, whose station is part of the Phoenix Model Market that is testing ATSC 3.0 through a number of stations, shared some of what they are working on, including encrypted OTA services like sharing emergency info to first responders and conditional access features, as well as pinpoint broadcasting features like geo-targeted storytelling, addressable advertising and hyper local content.

Providing a bit of a different perspective was Hane. “My work is focused on building markets for our ATSC 3.0 capacity outside of the core business, which really, really excites me,” he shared.

Hane said that among his primary goals is to convince entities outside of broadcasting to invest in the development of the next gen standard and how it can be beneficial for them. “We have to make it easy for people to come in and take advantage of our ecosystem”

He also said that Spectrum has plans to launch ATSC 3.0 in more than two dozen markets by the start of the 2020 NAB Show. This, he hopes, will get set makers to take steps to supporting ATSC 3.0 by 2021. However, he acknowledges that goal is reliant upon the FCC completing its application form, which some speculate may not be ready until June.

“There are three or four markets that could happen by the end of the summer, but not if we don’t have an application form,” he explained.

While many of the things that people focus on with ATSC 3.0 are capabilities like 4K and immersive audio, this panel stressed what the standard could do for its public broadcasting audience.

“To me, this is just the beginning, a very good start to see could we actually use some of the content we already have, pre-position it for those without broadband and see if we can give them a user experience that those of us who can afford to pay for it have been enjoying for a long time” said Elkins.

“I think especially for the or the universities and the state networks, it’s this added value of these other potential services that will be available that could resonate with the legislatures, the university systems and eventually, we’re hoping in North Carolina, that through this it could save lives,” Engel shared.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

WASHINGTON — John Hane, president of Spectrum Co., isn’t quite sure whether it’s a bad dream or he’s a bit paranoid, but he’s seen this all before. Hane senses TV spectrum is at risk from another round of givebacks, and that ultimately there will be nothing left but VHF.

“Does it seem to anyone else that every 10 years or so we lose a really big chunk of spectrum?” he asked May 24 at the Advanced Television Systems Committee annual meeting at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

“PROGRESSIVE RECLAMATION”

During his 20-minute talk, Hane recalled the “progressive reclamation” of TV spectrum broadcasters have suffered at the hands of lawmakers and regulators. “In 1983, the FCC reallocated channels 70 to 83, the 800 MHz band, for land mobile. That spectrum was given away to large companies. Given away,” he emphasized.

In the late 1990s, the agency developed a plan to reallocate channels 52 through 69 — the 700MHz band — for cellular service, and once the analog-to-DTV conversion was complete, broadcasters lost those channels.

“And just now, we are in the process of clearing out another 84MHz, but we’ve really lost more than that because the repacking algorithm — TV Study — really bunched us closer together so we have less breathing room,” said Hane.

While no auctions are planned at the moment, Hane reminded his audience that few saw the incentive auctions coming. Further, even without a new giveback, deep-pocketed, politically connected companies like Microsoft are trying to nail down broadcasters to their UHF assignments to make way for unlicensed white space devices.

“We need to put an end to the cycle of losing spectrum,” he said, as the crowd broke into applause. “Because ultimately without spectrum we don’t really have much of a business.”

ATTRACT NEW STAKEHOLDERS

The ATSC 3.0 standard is how broadcasters break the cycle of spectrum surrenders because it enables TV broadcasters to use their spectrum more intensely, he said. However, it’s a mistake to think of intense TV spectrum usage simply as a matter of attracting more over-the-air viewers, which Hane is convinced will happen due to Next-Gen TV’s reliable OTA reception, 4K UHD images and immersive sound.

“With 3.0, we increase the stakeholders in OTA broadcasting by reaching more people directly and by building new businesses,” said Hane. “We have to provide a range of services to a range of different stakeholders, and bring more stakeholders into the ecosystem to protect it.”

Some of those new services include data delivery to help power the Internet of Things and new automotive applications. Broadcasters will be deploying 3.0 to a market that is growing from a few hundred million handheld devices to a few hundred billion IoT and automotive devices, he said.

[Read: DISH Teams Up With Spectrum Co. on Next Gen TV Trial in Dallas]

“We are just at the beginning of the wireless revolution … It is a big market,” he said. However, that’s not to say that broadcasters will become “full-up competitors” with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. “Our platform will be unique in its capabilities as how it is brought to the market,” he said.

The signal strength single-frequency networks can deliver throughout a market is a key part of reliable data delivery to support these new applications. Hane did not call for an immediate nationwide deployment, but said that SFNs have “to be on our planning horizon for our data customers, for our core service, for a market mobility” and to demonstrate broadcasters’ desire to use their spectrum “in an intense way and make money on it and bring other stakeholders in …”

Indeed, one of Spectrum Co.’s core missions is aggregating a critical mass of ATSC 3.0 bit capacity to support these types of new services, he said. “Because the market for communications services is national, we have to work together to compete in non-broadcast services.”

