WASHINGTON—ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association, today announced that Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media and senior vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group, will be honored on June 2 as the 2026 recipient of the prestigious Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal.

This annual award honors individuals or teams who demonstrate exemplary leadership in advancing ATSC’s mission and embody the vision, tenacity, and commitment that defined the legacy of former longtime ATSC President Mark Richer. Richer led the organization through two decades of transformative innovation, from the original ATSC 1.0 standard to the launch of ATSC 3.0 next-generation standards.

The 2026 Richer Medal will be presented to Aitken during ATSC’s 2026 NextGen Broadcast Conference during the first week of June in Washington. Registration is now open for the event.

The ATSC board of directors awarded Aitken the Richer Medal for his longtime work to advance next-generation broadcasting in the U.S. and throughout the world. Promoting ATSC 3.0 as the most flexible IP-based broadcasting option available to broadcasters, Aitken has invested significant energy and time in developing new avenues for ATSC 3.0—particularly in India.

“From the beginning, as ATSC members began discussing how broadcasting should evolve to meet the changing needs of the industry and consumers, Mark Aitken has played a pivotal role in helping to build support for next-generation broadcasting as both an obvious upgrade for viewers but also for the new business opportunities that emerge with ATSC 3.0,“ ATSC President Madeleine Noland said. “With Mark’s leadership and personal engagement, the ATSC 3.0 standards have rapidly advanced to meet the needs of stakeholders and consumers throughout the world. Mark has also been instrumental as we sought to reimagine ATSC itself, not just as a television standards body but as THE Broadcast Standards Association. He exemplifies the very qualities that Mark Richer himself embodied during his leadership of ATSC.”

Said Aitken: “I am deeply honored to receive the ATSC Mark Richer Medal, an award that carries special meaning because of Mark’s extraordinary legacy of technical leadership, collaboration and service to the broadcasting community. This recognition belongs as much to the colleagues and partners who have worked alongside me to advance the future of broadcasting as it does to me.“

Aitken has spent more than four decades shaping the evolution of modern broadcasting technologies and standards, joining Sinclair in 1999 after accumulating more than 25 years of industry experience with companies including CCA Electronics and COMARK, where he specialized in advanced RF and transmission technologies. Since joining Sinclair, he has led the company’s efforts in emerging broadcast technologies, spectrum innovation, advanced networking systems, and digital television deployment.

As President of ONE Media Technologies, Aitken helped establish Sinclair’s technology innovation platform focused on developing advanced broadcast systems that integrate broadband, mobile connectivity, datacasting and enhanced video delivery. Aitken currently serves on the boards of the ATSC and the Advanced Television Broadcast Alliance (ATBA), and previously served as a board member of Saankhya Labs, a semiconductor and software-defined networking company specializing in broadcast and wireless technologies. He is also an active member of professional organizations including IEEE, SMPTE, and the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE).

An accomplished inventor and author, Aitken holds multiple patents related to RF devices, broadcast architectures and next-generation communication systems. He has written numerous technical papers focused on digital broadcasting strategies, advanced transmission systems, and emerging media technologies. His contributions to the industry have earned him several prestigious honors, including the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award, the ATSC Bernard Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, the Broadcasting & Cable Technology Leadership Award, and recognition as a fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

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.

Many U.S. broadcasters have refused to see mobile as an important part of their future, Sinclair senior vice president of advanced technology and ONE Media Technologies president Mark Aitken says. But he hasn’t.

Sure, the path to linear NextGen TV on mobile phones will be difficult, especially as carriers and device makers control the device ecosystem. But that hasn’t dissuaded him.

Returning from IBC in September, Aitken said he had conversations with fellow broadcasters from Brazil and India that illustrate the challenges of getting linear TV onto cellphones, as well as a possible solution.

In this interview, Aitken discusses the lessons broadcasters can learn from the ISBD-T SEG-1 mobile phone experience of Brazilian broadcasters, the role India and its direct-to-mobile (D2M) strategy may play, the growing ecosystem of ATSC 3.0-enabled consumer devices, and other key business opportunities that 3.0 offers U.S. broadcasters.

(An edited transcript.)

TV Tech: Broadcasters are on the cusp of greater certainty with respect to an eventual shutdown of 1.0 and, ultimately, 3.0 finishing the transition. Is there any reason to think that the wireless carriers and their device vendors will enable linear TV to be received on mobile phones?
Mark Aitken: I think the answer to that is no. Not linear TV, but what we have to offer through ATSC 3.0 that is not TV in the conventional sense they will, over a relatively short period of time, come to understand that the multicast broadcast capabilities of ATSC 3.0 can work to their advantage.

TVT: Let’s set datacasting aside for a moment and focus on linear TV to mobile phones and devices offered by carriers. Why won’t that happen?
MA: I think the issue of controlling the device is a very real issue. One example came out during conversations at IBC with some Brazilians. As you know, Brazil recently adopted ATSC 3.0 for their terrestrial television.

Part of the Brazilian experience brought to light what ended up happening as it relates to ISDB-T. Previously, they elected to use ISDB-T for their physical layer and ended up doing their own version of some of the middle layers of the ISO stack, but they wanted mobility.

They were very aspirational and saw a future that U.S. broadcasters have long refused to see as a future. They see mobility as being an important part of their future, and they made the decision for ISBD-T.

[Editor’s note: Brazil officially adopted ISDB-T in June 2006. In August 2025, it adopted the ATSC 3.0 physical layer for its next-gen DTV+ system.]

And just as use of their linear mobile channel was available and a flood of devices that came to the Brazilian market—because the other alignment for ISDB-T was Japan, as Japan already had it—you had a large number of mobile device manufacturers that were already building ISDB-T 1-SEG-enabled mobile devices.

As they started to come into the market, suddenly other options for delivery of video came along, and that was the business of the carriers, and the broad availability of these free-over-the-air-capable phones suddenly dwindled down to just a couple of devices that were available, squeezed out by the mobile network operators.

It's clear. They’re in the business of making money. People want to watch relevant content. There was and continues to be a large amount of relevant content that TV broadcasting delivers, whether it’s local news or sports.

But they squeezed ISDB-T as a free service out of existence because they control the device universe. When someone like Qualcomm makes the statement: “We have no intent to build separable chips for broadcast services. 5G Broadcast is part of our silicon,” you know what they are making very clear is that the services and capabilities that the mobile network operators are demanding at the core of the devices that serve their consumers at the end of the day they will control.

Just because 5G exists as a small area on a 7nm chip structure in the middle of a phone doesn’t mean the carriers are going to allow its use. There are lots of ways to figure that one out.

In the U.S., you can use MediaFLO as an example. At the end of the day, Verizon could never come to business terms with a separate entity to operate the MediaFLO network.

(Read: Opinion: Why European broadcasters need to gain control of the mobile device ecosystem)

Verizon tried to operate it themselves, and they began to realize there’s a lot to this business that they didn’t understand. There’s a lot to the licensing side. There’s a lot to the IP royalty side.

This all enhances at least this one guy’s opinion: Thinking that Qualcomm and the mobile network operators are going to allow broadcasters to continue in the business of operating free-over-the-air television to mobile devices, it's insane to imagine that that's going to be the case. And I believe it’s a trap.

Will ATSC 3.0 ever make its way onto a system on a chip at the heart of a phone? I think that, again, it comes back to having success in showing a plentiful device universe.

TVT: Where does development of that universe stand?
MA: Well, I think that some years after we have success in showing a plentiful device [ATSC 3.0] universe is when 3.0 as a system on a chip may emerge.

By the way, we showed smartphones, tablets and obviously television sets, USB dongle devices and feature phones [with 3.0 receivers] at IBC in September.

Feature phones are a class of devices that I would venture to say you will never find Qualcomm engaged in supplying because the economics aren’t there.

We see that as an opportunity, particularly in a country like India or any number of developing nations, and we’re clearly going after some of those market opportunities.

My point is, we’ve had discussions with MediaTek and Qualcomm. By the way, MediaTek provides more SoCs [system on a chip] in the mobile phone market than Qualcomm—more than anybody in the world.

They are very clear. Show us a market that wants ATSC 3.0 and it’ll be on the SoC.

Until then, we've got a more than capable chipset. The fact that I can show you a half-dozen different types of devices that fill out that ecosystem shows that if we can do it, I would venture to say just about anybody can.

It's not our core business, but we feel that strongly about mobile that we’ve put in much effort to make that happen.

TVT: You brought up India, which has announced it favors a direct-to-mobile (D2M) strategy but hasn’t yet selected how it intends to make that happen. Where do things stand with ATSC 3.0 as the solution?
MA: Look, you know, if India adopts ATSC 3.0 for D2M and every imaginable device, that would be huge.

At IBC, we spent a lot of time with the chairman of Prasar Bharati, the public broadcaster in India, discussing exactly the future in India.

Has ATSC 3.0 been chosen? No, not yet. You’ve got a bureaucracy that’s being navigated. At the same time, you have other interests that don’t see that it’s to their benefit that ATSC 3.0 is chosen. So, we don’t have a slam dunk in India, but at the same time, most stakeholders in broadcasting have been engaged in support of ATSC 3.0.

Will a minority faction win out? Well, I guess some of that will come down to money and how much people are willing to lie. And you can quote me on that.

TVT: You mentioned how important feature phones with 3.0 reception will be in developing markets like India. Are there any other devices?
MA: I did leave out another class of devices. Intel now has a reference for ATSC 3.0 on their laptops. One of the reasons for that is remote learning, which is an exceptionally important piece of the puzzle in India. I can tell you that there is a another very large, well-known PC manufacturer that is moving to integrate ATSC 3.0.

TVT: Earlier, you said you believe carriers ultimately will recognize the multicast broadcast capabilities of ATSC 3.0. Why?
MA: This is because of the IP nature of the standard and the work that is going on openly now in ATSC with B2X [broadcast to everything.]

B2X is a two-stage program. It’s activity that ONE Media started and has been engaged in for more than three years. For more than the last year, it’s transitioned to a small group inside ATSC. The membership knew about it, but now it has become public-facing. ATSC has broadcast to the rest of the world that this activity is underway and is inviting folks from across the spectrum of telecom to participate.

What ATSC 3.0 has to offer is its unique multicast broadcast capabilities lend themselves to providing an economic incentive for large mobile network operators to contract capacity inside of our spectrum. Sinclair and ONE Media have been public about some of that activity. We've done webinars with a large focus on automotive.

I can tell you that it was a learning experience. It was one of the reasons that we internally decided to develop B2X broadcast-to-everything because we began to understand the needs of those folks who we saw as being potential clients in that datacasting activity.

We’ve also talked about CDN [content delivery network] offloads. When you dig deep into those verticals, it’s certainly not the same vertical we’re in as televisioners, but you begin to understand the unique relationship they have with the carriers and the uniqueness of that carrier infrastructure.

To be really attractive to them as a carrier of their bits, our bits and their bits need to be equals in the way they are formed, and the way that they are received and processed. That’s what B2X is all about. It is a bridging technology that’s nearing completion.

Point: 5G Broadcast Connects Stations to the Mobile Future

The press is filled with stories predicting the demise of linear broadcast television. And certainly, it is true that we face many obstacles, including streaming services taking our viewers and advertisers, cable cord-cutting eroding our retransmission revenues and our own networks climbing on the streaming bandwagon.

But what if there was a new broadcast standard that held the promise of connecting broadcasters not only to television receivers, but also to 5G wireless smartphones and tablets, opening a whole new market to our transmission? The good news is that there is such a standard and it is called 5G Broadcast. And because 5G Broadcast (unlike ATSC 3.0) was adopted as part of the 3G PP 5G standard, it holds the key to our future. All we have to do is join large portions of the world in adopting it.

I have the greatest respect for my longtime friend Mark Aitken, who has advocated with great skill to try to make ATSC 3.0 the American standard for next-gen TV. And I have great admiration for Sinclair and its principal, David Smith. David is probably the only station group owner who has seated himself at a bench and actually built a UHF transmitter.

Let me state upfront that no one is paying me to write this article and that I do not own a single share of stock in Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, mobile chip makers or phone manufacturing companies. My investments are in boring municipal bonds with no relation whatsoever to the television or telecom industries.

Worldwide Standard
The broadcasting industry is transitioning from ATSC 1.0 to a next-generation standard. The two principal choices available to us are ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast. An international standards body called 3GPP sets the standards for all cellular devices in the world and all of the major cellular device manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, etc.) build their devices to comply with 3GPP. 3GPP-compliant devices only receive signals that are part of the 3GPP family of 5G global standards, meaning that broadcasters who transition to the 5G Broadcast standard will be able to transmit directly to the hundreds of millions of next generation 5G smartphones and tablets.

By contrast, ATSC 3.0 is not a part of the 3GPP family of cellular standards and therefore cannot and will not be able to be received by smartphones and tablets compliant with the 3GPP standards. For this reason, Sinclair and others tried diligently to get ATSC 3.0 approved by 3GPP as part of its standards. Ultimately, 3GPP refused to incorporate ATSC 3.0 into its standard.

LTE-based 5G Broadcast is better-suited for integration with 3GPP modems because it reuses nearly all existing LTE/5G components and hardware, whereas ATSC 3.0 requires different implementations across critical building blocks.

So far, public and private broadcast operators in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Estonia, Spain and the Czech Republic came forward and announced their intentions to deploy the 5G Broadcast standard. And there is continuing interest in 5G Broadcast in Malaysia, China and Brazil, with active trials and evaluation of the technology. With several large countries committing to 5G Broadcast, I expect TV-set manufacturers to incorporate 5G Broadcast receivers to meet marketplace demand—no government mandates necessary.

Because of trial broadcasts around the world—including a Federal Communications Commission-approved trial by low-power station WWOO in the Boston market—we don’t need to speculate about whether 5G Broadcast can be received by 5G smartphones.

Simply Stated, It Works!
So American full-power TV broadcasters face the following choice: Do you want to transition to a next-gen standard that broadens your market to include reception by 5G cellular devices, or do you want to transition to a standard that cannot be received by those devices?

The question answers itself.

Advocates for ATSC 3.0 try mightily to think of applications that could make up for their standard’s lack of access to 3GPP cellular devices. They argue that car manufacturers will go to the expense of adding ATSC 3.0 receivers to their cars to receive software downloads. But since all cars (even my low-tech minivan) already have 5G transceivers that serve that function, that seems very unlikely. Or they argue that an ATSC 3.0-based new GPS system will be the key to our future. That seems a real stretch, and certainly no substitute for gaining access to 3GPP cellular devices.

So why is Sinclair pushing so hard for ATSC 3.0? The simple answer is that they have a conflict—not bad or evil—just a conflict. Sinclair owns a vast portion of the intellectual property that makes up the ATSC 3.0 standard. That means that they stand to reap a fortune in royalties if American full-power broadcasters adopt ATSC 3.0. All other TV broadcasters can make their choice without being burdened by that conflict!

In my opinion the only thing that can save broadcasting from extinction is to transition to 5G Broadcast and transmit directly to both TV receivers and 3GPP cellular devices and thereby join the mobile future.

All we have to do is do it!

Reflections vs. Illumination: Choosing the Right Path for Broadcast

Bold claims are easy to make, especially from seasoned showmen. But if you’re going to listen to them, it’s best to keep one hand on your wallet. Advocates of 5G Broadcast like to make impressive claims about what 5G Broadcast is and what it can do. So, to avoid confusion, before discussing the relative merits of NextGen TV (or ATSC 3.0) and 5G Broadcast, it’s important to clarify one thing that 5G Broadcast is not.

First and foremost, it is not a near-term path for broadcasters to get their signals into mobile devices. The 5G Broadcast Barkers make much of the fact that 5G Broadcast is already a 3GPP standard. But what they don’t tell you is that this isn’t self-executing. Currently, no consumer device can receive 5G Broadcast signals. Not one.

To actually get a 5G Broadcast signal into a phone in a consumer’s hands, manufacturers would need to agree to install broadcast band antennas and new radio frequency filtering and front ends in mobile devices, which is exactly what they would need to do to get ATSC 3.0 signals into a phone in a consumer’s hands. One difference? India’s mobile manufacturers are already supporting ATSC 3.0 phones. Right now. As you read this.

B2X Is Coming
In any event, the standardization of the next ATSC 3.0 release, currently referred to as “Broadcast to Everything (B2X),” will accelerate the availability of 3.0 receivers in mobile devices. B2X is a backwards-compatible evolution of ATSC 3.0 that harmonizes with 3GPP standards—including Release 17 and anticipated extensions—providing a true path toward converged broadcast-broadband delivery without abandoning the robust ATSC 3.0 foundation.

So if 5G Broadcast doesn’t offer a faster path to getting broadcast to mobile, what does it offer?

Well, for one thing, 5G Broadcast offers measurably inferior performance. This is partly because it’s not even really 5G. It’s 4G/LTE. In fact, I don’t know why I’m even calling it “5G” Broadcast at this point.

You don’t need to take my word for 4G Broadcast’s technical inferiority. Last summer, Brazil engaged in a lengthy, thoughtful process involving extensive laboratory and field testing to select the ATSC 3.0 physical layer as the over-the-air transmission system for the country’s upgrade to next-generation terrestrial broadcast services.

In response to its original call for proposals, Brazil’s Fórum do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital Terrestre (SBTVD) received 31 responses from 21 different organizations worldwide, resulting in 30 candidate technologies. This included four over-the-air physical layer candidate technologies: Advanced ISDB-T, ATSC 3.0, 5G Broadcast, and DTMB-A, all of which were subjected to both laboratory and field testing.

The full results of the first rounds of lab tests are available at https://forumsbtvd.org.br/ under the TV 3.0 Project tab. SBTVD determined that it was necessary to conduct further lab and field testing between the top two candidate standards, Advanced ISDB-T and ATSC 3.0, before making a final recommendation. The full results of the final round of lab tests are also available at the URL referenced above.

So Much More to Offer
Here’s the short version of the lab results: ATSC 3.0 outperformed every other candidate standard and was unanimously recommended by SBTVD. ATSC 3.0 demonstrated greater spectral efficiency, with higher throughput for both fixed indoor reception and high-speed mobile reception. (Somehow the so-called 5G Broadcast advocates never mention that their mobile standard doesn’t work well with devices that are actually mobile.)

But for our purposes today, it’s particularly worth noting that 4G Broadcast didn’t even make the cut for the final evaluation in field testing. That’s right—5G Broadcast advocates are trying to convince broadcasters to adopt an also-ran technology as the future of the industry.

It’s misleading to suggest broadcast television could become instantly scalable just by virtue of being “part of 3GPP.” The broadcast mode of 5G—FeMBMS or 5G Broadcast—is not implemented in those hundreds of millions of phones. It’s a separate mode, with its own antenna, filtering, LNA, silicon and other required components and software stack—none of which is found in current consumer devices.

ATSC 3.0 has so much more to offer and is so much further ahead in the game at this point. Broadcasters are already using ATSC 3.0 to deliver superior pictures and sound to viewers. Broadcasters have spent years working on ATSC 3.0, developing features like broadcast applications that allow broadcasters deploying NextGen TV to offer new interactive features and benefits, such as enhanced content, program restart, hyperlocal weather and programmatic advertising.

These applications also create an easy pathway to extending content created for digital platforms into the broadcast experience. And broadcasters are already developing new business models that will allow the industry to diversify revenue streams and thrive in the decades ahead.

The future of broadcast isn’t about shiny distractions—it’s about illumination. ATSC 3.0 isn’t just a standard, it’s a system designed to serve the public, empower broadcasters and evolve with technology. It’s on the air. It’s in consumer devices. It works. And if you attended the recent ATSC Next Gen Broadcast Conference … it’s all about mobile! While others chase hypotheticals, ATSC 3.0 delivers real value today—and lights the path to tomorrow.

COCKEYSVILLE, MD.—Sinclair and its subsidiary, ONE Media Technologies, hosted another in a continuing series of ATSC 3.0 device interoperability trials this week.

This time, the testing centered on DRM (digital rights management) and signal signing, dynamic ad insertion, the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer, dynamic service changes, interactive services, enhanced audio and video services, failover recovery, and performance of a “BEST” (Broadcast-Enabled Streaming Television) channel feature whereby an over-the-air signaled channel is delivered via a broadband connection.

According to Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media Technologies and Sinclair’s senior vice president of advanced technology, the June 3-7 “interop,” or “plugfest” was the seventh such event to be hosted by ONE Media, and the second in-person trialing of NextGenTV technology since 2020.

More than two dozen equipment manufacturers and broadcast groups participated in the trialing, which took place in the ONE Media lab facility at Sinclair’s headquarters located in this Baltimore suburb. More than 100 separate tests were scheduled to be conducted during the four-and-a-half-day event.

Trials involved air chain (encoder, packager, gateway and exciter) technology providers, as well as 3.0 receiver and emergency alerting equipment manufacturers. ONE Media and Sinclair, in addition to providing the facility, also distributed Baltimore area ATSC 3.0 off-air signals to participants’ workstations to create a real-world testing environment.

What's Being Trialed This Time
Along with continued testing of ATSC 3.0’s MMT (MPEG media transport) and DRM (digital rights management) components, this year’s sessions also addressed signal modulation changes, with the latter being especially important as new NextGen TV services such as datacasting, DAI (dynamic ad insertion) and BPS (broadcast positioning service) are rolled out.

As explained by the event’s coordinator, and ONE Media senior systems engineer, Jason Kim, with 3.0, the signal modulation component is not fixed as was the case in earlier DTV implementations and standards.

“With ATSC 3.0 you can make your signal robust, but you’re not going to have as much bandwidth and throughput,” he said. “[Alternatively], you can change things to increase bandwidth to deliver as much data as possible, but the signal is not going to be as robust. There’s a tradeoff.”

“We’re trying to find a sweet spot where we can continue our linear video services and also provide robust mobile data delivery. Since the ATSC 3.0 physical layer modulation is flexible, we can optimize this,” he added.

Kim stated that testing of 3.0 physical layer configurations in preparation for datacasting would be part of the interop schedule.

“This is important, not just for Sinclair, but for others as well,” he said. “We are testing different configurations end-to-end in the delivery chain. Our number one priority is to ensure that there is no service disruption to television viewers. We want to find a modulation ‘sweet spot’ where this is possible.”

Kim observed too that while DRM testing had been part of previous interop events, it figured heavily into this year’s schedule as well.

“We want to make sure that there is interoperability with all of the existing receivers out there,” he said.

Aitken amplified Kim’s remarks.

“You’ve had early issues in connection with DRM that have stuck in the minds of some,” said Aitken, recalling that there had been mixed opinions about the technology developed to ensure that a network’s high-quality content wasn’t accessible by those who would want to use it for monetary gain.

“The battle cry has been that DRM gets in the way,” said Aitken. “At this event, we’re seeing that the different permutations of DRM are working quite well. This is a testimony to everyone involved, and also serves to raise a hand in the crowd and say ‘wait a minute — there’s a lot being said about little to nothing.’ Here’s the proof [a consensus on DRM]. Here’s the industry coming together.”

A Quicker Way of Rolling out NextGen TV
Kim observed that the “failover recovery” element of the interop testing was being performed in connection with a technology that’s being developed to allow broadcasters to very quickly deploy ATSC 3.0 services.

“This is an air chain that’s set up in the cloud,” said Kim. “It’s a totally virtual air chain. ONE Media and Sinclair demonstrated this air-chain-in-the-cloud concept at the NAB Show this year. We’re using the same air chain in our tests this week. This is the first time that a cloud air chain has been used at an interop.”

He elaborated that the “failover” component of the testing was especially important for when cloud-based 3.0 is implemented on a large scale.

“We’re testing failover between cloud and on-premises air chain implementations to see how fast these changes can be made,” said Kim. We need to [establish] the best way to do this so the viewer doesn’t notice. We need to see how receivers react and if this changeover can be done seamlessly.”

Interop Timing
Aitken noted that this year’s interop event had been scheduled to occur close to the June 12-13 ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference and associated meetings.

“We thought that a lot of folks would be in town for either the interop or the ATSC annual conference; maybe for one or the other, and for many, both,” said Aitken. “If it didn’t make sense to come for one thing, it makes sense to come for two things. This event [the interop] is all the more timely because of the push within the FCC to sunset ATSC 1.0.

“I expect that within the next few years we’ll have the ATSC 3.0 national rollout well underway. Washington is sort of a strange place these days, so nobody is taking bets on exactly what’s going to happen and when something’s going to happen, but I can tell you that’s something’s going to happen.”

Advantages of In-Person Testing
While noting that ATSC 3.0-related interops of plugfests had continued virtually during the pandemic, both Aitken and Kim acknowledged that there was no substitute for the in-person testing and evaluation that was taking place at this year’s event.

“At an in-person event, we all see the same thing and work together to troubleshoot any problems,” said Kim. “This happens a lot faster when you’re doing things in person. You get more things done in person. It’s very different from a virtual environment.”

“If you get the right people together at the same time in the same place, and deal with the same issues, many of these issues are easy to resolve,” said Aitken. “We saw that last time, especially in connection with signal signing. One party had it right and three had it wrong. What they had differently was quickly worked out.

“We’ve got encoding, packaging, scheduling, modulation, along with the demodulation and display — the entire chain all in one place,” he observed. “It’s rare that you have in the same room multiple representatives from every piece of the broadcast chain.

The interop event attracted some 55 participants traveling from a variety of countries with a presence or interest in NextGen TV development. Organizations represented included ADTH, Airwavz, Alticast, Anywave, Ateme, DigiCAP, DS Broadcast, DTV Innovations, EiTV, Enensys, Gray Media, Harmonic, Hisense, Heartland Video Systems (HVS), iWedia, Koherence, Maru Eng, News-Press & Gazette (NPG), Pearl TV, Rhode & Schwarz, Samsung, Sinclair/ONE Media, Sony, Synamedia, TCL, Triveni Digital, Velope, and Zixi.

If Winston Churchill was leading the broadcast industry into battle against the Tech Giants, he might say something like this—

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues in the service of truth, trust, and community—

We are not gathered here today as we once were, in times of ease or complacency.
We stand here, as broadcasters, in a time of great peril and greater promise.
A time when the very nature of communication is being redrawn by forces larger than any one of us.

And make no mistake—we are at war.

Not with rifles or rockets. But with rules rewritten, with platforms unbound by the public trust, with titanic technology firms whose appetites are insatiable and whose ambitions are global.

They do not play by the rules we obey.
They are not bound by the obligations we uphold.
They are not required to serve the public good, to be present in times of crisis, to stand sentry over the last mile of American democracy.

We are.

And yet, they take what was once our sustenance.
The advertising revenues that sustained local journalism, local storytelling, local accountability—these now line the coffers of trillion-dollar giants, indifferent to our towns, our cities, our people.

But we are not defeated.
We are not relics.
We are not obsolete.

Because we possess something they do not: spectrum—earned, defended, and held in public trust. Presence—in every market, in every community, in every storm.
And now, a new weapon in our arsenal: ATSC 3.0.

With it, we are no longer confined to the past. We become what we must become: a converged, IP-based force for communication, delivering data, entertainment, emergency information, education, and innovation.

We call it B2X—Broadcast to Everything.
And with it, the line between broadcast and broadband disappears.
Not to surrender our identity, but to expand our reach, to embed ourselves in the fabric of modern digital life.

This is not just a technology.
It is not just a standard.
It is our future. It is our fight.

I offer no easy path, no guaranteed reward.

I offer what our industry has always given to the American people: Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Blood, for the battles we’ve already fought to preserve free speech and local service.
Toil, for the years we’ve labored to build an industry that touches every home.
Tears, for the voices lost, the newspapers shuttered, the newsrooms emptied.
And sweat, for the hard days ahead as we rise again.

And let us not forget our solemn duty—to inform in times of emergency. When wires fall and networks fail, we remain.But imagine the strength we’d wield if our signal reached not just the television set or the dashboard radio, but every mobile phone, every connected device—a lifeline in every pocket, every hand. ATSC 3.0 and B2X make this possible—not someday, but now.

But I also offer this—Victory.

Victory through reinvention.
Victory through innovation.
Victory through unshakable localism and unstoppable national scale.
Victory through ATSC 3.0 and B2X—through coexistence, convergence, and alignment with the world as it is, and as it will become.

Without victory, there is no survival.

But with it—there is more than survival.
There is a future.
There is relevance.
There is greatness.

Let the world know: we are not done. We are not going quietly.
We will adapt. We will rise. And yes—we will win.

Authored by Mark A. Aitken
A Broadcast Industry Veteran and Champion for Spectrum’s Highest Calling

COCKEYSVILLE, MD.—The Sinclair Broadcast Group, along with the Pearl TV consortium, hosted yet another ATSC 3.0 device interoperability test at the ONE Media lab at SBG headquarters in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Md., June 3-7. 

The latest in a series of ongoing trials, this interop event was focused on such NextGen TV elements as digital rights management and signing in connection with MMT (MPEG Media Transport) and ROUTE (Real-time Object delivery over Unidirectional Transport), the Advanced Emergency Information broadcaster application, as well as basic interoperability testing of new models from TV set manufacturers.

According to Mark Aitken, SBG’s SVP of advanced technology, this is the sixth time Sinclair has sponsored an interop, the first occurring in 2016. It is also the first fully in-person testing event post-pandemic.

 The testing sessions involved most of the major hardware and software players in the field of NextGen TV—some two dozen—including encoder technology providers, emergency alerting gear, test equipment and receiver manufacturers. In addition to providing the facility, SBG also distributed ATSC 3.0 off-air signals from Baltimore broadcasters to provide a real-world environment. 

Jason Kim, ONE Media Engineer and coordinator of the event, said that literally thousands of tests were scheduled to be performed during the four-and-a-half-day event.

“There are many air chain equipment combinations—encoders, packagers, schedulers—with the ways things are implemented in each varying from vendor to vendor,” he said. “For instance, one encoder will be tested with a combination of all different packagers. By the time everything is finished), there will be thousands of different combinations trialed.”

What's Driving This 'Interop?'
With ATSC 3.0 now available to more than 75% of U.S. households, one might ask: Why is such continued testing necessary?  Weren’t all of the pieces fitted together a long time ago? It works—why do we need more interoperability testing?

The answer is both “yes” and “no.” While NextGen TV is—and has been—informing and entertaining broadcast audiences, it was designed to be flexible and extensible in terms of feature sets and functionalities as the technology surrounding it evolves. 

 “There are parts of the standard that are in the ATSC’s ‘Candidate’ phase, and it’s usual before putting these to a full vote of the ATSC membership that the Candidate Standard be fully vetted,” Aitken said, adding that testing on some elements of the standard was intentionally sidelined as the new TV service emerged. 

“MMT, which is one of two transport mechanisms in the standard, was put off for implementation intentionally by the big TV manufacturers,” he said. “We are now finalizing the MMT side of transport, particularly around security and DRM (digital rights management) and those related activities.”

 Aitken added that a very important aspect of the security-related portion of plugfest testing this time involved “signing.”

 “This is testing the certification by the broadcasters that it’s their content (signal and application), and also expiration of that certificate,” he said. “When in the process of exchanging this secure content along with DRM and the authorization to receive the content, the certificates expire,” he said… “and when those certificates expire—they are intentionally allowed to expire in this testing—we want to watch to see what happens to the various TV sets and set-top boxes.

 “The whole purpose of security (signal and application signing) and DRM is to protect the user and the content, and the other side of the equation is that when the related certificates and DRM keys expire, you want to make sure that the sets operate normally and don’t get locked up,” he added.

Ensuring the New ‘Keys’ Fit All of the Existing “Locks’
Plugfest coordinator Kim noted that such compatibility testing is becoming more and more crucial as NextGen TV matures.