To the extent this business case develops, broadcasters will want to deploy SFNs, up their signal levels and push out their coverage areas, he said. “We have to work together because no broadcaster’s business is big enough to do that by itself.”

If successful in creating new services, including mobile, the revenues generated “can easily justify the cost of supplementing” big stick OTA delivery with SFNs over time — “not first out of the box,” he said.

But don’t wait too long, he cautioned, because wireless competitors covetous of broadcast spectrum and companies like Microsoft that wish to deploy services in white spaces are not going to wait for broadcasters. “They are going to try to take it away and pin us in while we are not doing it [deploying ATSC 3.0], and that is one of the main reasons why we need to move quickly,” said Hane.

“By upgrading our technology, working together to build new businesses [and] bringing in new stakeholders, we stay relevant and make more money,” he said.

O’RIELLY: “TIME IS NOT A LUXURY”

Hane was not the only speaker at the annual ATSC meeting to urge broadcasters to hasten their Next Gen TV deployment. FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, a surprise speaker at the event, also encouraged broadcasters to move forward in an expeditious manner with their 3.0 rollouts.

O’Rielly, who visited Phoenix to see the “consumer-centric” 3.0 model market project being led by Pearl the week before the ATSC meeting, said time is not a luxury for broadcasters when it comes to Next Gen TV deployment.

“Television broadcasters are under enormous pressure right now, right here,” said O’Rielly. “The high-tech companies who broadcasters compete with daily for advertising and consumer attention are not going to stop and wait for ATSC 3.0 to be fully deployed.”

To make his point, O’Rielly recalled the story of a local car dealer who today on average gets 84 solicitations to advertise per month — the majority of which are from new digital outlets — where a few years ago he received only a handful from local stations. “If you are a broadcaster sitting on a fence [about] whether or not to deploy ATSC 3.0, you should be worried that the fence no longer exists if you take too long to decide.”

O’Rielly was introduced by former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley. Wiley was on hand to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the formation of the Grand Alliance, which included AT&T, General Instruments, MIT, Philips, Thomson, Zenith and the David Sarnoff Research Center and was responsible for development of the world’s first digital HDTV broadcast system.

“It was an intrepid assemblage of video pioneers who brought to the nation the wonders of widescreen, high definition television that’s been enjoyed by millions and millions of our fellow citizens over the past 25 years — at least,” said Wiley, who served as chairman of the advisory committee tasked by the FCC at the time with finding a path to advanced television.

“As revolutionary as the Grand Alliance and ATSC 1.0 was and still is, we stand today on a threshold of an even greater digital era.” Wiley said. “Of course, that is Next Gen digital television. So, today, we can celebrate and honor the past and present and look forward with great anticipation to what lies ahead.”

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

[Want more information like this? Subscribe to our newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox.]

BALTIMORE & IRVING, TEXAS—John Hane, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Pillsbury Winthrop Show Pittman LLC law firm, has been named president of Spectrum Co LLC, the consortium announced today. Spectrum Co is the ATSC 3.0 spectrum consortium founded by Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group. Univision is also a member of the consortium.

John Hane

While at Pillsbury, Hane focused on the needs of telecom-, broadcast- and technology-related clients. He also worked on ATSC 3.0-related development and regulatory matters, a consortium press release said.

“What you have to appreciate about John is he has a strong entrepreneurial background and the fact that he has been dealing with spectrum all of his career, going back to the work he did in satellite where he helped launch a complete satellite distribution platform,” said Mark Aitken, vice president New Technology at Sinclair, during a telephone interview.

Hane will foster the shared goals of the consortium, including promotion of spectrum utilization and aggregation, innovation and monetization, by taking advantage of the unique characteristics ATSC 3.0 offers television broadcasters, the release said.

“Nationwide deployment of the next-gen network is a necessary first step in what is expected to be the most revolutionary development in broadcasting since the launch of television more than 75 years ago,” Hane said in the press release.

“The unparalleled viewership and engagement of broadcasters’ local content offerings will become far better with next-gen broadcasting” he added.

Chris Ripley, president and CEO of Sinclair, praised Hane’s breadth of experience in ATSC 3.0-related matters and said his leadership “will be invaluable in opening doors and shaping new businesses through Spectrum Co.”

Nexstar CEO, Chairman and President Perry Sook said Hane is “ideally suited to lead Spectrum Co,” adding he “brings outstanding leadership and entrepreneurial skills to his new role.”

More information is available on the Sinclair website.

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