“As we deploy more of the advanced features of ATSC 3.0, interoperability has become more important than ever,” he said. “Right now, we are deploying services that we weren’t able to with 1.0, so there are a lot of new features that we are deploying as part of ATSC 3.0 service. So, we want to make sure that all receivers can support the services we are providing.”

In describing the trialing, Kim observed that it begins with some basic or “baseline” testing as a generalized health check of receivers from multiple manufacturers. 

“We call this ‘watch only’ TV,” he said. “It’s basically to see if all of the receivers function with over-the-air signals from our rooftop antenna. We want to baseline all the receivers that are here to ensure that they can support basic audio and video services. Once this is done, we go into different features that are now in production or that are going to be deployed.”

Kim said an important part of the testing for Sinclair was in evaluating “what we call ‘BEST (Broadcast-Enabled Streaming Television) Channel,’ where we are broadcasting the media presentation description over-the-air and the receiver is also pulling audio and video segments from a broadband connection.”

He noted that SBG has initiated this dual-delivery mechanism in some 40 markets over the past several months, but a few glitches were observed in the rollout.

“When we first deployed it, not every receiver supported it,” he said. “We are working together with the receiver guys that are here at the interop and with our broadcast air chain companies to make sure that our new BEST channel is supported by all receivers out there. We want to make sure what we are deploying can be received by all receivers.” 

What's it Like at an Interop?
For those not familiar with plugfests, perhaps the best way to describe the environment as something akin to a college study hall, with individuals huddled over laptop computers and a generally hushed atmosphere. There’s an adjacent break room where participants are free to fortify themselves with snacks, coffee, and soft drinks. 

What sets an “interop” event apart is that there are multiple (a dozen or so) wall-mounted large screen television receivers filling up most of the available lab wall space, and two distinct groups of players or teams—the “transmitters” and the “receivers”—continuously interacting with each other. The first group sends out various sets of computer code and the other attempts to decode it across multiple devices or device simulators. Such trialing is necessary to ensure complete compatibility between all hardware and software used in NextGen TV broadcasting.

Most of the communication among players is via computer keyboards and displays, with only an occasional “in-person” visit from a representative of one group with another when there’s a snag. Such events are essential in delivering an end-to-end digital television system that performs without any hiccups, as a very minor parameter change “upstream” has the potential to disable functions or even shut down operations in devices that are “downstream.”

Aitken noted that timing and location of this latest interoperability testing event was planned to facilitate attendance at the June 12-14 ATSC NextGen TV Broadcast Conference in Washington, D.C. by out-of-area plugfest participants—particularly those based outside the United States. 

The plugfest attracted some 65 participants from seven countries, who represented some two dozen companies. These included ADTH, Airwavz, Alticast, Ateme, DigiCAP, DS Broadcast, DTV Innovations, Enensys, Gray Television, Heartland Video Systems, Hisense, Harmonic, iWedia, Koherence, Lowasis, NBC Universal, Pearl TV, Samsung, SBG, Sony, TCL, Triveni Digital, Vbox, and Verance.

Fifteen years ago this month, U.S. broadcasters “cut the cord” on NTSC, shutting down analog TV and putting the finishing touches on a transition to digital that lasted more than a decade. 

Viewer response was fairly muted, but that’s because broadcasters, regulators and consumer electronics companies rightly anticipated an outcry if too many viewers lost access to a free over-the-air signal. Navigating the deadline to shut down analog was a frustrating process as all parties involved attempted to assemble the variety of moving parts that made up the transition.

In the summer of 2024, the industry is looking at the next shutdown—the end of ATSC 1.0. Despite the arduous task that faced broadcasters in the 2000s during the first transition, this next transition could be even harder to achieve.

Comparing the two transitions is apples to oranges. The first transition was mainly based on regulatory guidelines that in essence, forced industries to cooperate toward a common goal. The cable, broadcast and consumer electronics industries were also facing a far less complex media ecosystem where there was less competition for eyeballs. And perhaps the biggest factor was the decrease in prices for large screen 16:9 flat screens that aligned with broadcasters’ move to HDTV, a very noticeable and welcome advance for home viewers.

What Do You Get With NextGen TV?
The transition to ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV) is touted as “market-driven” with a lighter regulatory touch than the move to 1.0. There are no specific deadlines for stations to deploy the standard nor are there any mandates to provide tuners in any receiving devices. There aren’t any mandates for broadcasters to provide anything more than simulcasting ATSC 1.0. 

And, in contrast to the first transition, broadcasters face a much more complex media landscape and Silicon Valley competitors with far deeper pockets and much less to lose if a particular experimental service failed (remember Quibi?). It’s also harder to get viewers who are now used to getting their programs in 4K and HDR to get excited about 4K HDR broadcasts. 

Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group would beg to differ on that front. 

“HDR is very significant, and one of the promises of the ATSC 3.0 standard is better television for America’s living rooms,” Aitken said at this year’s NAB Show. “It was the focus of the ATSC at this year’s CES. CBS’s delivery of the February Super Bowl LVIII in HDR should spur others to add this enhancement to their ATSC 3.0 transmissions and I expect to see announcements from other networks,” said Aitken, who added that some 40 Sinclair stations are on the air with Advanced HDR by Technicolor. 

Aitken’s sentiments are echoed by Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, the consortium of broadcasters and manufacturers promoting NextGen TV, who discussed how local Louisville, Ky. TV stations promoted HDR, 4K and Atmos immersive audio in their local 3.0 broadcasts during the week leading up to the 2024 Kentucky Derby. Local stations partnered with a local retailer to give away NextGen TV sets and promotions on their websites attracted “a significant increase in traffic.”

“I think that is a good indicator of the interest in HDR,” she said. Schelle also noted Pearl’s recent announcement that several large station groups, including Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Hearst Television, Tegna and The E.W. Scripps Co. will accelerate funding of the ATSC 3.0 Framework Authority (A3FA), the driving force behind the RUN3TV platform. Pearl TV says it expects additional broadcast groups to become involved in the future.

“RUN3TV is  built by broadcasters for broadcasters and it allows companies who built on the platform to easily build applications and try out unique features and have them be able to work across the multitudes of operating systems that are currently out there and more to come,” she said.

A new partnership with ROXi to launch interactive music channels, as well as NBC’s announcement that affiliates in top markets are launching ancillary services via NextGen TV were among the other 3.0 highlights announced at the NAB Show in April. 

Beyond consumer applications, broadcasters are also using a portion of their spectrum to deploy new datacasting services. Also at the NAB Show, Sinclair launched its “Broadspan” datacast service in partnership with Edgio. The new service will enable data distribution in all the current markets where Sinclair stations are offering ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley invited other station groups to join the service. 

Bandwidth Constraints
While all of these new capabilities are brought to us via the ingenious capability of ATSC 3.0’s combination of broadcast with IP, there’s only so much bandwidth available and that bandwidth is further constrained by the 1.0 simulcasting requirement.

At presstime, ATSC 3.0 has been launched by more than 91 stations in 40 markets, bringing the advanced broadcast standard to within reach of more than 75% of U.S. households. Pearl TV says it expects that number to grow to more than 200 stations in 53 markets by the end of 2024.

Most of those stations are simulcasting 3.0 with 1.0 over “lighthouse” transmission partnerships in which one local station offers up its transmission facilities to “host” the other 3.0 stations in particular markets. This requirement is in place during the transition to ATSC 3.0. Originally, the FCC imposed a 2025 deadline to end 1.0 simulcasting but in 2023, moved the date to July 17, 2027. The decision was in part predicated by the industry’s exhortations to the commission earlier in the year about a “stalled” transition.  

In response, FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the formation of the “Future of TV” task force at the 2023 NAB Show, inviting all industry players to work together towards a successful conclusion of the transition to 3.0. 

“This Future of Television initiative will gather industry, government, and public interest stakeholders to establish a roadmap for a transition to ATSC 3.0 that serves the public interest” Rosenworcel said at the time. “A successful transition will provide for an orderly shift from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0 and will allow broadcasters to innovate while protecting consumers, especially those most vulnerable.”    

‘Frank’ and ‘Candid’
The FCC asked the NAB to take the lead by hosting the meetings, and while the industry has been tight-lipped about characterizing the tone, the best the press has been able to get out of sources is that they are “frank” and “candid,” which, in Inside the Beltway-speak, can have a wide variety of meanings. 

But given the cable industry’s long-held viewpoint that certain guardrails must be in place before it replaces 1.0 with 3.0 and the consumer electronics industry’s vehement opposition to any Congressional tuner mandates, it’s understandable that the task force may not arrive at a definitive deadline that will please everyone.

The NAB, for its part, is staying on message. “The Future of TV initiative has made great progress, and we are looking forward to releasing the report later this year,” they told TV Tech. “We appreciate the participation of everyone involved in this effort to help ensure a smooth transition.”

ATSC President Madeleine Noland agrees that ending the transition is top of mind for broadcasters, noting that until a deadline is established, broadcasters are finding ways to add more capabilities despite the bandwidth constraints. 

“As exciting as datacasting is, until the transition is farther along—and I don’t mean getting from 75% to 100%—but I mean within a given market, it’s important to have more transmitters available with 3.0. I think about the Boston market and we have one transmitter up, which is carrying five or six high-definition signals and at least two standard-definition search services. There’s not a lot of room to do anything else.”

Noland mentioned the recent addition of five more 3.0 stations in the San Antonio market as one of the ways around such constraints. “I gotta tip my hat to San Antonio for being able to get that second stick up.“ Noland said, adding that the current focus will not be in trying to finish the other 25%, but in expanding coverage in existing markets. “Let’s try to get depth in the markets that we already have because we’ve got all the big markets; let’s build it out and be able to do more with 3.0 in those markets.”

Consumer Devices
According to the CTA,  the cumulative U.S. installed base of NextGen TV receivers topped 10.3 million in 2023 and consumer sales of NextGen TV products are expected to increase by 45% in 2024. ATSC says more than 100 consumer products that support NextGen TV are expected to be available by the end of 2024, with the vast majority being TV sets from Sony, Hisense, TCL and Samsung. LG, which announced a suspension of the manufacturing of NextGen TV sets in 2023 due to a patent dispute, currently sits on the sidelines.   

Unlike the transition from analog to digital when the federal government subsidized the purchase of low-cost digital tuners for consumers who have yet to go digital, NextGen TV’s market-based approach provides no such incentives. 

One person, however, believes that a pure market driven approach is unrealistic and notes that public-private partnerships between industry and the government have an historic precedent that should also play a part in the transition to NextGen TV. 

John Lawson, executive director of AWARN, a consortium of business and government entities promoting advanced emergency alerting technologies on 3.0, thinks  low-cost converter boxes subsidized by the federal government would help accelerate the move to sunset 1.0. 

In an op-ed on TV Newscheck in March, Lawson wrote: 

“Congress would establish a new voucher program for 3.0 set-top boxes and dongles. This time, however, the subsidy program would be established in the name of public safety, for both resilient alerting in the face of climate change and national security to provide a back-up for GPS. Broadcasters would agree to carry Advanced Emergency Information, perhaps with sunset provisions for EAS, and receivers would be enabled to display AEI messages.”

Lawson said he arrived at his position after a meeting with the FCC as well as with broadcasters in Michigan.

“Senior staff at the FCC told me that the broadcast industry had made it clear from the beginning in their opinion that the 3.0 transition was unlike the transition from analog to digital, and that it would be a purely market driven approach,” he said. “And then I went out on the road so to speak to the Michigan Broadcast Engineering Conference I really got a dose of reality,” adding that nobody raised their hand when he asked attendees if the 3.0 transition was “on the right track.”

Lawson adds that his proposal follows a traditional path and promotes, “in effect, a partnership between government and industry.”

“American capitalism is dependent upon R&D and other investments by the federal government and it allows companies like Apple and Meta and many others to make a lot of money. [But] there's a general healthy weariness among the broadcast industry about getting government involved but there are many, many examples of where the two actually support each other.”

Will it Survive as a Purely Market-Driven Transition?
The transition to ATSC 3.0 contains an insane number of moving parts as well as a variety of approaches and while no one is suggesting Congressional mandates of any kind, in its current state, there remains some question as to whether it will survive its status as a completely market-based transition.  

But don’t tell that to Rob Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution with Gray TV and chairman of Pearl TV who says the transition to 3.0 is moving at a faster pace than the move to 1.0. 

“[The transition] has worked better than the government-mandated transition 20 years ago, we are moving ahead faster,” Folliard said. “And I think the reason the market-based approaches work is because the broadcasters see a huge opportunity, a huge ROI, and we’re making it work. We’re finding creative ways to cooperate, channel share, in order to make the transition happen.”

With ATSC 3.0 (aka “NextGen TV) now reaching approximately 75% of U.S. households, emphasis at the 2024 NAB Show will be on refinements and new applications for the advanced broadcast format—the most visible being HDR (high dynamic range).

“We’re expecting broadcasters to begin ‘taking the new car for a drive,’ with the expansion of high dynamic range programming to show viewers one of the key advantages of the new service—exceptional video that is matched with the Dolby audio system,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

“We’re calling this ‘the year of HDR’ because a lot of stations have received, or will receive, permission to scale services into High Dynamic Range,” added Dave Folsom, Pearl TV group’s engineering lead. “At least two encoder manufacturers can now do this scaling, and that will make the service better. In most locations it will be provided as a 1080p service.”

Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, also weighed on the addition of high dynamic range.

“HDR is very significant, and one of the promises of the ATSC 3.0 standard is better television for America’s living rooms,” said Aitken. “It was the focus of the ATSC at this year’s CES. CBS’s delivery of the February Super Bowl LVIII in HDR should spur others to add this enhancement to their ATSC 3.0 transmissions and I expect to see announcements from other networks,” said Aitken, noting that HDR is nothing new at Sinclair. “We’ve been broadcasting HDR 24/7 at all of our stations with ATSC 3.0. Some 40 Sinclair stations are on the air with Advanced HDR by Technicolor.”

Seeing is Believing
West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center will host most of the 3.0 exhibitors and perhaps the best first stop for attendees interested in 3.0 is the ATSC booth (W3056).

“We plan to showcase both the NextGen TV sets and also upgrade accessory receivers at the NAB Show to make sure broadcasters are aware of the variety of set-top devices coming for consumers,” said Noland. “Already, consumers have their choice of NextGen TV-certified and security-verified receiving devices from ADTH and Zinwell.”

“There are a lot of standalone devices now available to enable NextGen TV reception with legacy receivers,” added Pearl’s Folsom. “All modern TV sets have HDMI input capability, so when a conversion device is added the user can painlessly switch between ATSC 1.0 and 3.0. This should go a long way to greasing the skids to full adoption.”

Aitken says Sinclair will also have an exhibits-area presence at the show with ATSC, and both an “on-floor suite” not far from  the ATSC booth, and a Wynn suite, both demonstrating ATSC 3.0 datacasting. He also promised some surprise announcements at the show on recent major datacasting developments.

Additional Space for 3.0
Aitken says he hopes there is news from the NAB Show on a date for sunsetting 1.0, giving broadcasters more bandwidth to roll out the full inventory of audio, video and data enhancements that are part of 3.0.

“I believe there’s good progress being made in the Future of Television Initiative [dealing with ATSC 1.0 switch-off and other 3.0 transition issues] within the industry, with the NAB playing a key role and the FCC and other regulatory bodies coming to an understanding of the nature of what has to happen in order to jettison the first stage of this rocket, ignite the second stage, and be securely in orbit,” Aitken added.

Anne Schelle, Pearl TV’s managing director, spotlighted another big NextGen TV development — “Run3 TV—that will be featured at the NAB Show.

“Run 3 is a powerful middleware solution that acts as an abstraction layer, simplifying the complex process of developing and deploying NextGen TV applications across varying operating systems and devices,” said Schelle, adding that it will allow broadcasters to reach wider audiences with more efficiency and less technical overhead.

“At the 2024 NAB show, developers such as Velope, Playanywhere, Gameloop, and Roxi will showcase the innovative applications and capabilities enabled by Run3TV, highlighting the platform’s role in driving the future of interactive TV,” Schelle added.

New NextGen TV Hardware
Along with the new and updated 3.0 applications, manufacturers have been busy developing new products to show on the exhibit floor.

Heading the lineup of new transmitters for ATSC 3.0 is the new E-Compact EC600HP-BB3 series from Hitachi-Comark, optimized for LPTV/MPTV replacements and ATSC 3.0 SFN deployments, according to Joe Turbolski, Hitachi-Comark’s vice president of sales and marketing. 

GatesAir will launch its Maxiva VLXTE-OP, “which essentially rounds out the top end of the Maxiva family for ATSC 3.0 transmission,” said Steve Rossiter, GatesAir TV systems applications engineer.

Although details weren’t fully available at press time, Rohde & Schwarz is also promising a new transmitter launch. “Rhode & Schwarz has developed a new and next-generation ATSC 3.0-native transmitter that embraces the liquid-cooled design and legacy while enabling operators to maximize their efficiency at minimized operational cost,” said Manfred Reitmeier, R&S’s vice president of broadcast and amplifier systems.“

Dielectric President Keith Pelletier says the company will show their latest antenna offerings, including the Powerlite TFU-WB-LP series. “Dielectric has spent the last several years building out its portfolio of ATSC 3.0 solutions,” he said. “We are 95% there in terms of filling out the entire product line, which will essentially allow us to serve any ATSC 3.0 requirements. Dielectric expects to fill in some final gaps with new models at NAB 2024.”

Attendees will also want to check out Harmonic’s XOS media processor and cloud-based VOS 360 Media SaaS offerings. “These feature a unique cloud-native common software foundation and next-gen media processing technology,” said Jing Zhou, Harmonic’s director of broadcast solutions. “They enable broadcasters to deliver ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 services simultaneously and efficiently, with feature enhancements including AI-powered video compression and quality optimization, simplified SDR/HDR conversions, and more.”

Also, look for Sencore’s new AG 2700 for monitoring of both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 OTA signals. It provides ASI and IP outputs signals, and includes SNMP functionality.

These new product offerings only represent a small sampling of NextGen TV technologies that will be on display at the 2024 NAB Show. 

NextGen TV Educational Opportunities
In addition to tire-kicking and networking opportunities at exhibitor’s booths, you’ll also want to take advantage of the large number of presentations being offered on ATSC 3.0 television. These are part of the BEIT (Broadcast Engineering and IT) sessions featured Saturday through Tuesday at the 2024 NAB Show.

Presentations will cover advanced emergency alerting, ATSC 3.0 television translators, use of ATSC 3.0 transmissions for positioning systems, converging ATSC 3.0 and 5G technologies, offloading of video streaming content via NextGen TV and more.

Of particular interest to broadcasters is the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society’s Saturday afternoon presentation, “ATSC 3.0 Business Case and Monetization,” focusing on creating additional revenue streams for stations. According to the session organizers, such topics as the delivery of audio (radio) services via ATSC 3.0, targeted advertising, use of geo-localized datacasting, and delivery of ATSC 3.0 enhancements through the use of virtual (Internet-delivered) channels will all be included.

Paul Shulins, IEEE BTS president and president of the Shulins Solutions consulting firm, terms this session a “must-attend” event. 

“Broadcasters today have many different options to generate revenue besides the traditional advertising dollars,” said Shulins. “Thanks to ATSC 3.0 this session will showcase several new creative concepts for monetizing your data capacity.”

Another session explores a relatively new ATSC 3.0 technology, “core networks,” which will provide delivery of television services and data across multiple TV transmission facilities in multiple markets.

“The ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Core Networks: Serving diverse use-cases across a heterogeneous broadcast and supplier ecosystem,” Tuesday afternoon panel discussion will be moderated by Spectra Rep COO y the chief operating officer at Spectra Rep, John McCoskey.

“Broadcast core networks connect broadcasters, end-user service providers, and virtualized network infrastructure providers and enable data-centric businesses using ATSC 3.0,” McCoskey. “Don’t miss this session if you are interested in learning about the role, value, and importance of broadcast core networks as a critical part of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast ecosystem.”

For a complete listing of BEIT ATSC 3.0-related sessions and times, visit https://nabshow.com/2024/learn/conferences/broadcast-engineering

It’s certainly no secret that radio broadcasting has been moving away from its century-old analog over-the-air delivery platform. 

One large media company, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, is now field-testing a delivery modality that may prove to be the medium’s next step into 21st century broadcast ecosystems. 

The ATSC 3.0 or “NextGen TV” IP-based digital television transmission system is being rolled out rapidly across the country, with a projected availability in 82 percent of U.S. markets by year’s end; and the technology is being beta-tested at a Sinclair-owned ATSC 3.0 Class A television property in the Washington, D.C. market, WIAV(CD). 

But for (TV Tech sister brand) Radio World readers, the story of interest here is that, in addition to multiple streams of NextGen TV content, the station is providing a “multiplex” of audio services that includes Hubbard Broadcasting’s all-news operation in the nation’s capital, WTOP(FM). 

An Open Door?
Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s senior vice president of advanced technology and president of One Media 3.0, says the initiative is part of a larger effort exploring the full potential of the hybrid over-the-air/internet digital television transmission standard in terms of new business models and opportunities for broadcasters.

“We’ve been building out the Baltimore/Washington marketplace with some ATSC 3 showcase applications for automotive,” said Aitken. “ATSC 3 opens the door for providing additional content beyond television services.”

The package of a dozen or so audio services, including WTOP, is available free to owners of ATSC 3.0 television receivers. This is enabled through an app that’s easily executed on the sets themselves as a function of the NextGen TV interactive layer.

“With an ATSC 3 television set, the user launches the app that’s announced on the channel,” said Aitken. “The app lists the available services. We launched the audio services inside of STIRR XT (Sinclair’s brand for NextGen TV alternative services). 

“When you turn to the channel there’s a very recognizable icon that looks like a remote control that questions the viewer about launching the app. Using the remote control the user can navigate around various services; weather, news, traffic, headlines, etc. As well, there is STIRR XT, and inside of that are music services which include country, rock, classical and other services. The WTOP audio is just one piece of this [although] it’s at the top of the audio service list as we wanted to bring local radio into the environment.”

Aitken added that the “radio” app is not specific to one make of NextGen TV but is designed to install on any of the LG, Samsung and Sony sets that offer ATSC 3.0 capability.

The music channels accompanying WTOP are by a third-party Stingray, which provides customized audio services.

Alternative to Satellite?
Aitken noted that this NextGen TV audio delivery service is thought of as a possible alternative to that provided by satellite broadcaster SiriusXM, but with the addition of existing local radio services that’s already familiar with listeners.

“If we can include local radio in different markets as part of that whole experience, we believe that there’s a compelling consumer proposition to offer that as a paid service. You might get 100 channels that are uniformly the same and not much different than SiriusXM — for example ’70s, ’80s, ’90s channels, an Elvis channel, a classical channel, all of those — but part of that mix should be local radio.”

Aitken said the inclusion of local radio programming streams and other audio with television makes sense, especially with the plethora of consumer devices for consuming content that exist today.

“When content comes in on different platforms … this is a barrier to many consumers — having to switch from one platform to another,” he said. 

“Part of the equation is getting the user interface right. People don’t like having to push buttons other than ‘channel up/channel down’ and ‘volume up/volume down’ in between services. NextGen TV can be the common platform that brings different services together for a great consumer experience.”

Aitken envisions using the enhanced capacity for delivering data that’s part of the ATSC 3.0 standard for delivery of perhaps 50 to 100 or more audio services, without affecting the capability for simultaneously providing very high-quality television.

“[With ATSC 3.0] we’re doing HD video with 3 mbps typically, if one of the channels is operating with HDR (high dynamic range), we might use more bits. However, the bits used [for AC-4 audio] right now are inconsequential. You could do a voice-only service using xHE-AAC compression with only 6 or 7 kbps. You can do stereo music services starting at 12 kbps. So, you’re not talking about using up a whole lot of capacity. 

“What that means on the inverse side is that you can provide a very robust tier — a very robust PLP (physical layer pipe) inside ATSC 3 with a very robust modulation and coding formulation — and provide excellent indoor and mobile service without having to sacrifice a lot of spectrum.”

(The original ATSC 1.0 digital television compression scheme caps data rates at about 19 mbps within a 6 MHz television channel, while the much more efficient ATSC 3.0 coding methodology can provide upwards of 25 mbps within the same 6 MHz of broadcast spectrum at similar SNR.)

When asked about promotion of the ancillary audio service available on Sinclair’s D.C. TV station, Aitken said that there had been none. 

“There’s been no advance publicity; people discover it through the process of discovering ATSC 3. The response to [the audio service] has been positive, based on data analytics collected on those devices.”

Useful Feedback
Such data analytics leads to another big plus that’s associated with ATSC 3.0, whether the programming being consumed is video or audio. The hybrid OTA/internet connectivity of the NextGen TVs provides a return channel from consumers that can provide content producers or distributors with “instant” demographics on how their content is going over with consumers.

“In the ATSC world where the smart TV is connected to the internet, we can get real data about consumer actions,” said Aitken. “This is real data, not data extrapolated through Nielsen.”

Aitken said that at this point in the trial his company is not paying a lot of attention to such feedback for actionable activity, but it could be valuable as the concept of radio-via-ATSC 3.0 takes off. 

He mentioned that the potential interactivity between content originators and consumers afforded by NextGen TV is starting to get some creative juices flowing within the radio community.

“Some of the radio guys have ideas about things that they’d like to do, but can’t do in radio today, like promotions for concerts,” said Aitken. He said Sinclair has been approached by some radio groups for more information about “3.0 radio.”

Sinclair is not currently in the radio broadcasting business, but has owned properties in the Seattle market in the past, and previously experimented with airing radio audio there in connection with its ATSC 3.0 TV broadcasts. Asked if the company is considering re-entering radio, Aitken replied that there had been some discussion, but nothing has been decided yet. The on-going D.C. market “proof of concept” trial is being conducted just “to show that there are automotive and audio business opportunities.”

“As we’re not in the radio business [now], we’re probably looking at partnering where we sell the bits and someone else provides the audio service.”

He observed that while the audio services are now provided free, this would eventually change in today’s world of “bits for bucks,” especially when 3.0 capabilities are extended to automobiles.

“In the automotive environment, we think that such services should be for pay,” said Aitken. “We think that there are opportunities, or certainly value, in providing competition to SiriusXM, [which comes] with an interactivity that’s not available on any other platform.”

This article originally appeared on Radio World.

WASHINGTON—Three industry executives have been elected to the ATSC Board of Directors: Mark Aitken, Mark Corl and Jon Fairhurst. All three will serve three-year terms set to begin in January 2021.

Aitken, vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, was elected to the board for the first time. Corl, from Triveni Digital, and Fairhurst, from Samsung, were both re-elected.

Also joining the board as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) 2021 ATSC board representative is Dr. Yiyan Wu of the Communications Research Centre.

Craig Todd, who is set to retire from Dolby, will end his time on the board in 2020. As will Wayne Luplow, former ATSC Board chairman and a retired Zenith executive, who most recently represented IEEE on the board.

The new board members will join a group with Lynn Claudy, NAB; Jim DeChant, News-Press & Gazette Company; Richard Friedel, Fox Television Stations; Ira Goldstone, Cobalt Digital; Dr. Jong Kim, LG Electronics; Brian Markwalter, CTA; Anne Schelle, Pearl TV; Andy Scott, NCTA—The Internet and Television Association; Glenn Reitmeier, GlennReitmeierTV LLC; Dave Siegler, SMPTE; and Pete Sockett, Capitol Broadcasting.

On the agenda for the first meeting in 2021 will be the election of a new chairman, as Claudy’s time in the position will conclude in 2020.

“ATSC is fortunate to have Directors who bring a wide range of skills, backgrounds and expertise to the board,” said Madeleine Noland, ATSC president. “I feel privileged to be able to work with this outstanding group of people as we guide the organization forward in 2021, which promises to be a critical year for next-generation broadcasting in the United States and around the world.”

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.

HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Local TV news will become a real-time emergency information portal with the new broadcast technology being deployed in cities across the nation. ATSC 3.0—also referred to as “NextGen”—can automatically target the impact zone of an incident with pre-formatted alerts. This means less revenue lost to service disruptions, more relevance to viewers and more revenue options for broadcasters. 

“Currently, newsrooms and the Emergency Alert System are separate,” said Ed Czarnecki, chairman of the ATSC TGS3-10 Emergency Alert AHG Working Group and vice chair of ATSC Advanced Emergency Information Implementation. “This gives the station flexibility and control over content, and the audience controls what they want to see,” he said during a recent webinar—the second in a six-episode series on how to make money with NextGen TV. “It makes emergency information a value-added service that not only increases community engagement, but … may provide additional abilities to monetize the information.”

MAKING IT EASY

Emergency alerts cover an escalating spectrum of urgency, from traffic alerts to emergency evacuation orders. They often come from multiple agencies and tend to bypass the newsroom. NextGen changes that without throwing a wrench into the workflow.

“We want to work within the current workflow,” said webinar panelist Lane Michaelsen, group news director for Sinclair Broadcast Group. “What we want to keep in mind here is the user and producer experience, so that it’s not an additional mind game on either end.”  

Accordingly, Sinclair is developing alert templates that can go out as they are. Severe weather warnings, for example, can be pre-embedded with links to the station, a live camera, radar and perhaps a sponsorship. These can go out without being touched by a producer, or enhanced within the alert template with live video and additional information. Sinclair’s WJLA and Fox’s WTTG in Washington, D.C., are preparing to test this advanced alerting capability over a 60-day period to hammer out a turnkey workflow on the station side.

On the receiver side, geo-targeting is activated within the NextGen consumer device, so only those devices in affected areas will display the alert, which can run as a live-linked bug or a crawl concurrent with programming. With the exception of presidential EAS messages and tests, viewers decide what they want to see.

Panelist Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, described this ability as a “game changer” that will improve newsroom workflow, “not the least of which because the phones won’t be ringing off the hook because you’re [a television station] in say, Kansas City, Mo., that has interrupted programming for your entire viewing area for a tornado warning in a fringe county. This will allow people in that county on the edge of your viewing area … to get all the information [they] need without affecting those not in the path of the storm.”

BROADCAST APP IS KEY

This advanced alerting capability rests on the NextGen Broadcast App, which will reside in receivers and enable user clickthrough for further information. It is also the foundation of geo-targeted advertising by ZIP Code, business district or other granular criteria. (More on NextGen Advertising in webinar No. 3, scheduled for Aug. 4 at 2 p.m. ET. Register here.)

What’s more, said panelist Jim DeChant, vice president of technology at News-Press & Gazette, the Broadcast App will underpin the ecosystem for reaching NextGen-enabled mobile phones, computers and TVs.

“The broadcaster app itself will have the look and feel of social media, so basically, instead of changing channels and doing different things on different devices, people will be able to access information in similar ways across all media,” he said.

DeChant also emphasized how integrating emergency information into the news workflow can affect communities in times of crisis. At News-Press Gazette, TV stations use bespoke workflow software that allows journalists to post stories from the field to digital platforms and the playout server simultaneously, in real time. NPG witnessed the power of this immediacy last August after a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, drove misinformation on social media and panic in the community. 

“Our newsroom was able, in real time, to show people what was happening in their community, and in about four hours time, we were able to calm the community down and give people the information they needed,” he said. “I see the emergency alerting system as being so core to this, and 3.0 being able to provide that user experience that will literally be the calming lifeline to a community.”

REACHING THE WIDEST AUDIENCE

Ultimately, advanced alerting will be effective proportionally to how many people see it, so it’s imperative to understand what gets attention as younger generations migrate away from TV. 

“It’s no secret that the audience is changing and along with it, the way news is consumed,” said Fred Baumgartner, director of NextGen TV Implementation at ONE Media and moderator of the webinar.

TV industry strategist and webinar series producer Josh Gordon weighed in with a recent survey* of more than 2,000 respondents that demonstrated how younger and older viewers prefer news stories that impact them differently. Looking across generations—Gen Zs 18-21; Millennials, 22-37; Gen Xers 38-53 and Boomers, 54-72— younger respondents prefer viewing news on mobile devices and have greater preference for news stories that surprise them; older viewers prefer large screen TVs  and have a diminished desire for news that surprises. Asked generically about local TV news, all age groups said it made them feel connected to their communities. Also, if there was something people wanted to know about their communities, they first turned to local TV news.

However, younger viewers said they preferred stories that “make me think” or “surprise me,” while older viewers  preferred “reports on issues I care about” and helped them “prepare for my day.” 

“Younger viewers are more opportunistic,” Gordon said. “They have access to their information all the time. It’s something to think about as we consider how to construct content that will appeal to a younger audience.”

LAS VEGAS—NextGen TV took a major step forward with the launch of ATSC 3.0 over-the-air commercial television service in Las Vegas from network affiliates owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group and The E.W. Scripps Company.

The stations, Sinclair’s KSNV NBC and KVCW CW affiliates, Nexstar’s KLAS CBS affiliate and Scripps’ KTNV ABC affiliate, are sharing a single 6 MHz channel and transmitting from Sinclair’s tower on Black Mountain outside the city. The launch is significant because it is the first full-power, multistation commercial deployment of NextGen TV in the country. BitPath, formerly Spectrum Co, led the planning and coordination efforts to put the stations on air.

Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president of Advanced Technology and president of ONE Media 3.0 LLC, discusses the Las Vegas 3.0 launch, the cooperation among competing broadcasters needed to make it happen and what the rollout means more broadly for NextGen TV deployment and to him personally.  

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology: Congratulations on the NextGen TV commercial broadcast rollout in Las Vegas along with Nexstar and Scripps.

Mark Aitken: Let me tell you, in the midst of COVID-19, this has been a fairly monumental task to pull this off. 

TVT: How have you managed to do that during the pandemic?

MA: The fact that we have been able to get this together in the midst of a pandemic without the deployment of additional resources is remarkable. We have not flown anybody into or driven into the market. We are using on-ground personnel. 

We are using ready-baked solutions. For instance, when it comes to video distribution, we’ve gone to LTN. When it comes to switches that allow the flow of IP packets as relates to ATSC 3.0, it’s conventional Cisco gear. We’ve got cloud-based solutions that are being played out and ready-made hardware. We’ve done all of this without deploying additional in-market resources.  

TVT: Tell me about the setup. Is NextGen TV being transmitted from a Big Stick or via a single frequency network (SFN)?  

MA: We are making accommodations for an SFN in the near future. Actually, those efforts were underway for NAB, but lack of hands on ground due to the COVID-19 outbreak sort of postponed that.

So it’s our Big Stick. We are converting our primary station in Vegas, KSNV, the NBC affiliate, to 3.0 and we are doing channel shares with Scripps and Nexstar in the market.

TVT: How are you allocating the bits among the three broadcasters’ four ATSC 3.0 channels?

MA: You know, that’s a question that comes up in every one of the channel-sharing/host-station discussions. In the days when you had just one stream and it was a transport stream, it was fairly easy to say, “We are going to give you X amount of bits as your capacity.” And you would multiply those inside your transport stream.

Because of 3.0’s multiple operating modes, it really comes down to what we call spectrum utilization. You have fundamental, sort of atomic, building blocks for all of the standards, and there’s a finite, fixed amount of those that are referred to as samples. You have a sampling rate.

So, we look at the spectrum and in a certain sense, we are saying to all four partners, “You’re going to have an equal share of that spectrum capacity. Choose your operating mode.”

The operating mode is chosen, and that yields X amount of bits. Three of the four are sharing one physical layer pipe [PLP] and the yield to each of them is on the order of 6-plus Mb/s.

That is the level of service that closely approximates ATSC 1.0 in receivability over the air. Then there is one PLP for the NBC, which is operating in a robust PLP with lower signal-to-noise requirements and is aiming to be received both in the conventional over-the-air environment as well as by portable and nomadic devices.

There are so many issues. The carrier-to-noise is one of those issues. Doppler is another. There are all of these interrelated components.

By the very nature of 3.0, it will be possible to view on a portable and nomadic basis. But all of these channels within the Las Vegas market will be viewable on simple handheld, portable and nomadic devices.

There is an extra level of robustness for the NBC station. That station is operating at about 8dB better C/N performance.

PLUS: ATSC 3.0 Deployments: Where and When Will NextGen TV Be Available?

The NBC channel is taking the NBC mezzanine level standard 1080i feed, and with professional equipment is being converted to 1080p with sampling conversion to HDR via SL-HDR1. So the NBC programming will actually come across with TV sets that support HDR and SL-HDR1. Those devices will display HDR. 

Devices with an ATSC 3.0 receiver but standard dynamic range are capable of receiving the signal and displaying content.

TVT: Are Nexstar and Scripps also doing 1080p?

MA: The networks are not providing extended content, so not everybody is taking the best feed that is available to them, which is typically a mezzanine level, high bitrate AVC that’s being converted to HEVC.

TVT: Tell me about BitPath’s (formerly Spectrum Co’s) role in working with these competitors to bring about an agreement to share a channel for 3.0 service and accommodate the 1.0 channels displaced by 3.0 rollout.

MA: They were the driving, coordinating force in the hosting agreements for all of the participants. And we prefer to think of them as hosting agreements. So BitPath is preparing the way to engage multiple broadcasters—and this has always been the business plan. 

TVT: Where do you go next after the Las Vegas rollout?

MA: This is the first of many. We have a cascading series of launches. Next month, we are looking at Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City. Directly on the heels of that, we’ve got Nashville. So, June is going to be a very busy month doing the same thing with multiple partners, broadcasters, in those markets. 

We have literally not let up on the gas of transforming markets.

TVT: Transforming?

MA: This is transformational. This is not just about transitioning from one standard to another, but it’s transformational in that it provides new business opportunities. 

You think about the announcement from FCC Commissioner [Brendan] Carr last week on broadcaster utilization of 3.0 for data delivery, IP bit delivery. Those things become transformational for all of broadcast TV.

TVT: As the economy weakens and looks to be headed for recession due to COVID-19, do you anticipate Sinclair pulling back on plans to roll out 3.0 markets?

MA: First, I am not going to comment on the long-term economic impact of COVID. Obviously, there is an impact.

When you look at how you transform a market, the primary step in that transformation is converting an ATSC 1.0 site to ATSC 3.0. That is not a huge capital outlay, so the transmission facility already exists. 

These are brand new transmission facilities. They are repacked channels. They are almost universally new transmission systems, so this is not a huge burden.

Everybody is looking at the future of their business. For a modicum of investment, they can begin to make that transformation process. I think more and more broadcasters are looking at this and saying that it’s a bit of a no-brainer.

It’s more difficult to figure out how to move video around in that market. I have to get permissions from the network, permissions from syndicators and providers to move it from one physical channel to another, but the physical channel replicates coverage within a market. 

You get all that stuff done, and all of a sudden the ball begins to roll.

TVT: You have affiliates for NBC, CW, CBS and ABC involved in this Las Vegas rollout. Is this a sign that the networks are onboard with 3.0 and willing to accept things like simulcasting their content on a 1.0 and 3.0 channel where they had objected to a similar scenario when Mobile DTV (ATSC M/H) made its failed attempt to get traction?

MA: The fact is that with M/H to get the networks to sign onboard, what you were doing was inside of your spectrum was a simulcast. And there is a lot of legal “thou shalt and thou shalt nots” in the licensing of content.

And it was happening at a time when content providers were engaged in getting content onto the other wireless mobile platforms, and nobody wanted to stand in the way of that.

I think the real signaling that is coming out of a cascading series of markets that are coming online is No. 1, the broadcasters are committed.  No. 2, the content providers understand the success of reaching people wherever they are with the best platform that is available to them.

So, if you were a content provider and you are trying to reach the largest audience you would not preclude a new entrant—think of ATSC 3.0 as a new entrant in terms of carriage because it is different kind of over-the-air. I would say it’s a Kumbaya moment, but everybody is working as civilized capitalists who are looking for opportunities, including ones that may reshape the wireless landscape.

TVT: What does this launch mean to you personally?

MA: It’s emotional. You know, the company and our people have done a lot of firsts. The first ATSC 3.0 was done in Vegas by us for a Korean audience; the first mobile use of 3.0 was demonstrated in Las Vegas with an STA [special temporary authorization from the FCC]. 

[It’s been] eight years in the planning on this standard. But to see internally the entirety of our organization now focused on this as its future, that is probably the most rewarding piece of almost 21 years of stepping up to the plate to place a multidimensional standard and toolkit into the hands of broadcasters.

You actually managed to have me draw a few tears on that one. It’s monumental. This is my lifetime achievement. And I did not do this alone. Together, we are reinventing the future for broadcast television.

Part 2

While the International CES 2019 was top of mind for Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media LLC and vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group (as discussed in part 1 of this Q&A), far more is happening with regards to broadcast standards and ATSC 3.0.

In part two of this interview, Aitken reveals Sinclair’s plan to rollout ATSC 3.0 in 26 markets in 2019, where Sinclair’s Dallas SFN rollout stands, why 3.0 naysayers will soon see they are off target, the effect multistandard TV exciters and receivers may have on the future of standards and his thoughts on the announcement that ATSC President Mark Richer will soon retire.

(An edited transcript.)

TV TECHNOLOGY:ENENSYS/TeamCast and Comark recently announced they were showing a DTV exciter with support for both 3.0 and DVB-T2 waveforms at BES Expo 2019, India.

At CES, ONE Media rolled out its new multi-standard DTV tuner chipsets with support for at least a dozen standards, including 3.0.

It seems to me that multistandard TV exciters and receivers may usher in a new era in which TV standards become something different than they traditionally have been. In other words, it’s hard to see how TV standards in the future will serve as mechanisms to protect markets, regions, economic interests and even competing political systems. What do you think?

MARK AITKEN: I am sure that I have said Broadcast Market Exchange, BMX, to you on more than one occasion.

We started seven or eight years ago –before we even entered the ATSC process for this standard. We started putting out some white papers and articles about the notion of a Broadcast Market Exchange.

Part of that was looking at what was going on in the spectrum sharing worldview and a lot of that came out of the foundational work even before there was CBRS (citizens band radio service).

CBRS is different spectrum, but it’s all about spectrum sharing and providing spectrum access. So, the Broadcast Market Exchange we envisioned tied together broadcast stations on a virtual basis to create a national network.

That in fact to a large degree was the reason we worked with Nexstar to start Spectrum Co. And Spectrum Co is involved in a lot of conversations right now based on our own commitment to build out [ATSC 3.0] in 26 markets this year and finding other partners in those markets.

That’s all backdrop. The point is we had this thing called the Broadcast Market Exchange that envisioned this world of virtualization. The very same world that is at the heart of 5G –not a bunch of hardware, but in fact cloud-based, virtualized functions.

Well on the other side of the world in India, one of the things that attracted me to Saankhya is that they shared a very, very similar view and about four years ago wrote a series of white papers–and there will be another one coming out shortly—on something called a cognitive radio access network.

Cognitive is now being morphed into AI because everybody believes they know what AI means.

To your point, imagine a network where you have software-defined radios, software-defined receivers. You have a network that when you apply AI has a cognitive ability to determine based upon a set of requirements of how best to deliver a wireless set of packets.

If you can describe the attributes of various technologies, you suddenly have a network that can on its own define unique waveforms to deliver [data] in the most effective and efficient way.

The short word for this is AI-RAN [AI Radio Access Network] where you deploy a network with the ability to shape waveforms and radios that can conform to those waveforms. You can begin to envision a world in 10 years, perhaps less, where you don’t even have a standard per se of a fixed set of waveforms. But in fact you have a network that is capable of producing its own waveforms on a flexible, desirable basis.

I would add that I think that becomes almost essential in a future world where you are looking for security at all levels.

Imagine the ability on a data-frame-by-data-frame basis to convey that data with a slightly different waveform based on a 128-bit or 256-bit encoding scheme.

Suddenly not only are you encoding data, but you are effectively encoding waveforms and obviating the need for a fixed standard.

TVT:So this would be a whole new level of security.

MA: Exactly. You could define your own unique waveform. You are not going to hard code that into a chip because it’s your unique waveform. It’s your own modulation, your own coding scheme. The only thing that is common is this bootstrap.

TVT:Probably from its inception, there have been 3.0 naysayers. Some, given the dearth of 3.0 TVs at this year’s CES, say the Next-Gen TV standard is 'DOA.' Clearly, you don’t see it that way. How would you respond to the naysayers?

MA: I’ve not gone to two CES shows in a row where the theme and the thrust of the show on the outward side wasn’t about something new.

CES is always about something new, and this year, surprisingly or not, it wasn’t just one thing. On the surface, you certainly had 5G, 8K and autonomous vehicles. But all of those things, if you think about it, come back to a flexible means to convey any and all of that.

And so, while there was not a big stage for ATSC 3 television devices, ATSC 3 fits into all of those devices.

And I think if you talked to the manufacturers there are a couple of reasons they haven’t launched new ATSC 3 product lines. One of them is technical, and one of them is market.

On the technical side, it is the issue of content protection. You know the ability to ensure that content [remains safe], creating a high enough bar that you haven’t got easy theft, easy access and therefore easy distribution of an all-IP piece of content.

We are a long ways down that road, and I think in a couple of months there will be an announcement of industry alignment and cohesion around a content protection solution.

And I would venture and say it will be supported by the consumer electronics industry, broadcasters and the MVPDs. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to sell ATSC 3 sets into a marketplace.

Probably the more important piece–and I fully understand this from a product manufacturer’s perspective—where are the 3.0 signals? Where is the content?

We are answering that with an absolute public commitment to launch 26 markets by the end of this year.

When we start launching those markets and there is a clear set of objectives for where those markets are and how the content is going to be protected–when all those things come together—the problem is not a technical problem, it’s the realities of a new market, making sure the new market is alive.

TVT:Have you announced Sinclair’s 26 ATSC 3.0 rollout markets for this year?

MA: We have not publicly stated those yet. We have internally as of today, and we will externally two weeks hence.

We know the 26 markets in which we need nobody to participate to create channel shares and offload channels from one to another to clear a channel for 3.0.

But we have also engaged ourselves in discussions through Spectrum Co. We actually have more than 26 markets. I can tell you that we have commitments from a number of broadcasters to participate in a large number of markets. We have one broadcaster that will be working with us in five markets –somebody outside of Spectrum Co.

I think you will see a public announcement of those markets in a couple of weeks.

TVT:Where does the Sinclair SFN deployment in Dallas stand?

MA: It will light up March 1 at all sites. Actually, I just reminded myself I have to check with legal on this one. The holdup on this one is the MVPD notification process, and the FCC is a stickler on making sure we run out the 120 days. That is why it is March.

But I am saying that with a smile because I don’t know how this partial government shutdown impacts that. I am certainly hopeful that the government will be back to being as dysfunctional as it can be by then.

TVT:Sinclair has announced its STIRR OTT service. It seems like this might be a good learning experience and springboard for launching many aspects of an over-the-air IP-based broadcast service like ATSC 3.0. Is that the case?

MA: There is nothing that we are doing that is not focused on the 3.0 future. So, there is a whole lot of learning that comes out of these things.

So, yeah, STIRR is local-advertiser-supported. It has a lot of the moving pieces that end up being connected to 3.0.

When you think of 3.0, you think of broadcast and broadband. OTT sits right alongside of OTA, and while the ad tech might be slightly different between OTT and OTA because OTT is unicast, a one-to-one relationship with folks, there is a lot of technical convergence between the two.

TVT:Finally, the Advanced Television Systems Committee announced that its president, Mark Richer, would soon be retiring. I know you and Mark have a long history–I believe going back to the early DTV days at Comark. What are your thoughts?

MA: I could almost say I love Mark like a brother, and it’s not as though we haven’t had our differences. We have.

When we are together we have this little routine that we go through that we are the “Co-Marks.” Mark ran the Comark Digital Services Group. That is what he was hired in to do at Comark. It was me and the president at the time who brought him in.

We’ve remained very close. We’ve always had the utmost respect for each other, and very recently I had the pleasure of spending a lot of time together with him in India. We went to the Taj Mahal together.

The industry will miss him. The industry will come to understand that leading an organization that demands consensus is a very trying job. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of talent to try to maintain congeniality in the face of confrontation. It takes a lot of effort to intercede and provide a calming effect and bring aggrieved parties together.

A lot of this is finding the common ground as opposed to highlighting the differences. Mark has affected a lot of people in a very positive way, and he made it look really easy, but I can assure you it was a most difficult job that he was a champion of.

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

LAS VEGAS--As Yogi Berra might have observed about this year’s CES, “It was déjà vu all over again,” (at least with regard to the next-gen TV sets being displayed by both large and small manufacturers.)

Last year, with the ink still drying on the 3.0 standard and the FCC’s green-lighting of its use by the nation’s TV stations a couple of months earlier, ATSC, NAB and CTA industry officials gathered to celebrate its arrival with a champagne toast on the opening day of the CES. However, there was not a single 3.0-capable set to be found among the super-bright, super-big, super-colorful, super-intelligent, (and, in some cases, super-expensive) television receivers that literally reached the ceiling of the Los Vegas Convention Center which hosted the 2018 show.

Fast forward a year—has there been any change in the 3.0 situation?

In a word, no! If anything, there was less ATSC 3.0 presence this time, as one TV manufacturer did put up a sign in its 2018 CES display space that touted the benefits of the new DTV transmission standard. Not even the sign was there this time.

CRITICAL MASS

While most of the TV set exhibitors quizzed about the lack of ATSC 3.0 product (which has been available since 2017 in South Korea) were silent about its absence at CES, John Taylor, senior vice president of public affairs for LG USA did offer an explanation.

“You’re a year or so early,” he said. “We’re trying to time the introduction of the product with the critical mass of Next-Gen TV broadcasting, and the whole industry seems to be moving toward a 2020 product launch.” Taylor did seem fairly certain that the 3.0 sets would be populating manufacturers’ exhibit spaces at the 2020 CES to “prime the pumps” of buyers who would be at that show to decide what to stock their stores with for the 2020 holiday buying season.

And while others in the industry have hinted that there may be a problem with delivery of some of the components needed for 3.0 sets, Taylor was quick to state otherwise.

“There’s no technology issue at all,” he said. “It’s a business marketplace consideration about the right time to introduce the product in the U.S. market. We could ship the product today. As you know, we’re shipping ATSC 3.0 TVs in Korea, but it has to make sense for the U.S. market and that’s heading towards 2020.”

Taylor noted that LG and its Zenith R&D subsidiary are providing receiver products and technical support for some of the U.S. ATSC 3.0 field trials.

THE VIEW FROM OVERSEAS

Peter Siebert, head of technology for the DVB (Digital Video Broadcast organization, a Swiss-based consortium that sets digital broadcast transmission standards for Europe, and is roughly the equivalent of the Advanced Television Systems Committee), was at the show and had a slightly more pessimistic view when asked about the appearance of ATSC 3.0 TVs at the 2020 edition of the “world’s biggest consumer electronics show.”

“I don’t think so,” said Siebert. “And the reason why I don’t think so is that there has to be a strong commitment from the broadcasting community to say ‘we will introduce the service,’ and personally from a European perspective, I don’t hear this message from the North American broadcasters.

“It’s a typical ‘chicken and egg’ problem and there must be somebody breaking it,” he continued. “The broadcasters must say ‘we offer a service.’ It doesn’t help that the industry develops products first. For example, when I look at the televisions, there are many 4K televisions on the market. However, this doesn’t mean that we have 4K broadcasts. I think the broadcaster has to make a firm commitment to introduce the service and then the receiver industry will follow.”

Siebert noted that when the United Kingdom decided to migrate from the original DVB-T (terrestrial broadcast) standard, which was struck in 1997, to an updated version, DVB-T2, which was completed in 2008, there was no “chicken and egg” situation because there was a clear commitment from the BBC for a rollout of the improved HD service via DVB-T2.

“It can go very fast if well planned,” he said, noting that the transition was accomplished in Ukraine in a single year and in two years in Germany. Siebert did admit that the move to DVB-T2 didn’t go quite so fast in every European nation, explaining that “typically, the more a country is relying on terrestrial television, the longer it takes, because you have a much bigger legacy of receivers that you have to update before you can start a new service.”

However, lack of suitable receivers didn’t seem to be an issue in the DVB-T2 transition.

“In Germany, when we went from DVB-T to DVB-T2, we had all stakeholders sitting together at a round table and making a plan on how to introduce T2,” said Siebert. “It was very clear. The broadcasters said on this date we will switch our transmissions to the new DVB-T2 specification. And it was also very clear that the consumer industry [would be] ready way before this, providing the necessary equipment. So, at the time the switchover happened, quite a high percentage of receiving equipment was ready. I think it is necessary that all stakeholders sit together, to agree on a plan and then stick to the plan.”

THE VIEW FROM SINCLAIR

Since ATSC 3.0’s inception, one of its biggest backers has been the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and for the past several years the broadcast station group has been at CES to promote the standard, even operating a transmitter on Black Mountain south of Las Vegas to provide TV set exhibitors with 3.0 signals to demonstrate reception of OTA UHD video at the show. Sinclair has also hosted demonstrations of 3.0 technologies a few blocks away from the convention halls in a suite at the Wynn Hotel.

Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s vice president of advanced technology, was on hand this year to offer his take on the absent ATSC 3.0 hardware.

“I think it’s very simple,” said Aitken. “There two issues. The difficult one is content protection, and this issue has not been answered. You’ve got a lot of dancing around on the part of the networks with respect to what their requirements are for content protection, and not a single solution that has been put on the table has been supported by all of the content providers—and I might add content distributors or MVPDs. So, you have a bit of a stalemate. For me, it’s a fairly easy one to resolve. I look at it and say as a starting point ‘if Widevine [DRM] is good enough for Netflix, why isn’t it good enough for broadcast?’

“The networks will always try to extract the broadcaster from out of the middle of the relationship with the consumer,” continued Aitken, noting that reluctance of networks and program providers to allow their content to be transmitted by affiliates deploying ATSC-M/H [aka Mobile DTV] was one of the reasons for that mobile initiative’s ultimate demise.

“I think there’s been a soft promise made on the part of broadcasters that we’re willing to come to a solution. There’s been an unwillingness on the part of the large content players to sit down and really try to solve that problem, at least with Sinclair. They have their own views and their views are not shared equally with all broadcasters. And so, for the very same reasons that we ended up with Dolby AC-4 as an abstraction of the Atmos production environment in Hollywood, the issue of content protection is being driven by those same Hollywood entities, which for a broadcaster is driven through the network.”

Aitken summed up the situation by stating: “It is a political problem, absolutely.”

Aitken said that Sinclair will light up 26 markets by the end of 2019.

“There’s a requirement by the FCC that there be some replication across ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0,” he said. “There may have to be an opportunity to force that issue at a regulatory level, which nobody really wants. But at the end of the day sometimes you solve problems by spilling a little blood first.”

THE CHIP

Despite his disappointment with this stalemate in the rollout of 3.0, Aitken was in a celebratory mood as he announced the release of an integrated circuit specially designed and fabricated for Sinclair. The chip’s unveiling marked the end of a nearly two-year journey that began with a pledge to supply free ATSC 3.0 demodulator chipsets to any company manufacturing smartphones or other handheld viewing devices that would commit to including them in their products.

Explaining the genesis of the project, Aitken—who is a firm believer that broadcast television’s future lies in mobile devices—said that after surveying existing 3.0 chip products, he quickly came to the conclusion that none were really satisfactory for mobile device applications.

“We knew what sort of power the available chips consumed,” said Aitken. “It’s easy enough to guess the power requirement specs, because it’s almost like a curling iron if you’ve ever put your finger on one. If we were ever going to have a mobile-enabled device—something that was suitable for embedding in phones, something that could couple-up to a cellphone without draining the life out of the phone—we would have to create it.”

Frustrated that none of the large consumer electronics firms showed much interest in mobile TV products, he decided to go it alone.

“We went literally to the top of the ladder, and at the end of the day, they saw the world the way that they choose to see the world,” he said. “They saw no place for mobile ATSC; certainly not at this time.”

Aitken recalled an Indian company with a reputation for low-power consumption specialty integrated circuit design—Saankhya Labs—from his involvement with ATSC M/H—and contacted them.

“I decided to pick up the phone and have a conversation with Praag Naik, who is the president,” said Aitken. “We had a conversation, and it became evident that we shared a much higher-level understanding of what was possible, so Sinclair invested.”

The result was the creation of a very low-power consumption chip that can easily be incorporated within a mobile viewing device without substantially decreasing its battery life or increasing its physical profile.

NOT JUST FOR ATSC 3.0

Aitken said that as Saankhya had an established reputation in software-defined radio (SDR) technology, it was decided early on to create a chip that was signal agnostic, with software dictating which of a dozen or so digital TV signals it will decode, including ATSC 1.0 and the European DVB-T2 standard.

“We’re not building an ATSC 3 chip,” he said. “We’re building a chip that can go in set-top boxes, in televisions, in tablets, for any global broadcast standard, including digital radio. You level your risk by having a multistandard chip.”

Aitken says that at present about 1,000 of the chipsets have been created, and the foundry is ready to roll out millions more. Asked about takers for the free devices, he acknowledged that this has been a bit of a hard sell, but sees some light on the horizon.

“We’ve offered a major carrier five million chips. We’ve also offered the engineering of that chip into the device and we’ve offered the availability of the IP data stream, but that has not been enough to entice them to do that yet, but we are knee-deep into discussions with a USB manufacturer.”

Aitken views this as a first step to getting the chips into mobile devices, explaining that they would be part of a USB-C “dongle” equipped with an embedded antenna and designed to plug into mobile devices. And by the chip’s not being specific to ATSC 3.0, the dongle could be used virtually anywhere that digital over-the-air broadcasting is taking place.

“It would host DVB-T2, ISDB-T, ATSC 1, and other standards just by changing the software,” said Aitken. “It could be used in any part of the world.” 

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

BETHESDA, Md.—At a presentation to automotive executives near Detroit in late 2016, Advanced Television Systems Committee officials demonstrated how — in addition to traditional over-the-air broadcasting — ATSC 3.0 could also be used for telematics, infotainment and other services involving connected cars and autonomous vehicles.

The idea of using a broadcast standard for such uses is revolutionary but it’s anticipated that the emerging 5G wireless standard will be the dominant method for communicating with autonomous vehicles. On the other hand, the vastly increased bandwidth of 5G will give wireless carriers the ability to greatly expand their video offerings.

So could these two standards be headed for a “technology smackdown?” Not according to most broadcast executives.

The ever-upbeat Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, emphasized the ability of the technologies to work together.

“The new [ATSC 3.0] broadcast standard was designed with 5G convergence in mind,” he said at the event, emphasizing the internet protocol foundations of both technologies.

COLLABORATIVE POTENTIAL

In a follow-up discussion with TV Technology, Aitken expanded his thoughts: “5G is about heterogeneous networks and hybrid services,” he said, adding that the emerging technologies will give companies “the ability to align the data framing of 3.0 with LTE [Long-Term Evolution, the current 4G format] and 5G.”

Aitken and others have stressed the collaborative potential as both ATSC 3.0 and 5G technologies race to market on parallel courses in the coming months. Although there is competitive potential l— such as 5G’s broadband capability to deliver on-demand video services and 3.0’s prospect for transmitting voice messages over IP — broadcasters and suppliers are confident that the two technologies will both evolve into the market strongly. They emphasize that 3.0 is optimized for broadcast while 5G is tailored for unicast streaming and fixed wireless access.

“ATSC 3.0 and 5G address different use cases and scenarios,” acknowledged Mauricio Aracena, Media Standardization Manager at Ericsson. “Neither technology will interfere with the other. On the contrary, hybrid capabilities of ATSC — such as support for broadcast and broadband delivery — allows broadcasters to combine both 3.0 and 5G technologies for more personalized content.”

It’s still too early to determine just exactly what 5G will entail, according to Richard Chernock, chief science officer at Triveni Digital.

“We know exactly what 3.0 is, but don’t yet know what 5G is because it’s in the early part of its cycle,” he said. “5G is a collection of technologies that may work with each other.

“It has enormous bandwidth; its low latency [and other attributes] may work well together,” but other features are mutually exclusive, said Chernock, who until recently headed ATSC’s Technology Group 3, which guided the Next Gen TV standard to completion.

Chernock acknowledges that there are many “things you could do” to integrate 5G and 3.0 capabilities.

“There is flexibility in the 3.0 physical layer that you could include 5G,” he explained. He pointed out that the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project, a mobile industry technology standards group) is examining how 5G could move the wireless telecom business from its legacy one-to-one communications focus into a “one to more” role.

“We have different models,” Chernock added. “3.0 could do on-demand as a hybrid. Broadcast can cover it by parking content in the receiver, or you can go from broadcast to broadband and it can complement really well.”

FACING REALITIES

Technical optimism about the interplay between 5G and 3.0 is tempered by market realities. In particular, the ability for future 5G handsets, tablets and other customer equipment to receive over-the-air 3.0 signals is likely to be limited since the wireless carriers and handset makers are expected to continue their longstanding policy of not integrating OTA broadcast receivers into mobile devices. But ATSC 3.0’s strength in mobile reception could help get over that hurdle.

“You’re increasingly going to see the efficacy of 3.0 aligned with mobile, especially 5G,” Aitken said. “ATSC 3.0 is compatible with 5 MHz spectrum. We have demonstrated the ability of 3.0 in relationship to CDMA [Code-Division Multiple Access, the cellular technology used by Verizon and Sprint in the U.S.]. If you take that wide swath from the lowest frequencies and look across the spectrum, you have everything from 600 MHz spectrum to AWS4, where 3.0 can fit in.”

EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE, MARKET PRESENCE

Telecom and broadcast technology suppliers are evaluating when and how to plunge into both the 3.0 and 5G markets. Aitken says that prior to the NAB show, about 40 vendors offered 3.0 products. Now, he says, triple that number of suppliers are “talking about their product paths.”

“Vendors who have been diverted to other markets are coming back to broadcasting," Aitken said, “bringing with them lessons learned from their experiences in the telecom market.”

Triveni Digital’s Chernock agrees. “Encoder makers and others are agnostic,” he said.

Ericsson is one company with feet in both camps. The company is in the process of spinning off their business targeting broadcasters, TV operators and content owners into a new company, Ericsson Media Solutions, according to Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology for EMS.

“This was done at least in part to allow for more focused investments in media technologies independent from the networking business,” he said. “ATSC 3.0 is a new market in which Ericsson Media Solutions fully intends to provide solutions to broadcasters, and indeed initial solutions already are available.”

The next reality check will be with consumers who confront both technologies. Verizon has already started field testing of 5G in selected markets, and AT&T intends to do the same this year — even before final 5G standards are adopted, scheduled for 2019. Since 3.0 tests will be underway soon in Phoenix, Cleveland, Dallas and other cities, it is likely that some early adopters may encounter both technologies soon — albeit structured for different purposes.

LAS VEGAS--Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group is the recipient of the 2018 NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award, which he will receive at an April 10 ceremony at the NAB Show. 

In its announcement, NAB called Aitken a “dynamic leader in the development of Next Gen TV.” Aitken has been involved in the broadcast industry’s migration to advanced services, including participation in the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, involvement in ATSC including chairing the specialist group on mobile DTV, and with the formation of Sinclair's joint venture ONE Media, serving as its President.

TV Technology caught up with Aitken after the news, for which he said he was “honored” for the recognition. Over the course of decades of involvement with the broadcasting industry, he has worn numerous hats, getting his start with CCA Electronics, a small Massachusetts-based TV transmitter manufacturer in the mid ‘70’s. He counts Richard Fiore Sr., the founder of what was to become Comark Communications in 1976, as his mentor. “We just hit it off,” Aitken said. “Rarely in your life do you find yourself in a situation where you feel like ‘this is where I belong.’ And before long it blossomed into what I always refer to as my mentorship in this industry and into the world of radio frequency design.”

[Read: SMPTE 2014: Aitken—Broadcast Must Be More Than TV]

Early on at Comark, Aitken got to know Fiore’s business partner, David Smith (yes, of Sinclair) as well as Nat Ostroff, who became president of the company in the ‘80’s. By the end of the ‘90’s Aitken moved to Baltimore ostensibly joining Sinclair to rebuild Acrodyne, a company acquired by Sinclair to provide transmitters for the "digital transition."

Beyond Acrodyne activities, Aitken became focused on problems over the RF capabilities of the newly minted ATSC digital TV standard (at Smith’s and Ostroff’s prompting), an issue he characterized, as “Houston, we have a problem.”

“Ray Kiesel and I got handed the job of ‘we’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with this standard because we’ve got to make it work, it’s our future, we don’t have a choice,’” Aitken said. Despite Sinclair’s advocacy for an alternative to 8-VSB that would enhance mobile reception, their efforts came up short. The experience taught Aitken a valuable lesson.

“What I learned was that you must understand politics and business to understand technology, because technology in the marketplace doesn’t end up there simply based on the best engineering,” he said. “It arrives there based on business use cases.”

As a result, Aitken, along with many of his colleagues at Sinclair, became heavily involved in the development of ATSC 3.0, forming ONE Media and focusing on mobility and more efficient use of spectrum. It’s primarily due to these efforts that he is being recognized by NAB.

[Read: Q&A: Mark Aitken On Dallas Next-Gen SFN Trial]

“For me, this award is very much in line with the FCC’s elevation of the Next Gen standard and the engagement of our industry,” he said.

As for his future with Sinclair, Aitken says “I’m not going anywhere,” but he is cognizant of the importance of bringing “new blood” into the television industry. Promoting Next Gen TV is key to attracting new engineers, he said.

“Next Gen is not your father’s or your grandfather’s television,” he said. “Next Gen is so much more. I think it’s everybody’s job to sort of toot the horn.”

BALTIMORE—Two months ago, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar Media Group, Univision and American Tower announced they would work together to setup an ATSC 3.0-based single frequency network in the Dallas market. Work is progressing on the SFN, which with a bit of regulatory help from the FCC should be partially lit up before next month’s NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The SFN effort is more than simply a trial of Next-Gen television, however. It is also a test of a proposed ATSC 1-to-ATSC 3.0 transition that relies on spectrum clearing, channel sharing and what may be an unprecedented level of cooperation among competing broadcasters.

Mark Aitken, vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, has been at the center of the rollout of this Next-Gen SFN trial. In this interview, he discusses how work on the single frequency network is progressing and how the trial will provide Sinclair with critical data that will help it achieve its goal of deploying SFNs nationwide to usher in a new era of television.

(The following is an edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:Sinclair, Nexstar and Univision, along with American Tower Corp., announced in January the joint construction and operation of an ATSC 3.0 single frequency network in Dallas. Can you bring me up to date on where the project stands?

Mark Aitken: There are three new SFN sites that will host the Next-Gen service of five local Dallas stations. We refer to this as a multi-channel, multi-tenant SFN—obviously Next-Gen-related.

We are in the process of providing a network infrastructure that ties to all of those facilities so that we have what we refer to as a Next-Gen Broadcast Operations Center. That will be a local presence that also is capable of being run from Baltimore [the home of Sinclair’s headquarters].

On a local level, we have the issue of getting the SFN up and running. First off is the main transmission site with Next-Gen, tying that into multiple SFN sites and all of the work that goes along with that, including timing and determining the proper power overlaps.

Once that is working, we must address how to operate that as a remote site. Eventually, that operation will go back to a regional center because it is envisioned that Dallas is just one of a number of DMAs that get serviced from a regional hub.

[Dallas Getting Single Frequency Network for ATSC 3.0 Deployment]

TVT:What stations will participate?

MA: The target stations—and I say target stations because all of this is subject to FCC approval—are KSTR, a UniMas station; KTSD, an independent owned by Cunningham Broadcasting; KUVN, the Univision affiliate; KDAF, the Tribune Broadcasting CW affiliate; and a fifth station, which I cannot divulge at the moment.

Two of those stations—KSTR and KTXD—will relieve themselves from their ATSC 1 activity and be hosted by the others in a channel-sharing arrangement. This is important: this channel sharing means there will be no channels lost to over-the-air viewers. None of the core channels nor the Diginets will be lost.

All five will also broadcast all of their channels—core and Diginet—as Next-Gen service on the SFN. I think that is a total of 20 channels.

TVT:That setup must put big demands on MPEG-2 encoders for the ATSC 1 side of the operation.

MA: This is a crowded field, and we need capacity for additional channels on the 1.0 stick. What that encompasses is bringing in new software-based encoders that are being optimized for a new and different level of service.

In that regard, we have a vendor with encoders that will do one HD and depending on program content five, six or seven SDs at the same time. Or, they are capable of supporting three HDs at the same time, or supporting a whole host of combinations in between.

TVT:I’ve often heard it said that getting a group of broadcasters to agree to anything is like herding cats. This Dallas arrangement seems to fly in the face of that.

MA: My emphasis in Dallas is on learning how to get along. None of this happens without participation and cooperation.

It’s about keeping that 1.0 piece whole, not impacting the consumer. Not impacting the revenue of stations and making way to fully impact the unleashing of new, future services. Those things equate to keeping the industry alive.

TVT:What is the target launch date?

MA: We are hoping to have part of the system up and running prior to NAB. I say trying to because once you figure out who your partners are for the sharing on the 1.0 side, you’ve got notification requirements and FCC filing requirements for post licensing through the commission.

If you look at what came out of the rulemaking, a secondary license gets issued for the purposes of being allowed to carry your content on another channel [channel sharing to continue 1.0 service]. And that’s further made difficult if you have a PBS non-com in that mix because of the nature of non-com rules. On top of that, the FCC form called out [in the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking that details the 1.0 hosted environment] doesn’t even exist at the moment. So, we’re working very closely with the FCC.

TVT:You’ve mentioned in the past that Sinclair wants to rollout a nationwide network of 3.0 SFNs. Will this SFN trial help you achieve that goal, and if so, how?

MA: What Dallas allows us to do is check off the list, “OK, here’s the equipment, here are the available vendors, here is the project timeline and here is the sequence of events.”

It’s a project in its own right, and it has its own timeline impacted by deliveries and acceptance and commissioning and all of those things. When you are talking about multi-channel, multi-tenant sites for SFNs, you’re building new transmission facilities.

It is really understanding what resources are available, what capitalization is required, what the interrelated services are and how they get sequenced. It is really a soup-to-nuts approach to a somewhat complicated puzzle.

By the way, what’s gone on in front of that is the actual engineering and planning of what is the nature of a properly designed single frequency network.

How do you get the coverages lined up, how do you coordinate coverage in an SFN environment versus interference? It’s all those engineering studies. It’s all those—in our case—the use of Progira software as the planning tool for understanding the nature of what the end result is going to be.

TVT:You’ve had an ongoing SFN trial in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore corridor. What takeaways from that trial will be helpful in Dallas?

MA: What’s helpful is we understand how to synchronize and balance the propagation characteristics in that SFN, the nature of performance we need in the network. We know the nature of the components that go into that. However, we need more than a single market to understand propagation. We do propagation studies. But do they match in the real world what we have synthesized in the environment in a software program?

TVT:How will you be conducting field strength tests and other needed tests in Dallas?

MA: ONE Media will deploy its mobile lab, which is a completely outfitted van that will do every level of testing on the move, not just from fixed sites—so automated data collection on the move in a real mobile environment.

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

We have to take that data and compare that against the projected data coming out of Progira and ensure that what we think we’ll get is what we’re getting. We started that process in Baltimore, but that’s just one market.

TVT:Why Dallas? Was it the fairly flat terrain?

MA: Look, it would be foolish to start with the most difficult cases and there are plenty of those. Top of mind, you have Seattle, Pittsburgh and lots of other markets. But it wasn’t chosen specifically because it is flat. There were a whole number of considerations.

We’re looking at how we would do a connected, regional service. The plans that we have made in terms of the SFN aren’t just about the Dallas-Ft. Worth market. They extend down a whole corridor and the next in line is Waco.

It also was chosen because of the availability of partners. It was chosen because Dallas is a bit of a high–tech center. It was chosen, by the way, [because] Nexstar’s home office is in Dallas.

It was chosen for a whole number of reasons, but clearly because it is reasonably tame geographically, first things first. The mantra here is crawl, walk, run.

TVT:One theoretical SFN deployment scenario that is often described is ringing the perimeter of a market with several—maybe four—SFN sites with directional antennas pointed inwards toward the big stick. I know you’ve said there will be three SFN sites, but is this the type of approach that will be taken in Dallas?

MA: Actually, it is substantially of that nature. They are not directional antennas, but they have a degree of directionality. They’re cardioids.

If you looked at the plan, you would see there is a fourth site, but it actually overlaps into the Waco market, and that’s best suited to be served by the channel structure in Waco as opposed to Dallas.

So, we know we need that in the lower side of Dallas. We’ve focused on the high population densities—the northern sort of growth patterns of that market—to light that up first.

TVT:What transmitters will be used at the SFN site and what will the ERP be?

MA: We will be using 5kW Comark solid state transmitters. The ERP will be 100kW.

TVT:Is there a target average signal strength you are trying to achieve for the market?

MA: The target signal strength is 60µv/square meter at 1.5 meters off the ground, or the typical distance off the ground a person would be holding a portable device. That’s based on a 95 percent probability service factor.

TVT:What are your plans for synchronizing the transmitters on the network?

MA: It is a matter of going out in the field, looking at the impulse response of merged transmission systems. We’ll be flexing some of the tools like TxID [ATSC 3.0’s transmitter identification signal] that allow us to identify the nature of the multiple signals being received.

We know on a map where the mating point is, if you will, of converging emissions from towers. We will go out in the field and set those up. And we’ve got GPS lock and distribution of common timing across the network. It’s actually a pretty easy process.

  [WRAL-TV Showcases Next Gen TV's Potential]  

TVT:If the GPS satellite signal were lost, is there a backup?

MA: The GPS assumes we have a running Rubidium-based clock synced. That way, you can lose satellite coverage and still have a stable clock.

It really is the case that GPS is bigger than a single SFN. You need a stable clock source that ties all of these entities together. But there are multiple ways of doing that and we will be testing other methods as well.

All the other industries that surround us do this on a day-in-day-out basis, whether it’s LTE Broadcast, DVB-T2, DTMB, go down the alphabet soup list. That’s not the difficult piece of the equation.

TVT:What about STLs? Microwave or fiber?

MA: While we have fiber to all sites, we are purposely dropping microwave into the middle of that to dissuade any concerns people may have about a mixed environment.

TVT:How important is sharing to the success of your SFN strategy?

MA: It is really important, because it is a cost share. It is also about efficiency of resource use.

The fact of the matter is I want to build an SFN and you want to build an SFN. Well, does it really make sense to deploy two different tower crews and do it sequentially? So, there are cost savings and resource savings and I would say that in the planning of that there is a level of redundancy and resiliency that gets built in by the nature of the quality of service desired.

TVT:You said ONE Media will be in the market with a specially built van taking measurements. Are there other plans for reception besides the engineering side of things—perhaps seeding the market with ATSC 3.0 receivers?

MA: Absolutely. We’ve got a number of parallel paths underway to bring to market the devices that are going to ultimately support the business. So, gateway type devices. We’ve got activities underway with a couple of proposals. A couple of the participants are actually building prototype receivers and prototype gateway devices.

We are in the process of lining up the type of launch services, but a lot of that is in the hands of Spectrum Co and John Hane [newly named president of Spectrum Co].

TVT:How much will this SFN deployment cost —or is that proprietary information?

MA: We will make public the cost when we tally it up. There won’t be any secrets here. What I will say is it is running substantially below the budget we projected. That budget was in line with projections many people have made over the last couple of years with respect to the cost of building out shared SFN sites.

TVT:Dallas is the model. But each market where you ultimately will deploy SFNs will be different. The big sticks in one case might be co-located on an antenna farm and in others they will be spread out throughout the market. So how much can you walk away with from this SFN trial that will be applicable to other markets as you deploy a nationwide network?

MA: I think the framework is 100 percent applicable. The variables inside that framework may be different. Is it three, four, five or a half dozen transmitters? That changes it. The nature of the work that has to be done on site is another variable. Is the existing tower fine, or does it need to be reinforced?

But we know these variables because all of these variables are in play in Dallas. While the specifics won’t be exactly the same, we are defining a framework of decisions that will have to be made. So, we will have a well-defined decision engine that we hope will help us deploy in virtually any market.

TVT:Is there anything else?

MA: I think the industry wishes us success and we wish great success to others in the industry that are doing their own Next-Gen implementations.

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

WASHINGTON—Mark Aitken, VP of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, will be honored at the 2018 NAB Show with the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award. Aitken, who has played an instrumental role in advancing development of the ATSC 3.0 Next-Gen TV standard, will join Roger Keating, chief strategy and business development officer at Hearst Television, Tom Jones, president of Carl T. Jones Corp, and Clay Freinwald, RF systems engineer at Freinwald Technical Services, in being honored at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 7-12.

Keating will be honored with the 2018 NAB Digital Leadership Award. Joining Hearst Television in 2008, Keating oversees the broadcast group’s digital media unit and leads its product, business and corporate development. He also served as the first chairman of the Pearl TV consortium of station groups.

Freinwald, a broadcast engineer since 1961, will receive the 2018 Service to Broadcast Engineering Award. He has held many technical positions at many stations and station groups, including Tacoma News, Tribune, Viacom and Entercom. He is a founding member of the Broadcast Warning Working Group.

Jones will receive the 2018 NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award. A broadcast industry consultant for nearly 40 years, Jones joined his father’s engineering firm as a senior engineer in 1979 and became a full partner in 1983. Jones has managed hundreds of complex broadcast engineering projects.

Aitken, who will receive the 2018 NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award, joined Sinclair in 1999 and was promoted to VP of advanced technology in 2011. He has participated in the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, chaired the specialist group on mobile DTV at ATSC and participated in the formation of Sinclair’s ONE Media joint venture, where he serves as president.

[Kristen Bell Recipient of 2018 NAB Television Chairman's Award]

Aitken, Freinwald and Jones will be honored at the We are Broadcasters Celebration on Tuesday, April 10. Keating will receive his award at the Achievement in Broadcasting Dinner on Monday, April 9.

More information is available on the NAB Show website.

ANN ARBOR, MICH.—ATSC 3.0 is being heralded as the next big thing for the broadcast industry, but Sinclair is thinking outside the traditional TV set. According to Mark Aitken, vice president for advanced technology for Sinclair, the Baltimore-based broadcast group participated in a recent automotive technology event hosted by the University of Michigan’s Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) where Sinclair—along with LG/Zenith—transmitted telematics firmware updates and advanced emergency alerting data from Detroit Channel 56 to Ann Arbor, Mich.

Photo courtesy of ATSC

The demonstration showed a potential alternative to cellular-based technologies for transmitting software updates for electronic control systems and firmware downloads for navigation devices that could be used in autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars.

“Everybody, when they think of autonomous vehicles, they think of communications and they immediately jump to the conclusion that there’s got to be a cellular radio tied to one of only a very few players to drive that vehicle,” said Aitken. “But the reality is the vehicles all within the same geographic location need the same data, and broadcasting is the ideal platform for providing the data.”

Sinclair has also begun working out the next steps for what it would take to effectively utilize ATSC 3.0 for autonomous vehicles. It has done the engineering to map out the possibility of a Single Frequency Network (SFN) that could connect the corridor between Ann Arbor and Detroit, which would then be a model for other cities across the nation. A large part of the infrastructure is also already in place, according to Aitken. “This is not like we have to go out and plow billions of dollars into new transmission facilities,” Aitken said, adding that once ATSC 3.0 is approved, Sinclair will look to accelerate its migration and have regional and national services ready within two years.

The television broadcast and automotive industries have never really been partners outside of advertising, but that could change as the automotive industry learns more about ATSC 3.0 technology. “There is in fact a thirst for broadcast content, not television content necessarily, but broadcast content to the autonomous vehicle universe,” Aitken mused. “You could say that Sinclair and LG, for the first time, showed a service opportunity to the automotive industry that is untapped by broadcasters today.”

The MTC conference where Sinclair and LG showcased the demonstration took place on Nov. 16. For more details on the demonstration, read a write-up about it on ATSC’s blog. 

For more on ATSC 3.0, see TV Technology’sATSC 3.0 silo.

PISCATAWAY, N.J.—Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s vice president of advanced technology, is joining the roster of keynote speakers for the upcoming 2016 IEEE Broadcast Symposium. On Oct. 13, Aitken will headline the “So You Think You’re a ‘Televisioner’” session that will look to challenge assumptions about OET69, offering insight into broadcaster’s opportunities to maintain relevance with services that extend beyond conventional TV broadcasting.

“Spectrum… reverse auction… forward auction… channel of allocations… repack. These are all familiar terms for many of us, but there’s a resounding question that we should all be asking our company leadership, right now: ‘So what are we doing when we restart broadcasting with NextGen?’” said Aitken. “In this session, we will explore the new tools and assumptions that begin to shape an understanding of the QoS realities for NextGen broadcasting, the impact that has on business assumptions, and the humorous perspectives I’ve gained after enjoying a career of 40-plus years.”

The IEEE BTS previously announced Pilot Executive Director John Clark to serve as a keynote speaker during its conference.

IEEE BTS is set to take place from Oct. 12-14 in Hartford, Conn. More information is available here.

BALTIMORE—A consortium of broadcast technology developers reported doing field tests of ATSC 3.0 concepts over a single frequency network on the East Coast on Monday this week. (See “ONE Media Conducts ATSC 3.0 ‘Concept’ SFN Trials.”) One Media, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Teamcast, Acrodyne, Comark, Dielectric, GatesAir and LG contributed technology and elbow grease to the effort.

Sinclair has been at the forefront of supporting the deployment of ATSC 3.0, an advanced broadcast TV transmission standard said to support features such as interactivity, personalized content delivery and mobile reception, among others. Mark Aitken, vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair, is the company’s ATSC 3.0 evangelist. He fielded questions from TV Technology about the 3.0 SFN tests, which took place with transmitters in Sinclair’s home turf of Baltimore, and neighboring Washington, D.C.

TV Technology: What is the chief benefit of using a single frequency network versus the traditional big stick, big power method?
Aitken: An SFN allows a broadcaster to provide a higher signal level where he or she wishes to do so. It also allows for a more uniform signal level to be spread across an area to provide for service. This is not to be confused with coverage, which is the out-lived and of-little-relevance term used today.
As well, when fully understood, it is possible to define a QoS (quality of service) for specific reception modes—fixed, portable, mobile, indoor, etc.
Also, higher signal saturation allows the delivery of more bits, and with geographically disperse transmission sites, leveraging tools within the ATSC 3.0 standard makes it is possible to provide hyper-local services within the contours of the individual sites. SFNs are supplemental, but open new business opportunities.

TV Technology:In what way will single frequency networks impact a broadcaster’s post-incentive auction coverage area?
Aitken: Positively!? Kidding, actually it is the service area that is positively impacted. If we are to be good stewards’ of our resources, we will work with the Federal Communications Commission to allow minor coverage modifications that would allow shared siting (co-siting) of SFN facilities, providing better uniform services as a result of minimizing interference that results from multiple sites.

TV Technology:What is the duration of the STA, and what further does this coalition hope to achieve under this STA?
Aitken: STAs are typically six months in duration, with reauthorizations allowed. 

TV Technology:The ONE Media press release said this was “the first of hundreds of SFNs Sinclair Broadcast Group and other broadcasters will roll out in adoption of the next-gen technology.” Whom else, and why?
Aitken: Speaking for SBG, we see opportunities in NextGen services: Ease of reception, including inside the home? Who would not want that? What new businesses can be driven with an ‘all-IP’ wireless pipeline? CDNs? Prepositioning ‘most-consumed’ entertainment?
Mobile rules the roost. We should be part of it, either independently or in conjunction with other service providers.

TV Technology:Why specifically is Sinclair adopting SFNs?
Aitken: 1) More consistency of an easy to receive OTA service. 2) Larger potential audience reach. 3) Higher signal saturation allows the delivery of more bits. (Bits/Hz is Shannon limit defined and vary as a function of signal-to-noise ratio).

TV Technology:The tests were conducted on Ch. 43, which may no longer be part of the TV band after the auction. What are the implications for SFNs in lower frequencies, particularly in the high and low VHF bands?
Aitken: UHF will survive post-auction, so the specific UHF channel is somewhat irrelevant. Also, SFNs provide the same impact on all frequencies, but physics dictate the usefulness within constraints of power. Additionally, high-VHF may be a great place to provide for hybrid vehicular mobile services.

TV Technology:  The field-tested SFN used two transmitters—an Acrodyne 60 kW IOT in Baltimore and a GatesAir solid-state Maxiva ULXT-12 in D.C. What was the EIRP of each transmitter?
Aitken: Baltimore = 800 kW EIRP. Washington = 120 kW EIRP

TV Technology:Why only two transmitters? Does this technically constitute an SFN?
Aitken: Yes. Got to start somewhere; more to follow.We are working towards an understanding of matching SFN emulation model (theoretical) with real-world results. We are partnering on developing a state-of-the-art synchronization and distribution method. We are developing an understanding of the impact of all issues that impact the broadcast transmission topologies that are possible (i.e., optimization of service).

TV Technology:Did this test use the full ATSC 3.0 transmission format, or some flavor of it?
Aitken: A fully compliant ATSC operating mode (similar to Korea’s Mode 4 parameters, modified for transmitter spacing (impact-to-GI and other timing-related parameters). This is truly a first; a start to the required learning.

TV Technology:What is meant by “specific coverage” field tests?
Aitken: First, confirmation of synchronization and ability of receivers to receive. More to come.

TV Technology:What part of the ATSC 3.0 STL standard will this trial attempt to define and finalize?
Aitken: There is not yet a standard, we will continue to co-development. Nowhere near final…

TV Technology:Were both audio and video transmitted in sync?
Aitken: Nope, not required. Soon to follow.

TV Technology:LGE as in LG Electronics, correct? This group has previously worked with Samsung
Aitken: Yes, LGE…we have worked with all parties, and have flourishing relationships with them and many others.

TV Technology: Is there a specific requirement beyond ATSC 3.0 reception for this receiver type?
Aitken: ATSC 3.0 compliance at this time.

TV Technology:Were any of the receivers for this test mobile-enabled?
Aitken: Mobile capable? Yes, but not yet tested…we just turned it on!

Also see…
Feb. 1, 2015
Sinclair Taps Swedish Firm to Implement ATSC 3.0
Sinclair Broadcasting Group has chosen to use Progira Plan, a software-based networking planning tool from Sweden-Based Progira, to help implement the new standard across the SGB TV network.

December 3, 2015
Sinclair Demos HDR 4KTV Over ATSC 3.0 in Vegas
Sinclair Broadcast Group, along with subsidiary One Media and Technicolor, report they have successfully transmitted high-dynamic range 4KTV over the air using the proposed ATSC 3.0 standard and a prototype reception device. 

May 15, 2015
“Samsung and ONE Media Drive ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard“ 
Samsung and ONE Media proposed a hierarchical framework comprised of the ‘bootstrap,’ preamble and data framing to meet broadcasters unique requirements.

April 9, 2015
“Technicolor and Sinclair Demo HDR UHD Live Over-the-Air Broadcast”
Technicolor and Sinclair Broadcast Group have announced a successful demonstration of UltraHD with high dynamic range live broadcast based on proposed ATSC 3.0 technologies.

October 8, 2014
“Sinclair and Technicolor Do ATSC 3.0 4K Over-the-Air Broadcast”
Sinclair Broadcast Group and Technicolor delivered an industry first by successfully deploying Technicolor’s ATSC 3.0 4K UltraHD testbed platform and receiving an over-the-air signal.

INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—High dynamic range or Ultra HD? That was the first question put to the annual broadcasters panel at the HPA Tech Retreat Wednesday. Matthew Goldman of Ericsson once again moderated.

HDR vs. UHD
Skip Pizzi of the National Association of Broadcasters said there was no NAB consensus viewpoint, but that “generally anecdotally,” there appeared to be more bang for the bit with HDR versus 4K.

“Especially with 4K upconversion at the set,” he said. “HDR has the most ‘wow’ factor for the consumer, and we figure high frame rate in sports.”

HDR increases visibility of motion artifacting and thus makes a case for HFR in fast-motion imagery such as sports.

Sinclair’s Mark Aitken noted that if a media facility has just “spent a boatload of money on a 3G plant, you’re not going to suddenly build a 12G plant for UHD. HDR does give a noticeable enhancement to consumers…. HDR 60P 1080p certainly is an enhancement that consumers recognize.”

Mario Vecchi of PBS said that without a real business case to increase the capacity of the PBS plant, including storage, “it’s going to be a real difficult decision to make.” HDR, he said, seems to be “a low-hanging fruit.”

Robert Siedel of CBS said the network was testing it

“One thing of interest to us is how television sets labeled HDR behave with a regular signal, and you see an ‘S-curve,’” he said. “They’re going to have to process our standard HD signals. So when you compare how they’re processing that signal versus how they will process a true HDR signal… we’re looking at how those sets are scaling HDR.”

Goldman asked about “video loudness,” where the brightness overwhelms. Siedel said the International Telecommunications Union is testing issues of eye fatigue. In Japan, they have instated regulations on photo-epilepsy, he said. The ITU has considered similar concerns on HDR and whether or not it creates eye fatigue.

Stan Moote asked Siedel if CBS has “control down to the TV now, because you must have 4K viewers who can see the motion artifacts.”

Siedel said CBS specifies minimum data rates with carriers, and a quality threshold, not only for over-the-air, but through the cable signal. They have not yet increased the data rate for 4K sets, “because we feel upconversion in the sets is pretty good,” he said.

ATSC 3.0
Mark Schubin jumped in with a question about how the industry plans to transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0.

Aitken characterized it as “more of a migration; an enhancement of the digital standard, and in the context of the FCC’s own rulemaking, to continue the development and advancement of digital standards.”

Deploying it will be a matter of market dynamics, he said.

“We can hang onto 1.0 as long as we want in a channel-sharing situation. Say one station wants to convert to 3.0. They can sign a deal with another broadcaster in the market and they can piggyback channels. Now you’ve cleared a channel for the roll-out of 3.0. You basically have a six times multiplier in the video capacity of that channel using 3.0. There have been discussions about making that kind of migration across markets.”

Asked if a shared channel can carry two 720p signals, Aitken said he wrote himself a note.

“I wrote down ‘least crappy,’” he said. “It’s a valid question, but it’s a question of what’s being delivered to the consumer, and the least crappy thing that is being delivered to the consumer. We know about grooming and compressing in the cable plant and anomalies in displays. We believe broadcasters can deliver two shared HD signals that look just as good or better than what’s being delivered” over closed infrastructures. “It will require discussions between sharers.”

He then said 85 percent of Sinclair’s content is carried by MPVDs.

Gateway devices have been discussed for reception. The NAB is working on a 1.0-to-3.0 converter, much like the digital-to-analog converters made for the 2009 digital transition. Pizzi said the NAB is developing a prototype, but the price is now around $150.

“We’re hoping it will come down,” he said.

At one point during the morning, the majority of folks raised their hands and said 2K HDR would be something they would watch versus 4K. Fox’s Rich Friedel, recently elected board chairman of ATSC, was asked if broadcasters would do 2K HDR.

He said, “ATSC 3.0 gives great flexibility. That certainly includes 1080p 60, SDR and HDR. It has to be a business decision made by each broadcaster.”

In terms of codecs, Friedel said HEVC is written into it now, and while the ATSC is anxious to get the standard out, Aitken said there is a need for more than one codec.

“There are enough questions about HEVC for anyone who envisions a streaming future to take a long, deep look at it,” Aitken said. “AVC is a perfectly valid choice. It could also be a bridging technology. Ultimately, there may be a wide variety, but many of these codecs are baked into the product they’ll be displayed on.”

There is a certain amount of tension between the business case and the technical case, he said.

John Luff asked if the future of local broadcasting is moving toward centralcasting. Aitken said that 3.0 would make it easier to virtualize the local facilities and create a de facto national reach.

“All it takes is a Sinclair, a Nexstar and a Gray to enter into an agreement to use a portion of the bitload for a national service,” for example, he said.

In terms of advanced audio, 3.0 has the juice for immersive sound, but the question is whether or not people will take advantage of it.

Pizzi said the standard leverages AC-4 from Dolby and MPEG-H.3 from MPEG Audio Alliance.

“What we’re doing to keep the deployment manageable, we’re asking for regions to pick one or the other. Both systems allow for personalization and immersive audio.”

Pizzi also noted that with immersive, a speaker array isn’t necessary. Soundbars can now decode immersive.

Asked how ATSC 3.0 dovetails into Internet delivery, Aitken said it 3.0 “was envisioned from the beginning to be a hybrid platform” that would deliver bits by broadcast and broadband, simultaneously.

Siedel, from a different perspective, spoke to CBS OTT delivery. He said CBS is available on Roku, Apple TV and smartphone. CBS has 135 CBS market affiliates up on CBS All Access, covering 85 percent of the U.S. population.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Asked if social media tools draw in a younger audience, Vecchia said PBS sees the area as an opportunity for growth.

“We already integrate social media and interactivity with a number of our programs,” he said.

Friedel said social was very powerful for Fox.

“We can see if we monitor social media, when mentions of our programs come up, we can see a spike in ratings… up to 20 to 30 percent on shows with active social media conversations.”

Siedel said CBS also sees increased linear viewing when someone in an online community brings up binge-viewing a show.

IP
The SDI-to-IP migration came up. Vecchia said that, “using an IP infrastructure is so generic. I think in terms of control and management, that’s migrating aggressively to IP technology. The actual transport of the signal will take heavier lifting.”

Siedel talked about the inherent security of an SDI plant and its resistance to viruses.

Friedel, also president of the Video Services Forum, which is actively working on IP transport, conceded this bias.

“At Fox, we’re trying to make use of this technology. Primetime will be the last place we use this, I agree with Bob. But sports now… NASCAR, is being run through IP routing. We have IP routing in the plant, not for on-air yet, but we’re making use of these IP systems for live content. We see it as a format-agnostic platform, to handle UHD capabilities internally.”

Also see…
Feb. 6, 2016
“HPA 2016: ATSC 3.0 Update”
Over-the-air TV is on its way to resembling a more robust version of the Internet with the realization of ATSC 3.0, the so-called “next-generation” transmission standard being developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee