ARLINGTON, Va.—The 2020 PBS TechCon, which was scheduled to take place during the 2020 NAB Show in Las Vegas, has been cancelled “in light of the growing concerns around coronavirus/COVID-19,” PBS said on its website.

The announcement comes as PBS is limiting non-essential business travel, as a result, it said it “made the difficult decision to cancel all upcoming PBS conferences, including TechCon.” The public broadcaster cited the health and safety of its attendees and partners as its primary reason for cancellation.

Registered attendees, sponsors and exhibitors for TechCon will receive a full refund, per PBS. It also said that attendees who booked a room at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as part of the PBS room block will have the reservation automatically cancelled and be issued a refund in the next few days.

The 2020 NAB Show, meanwhile, still is set to go on as planned from April 18-22. PBS says that PBS TechCon attendees who were also planning to attend the NAB Show and were part of the PBS room block at MGM Grand will need to rebook a hotel reservation.

PBS has a complete FAQ list regarding PBS TechCon’s cancellation on its website.

TVT is keeping track of all the latest news involving the coronavirus’ impact on the 2020 NAB Show. 

LAS VEGAS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers and PBS TechCon this year are collaborating April 6 on a daylong tutorial on the technical implementation of ATSC 3.0.

“It’s a total crash course,” says Fred Baumgartner, director of Next Gen Implementation at Sinclair Broadcast Group and organizer of the event. “The focus of our class is everything engineers need to know to implement ATSC 3.0 in the next year with a little bit of what’s going to come right after the initial implementation.”

The first-ever collaboration between SBE and PBS TechCon, which will be held at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and run from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m., will offer insight on 3.0 architecture, equipment and configurations, as well as examine the options offered by the Next Gen TV standard.

“This is a very pragmatic approach,” says Baumgartner. “The program will cover the entire gamut of 3.0—not just the RF and transmitter. It goes back deeply into the entire platform.”

Topics include:

• Regulations, such as MVPD notifications, carriage and 1.0 host requirements and agreements;
• Converting a transmitter to 3.0 service, including an examination of proof-of-performance and acceptance testing by the engineers who build the devices;
• 3.0 scheduler, including the most practical configuration options, performance monitoring and test equipment; and
• A look at issues related to adoption, timing, budgeting, project planning, enhanced content and services.

Several speakers, including those from the three major TV transmitter manufacturers and two from major scheduler makers, will offer their insights. Baumgartner emphasizes that these speakers will not use the forum for commercial purposes but rather to advance the knowledge of attendees on implementation of the Next Gen TV.

“Here is the issue. We are at that stage in the game where nobody knows it all, and nobody knows even large chunks of it,” says Baumgartner. During this period, the television industry needs a high degree of back-and-forth exchanges between engineers to come to a clearer picture on what really is needed to deploy 3.0. “This event is part of that process.”

Topics as rudimentary as setting up a 3.0 receiver will be covered. “If you are going to convert your station, your general manager is at least going to want a TV in the lobby that can pick it up,“ he says. “We’ll even get into that.”

The daylong seminar is priced at $95 for SBE and PBS members and $145 for nonmembers. Registration is available online.

Separately, IEEE BTS and Gary Sgrignoli are offering the ATSC 3.0 Roadshow on the same day. 

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

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—Broadcast management system provider Myers will be hosting a ProTrack User Workshop in association with the 2019 PBS TechCon. Part of the conference’s Beyond TechCon series, Myers’ workshop will provide hands-on experience with its ProTrack system, along with input from the Traffic Advisory Committee.

In addition to the workshop, Myers is a silver sponsor and exhibitor at PBS TechCon. Its booth will have many members of its staff to answer questions and give demonstrations of the ProTrack system’s latest features and functionality, as well as give a preview on what’s ahead in 2019, like web-based browser accessibility and cloud technology advancements.

The ProTrack User Workshop will be held on April 3 from 10 a.m. to noon. There is no cost to attend the workshop, but space is limited so it is recommended for those interested to register when registering for the entire TechCon conference.

Myers will also co-present a session on Traffic and Scheduling with TAC at an as yet undetermined time.

PBS TechCon is a gathering of public television professionals to share ideas through education, professional development and technology. It will take place from April 3-5 at the Flamingo Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS--SBE announced this week that it will offer an all-day tutorial on ATSC 3.0 (aka Next Gen TV) right after the 2019 PBS TechCon, April 6 at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel. The tutorial is open to all, and costs $95 for SBE and PBS members, $145 for non-members.

The tutorial will cover regulations that dictate the requirements of the transition and technical compliance. These include MVPD notifications, carriage and 1.0 host requirements and agreements. It will also cover RF testing and field measurements and the importance of the scheduler feature in the standard. Additional topics will cover adoption, timing, budgeting, project planning and (looking further out), the enhanced content and services that Next Gen TV will enable.

In announcing the tutorial, the organization cautioned broadcasters to have a realistic approach to deployment of ATSC 3.0.

“Everybody in your world will want to know what NextGen is all about,” it said. “Some will have overindulged in the hype. Most will have more misunderstandings than real knowledge (we don't throw out TVs this time). For others, there will be fear, uncertainty and dread. We'll conclude with what is real and what is not, matching adoption curves with equipment life cycles. We will separate what happens today and what happens further down the road. In particular, we'll look at what changes in broadcast station architecture and workflows, including digital ad insertion and ad tech, will help move the revenue needle.

“When the hype becomes real, it is always a big deal.”

Registration is available at bit.ly/SBEatPBS.

Also on Saturday at TechCon, the the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society will host an ATSC 3.0 Roadshow, including a training seminar taught by expert Gary Sgrignoli of Meintel, Sgrignoli, and Wallace, the noted digital TV transmission consulting firm. This course will cover the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer and prepare participants to take the SBE ATSC 3.0 certification exam.

Registration and seminar information can be found on bts.ieee.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More information is available on PBS TechCon 2018 website.

As a broadcast veteran, I have the advantage of looking back to look forward. In this new column, I hope to bring some of my “rear-view mirror” insight to help us best navigate the challenging and turbulent times for our industry.

In recent years, one of the issues that has been a source of confusion and frustration is the separate naming of what have been called ”broadcast,” “digital” and “technology” businesses and services. We need to revisit this issue because the boxes hinder our industry. Let’s start with some definitions.

“Broadcast” has become narrowly defined to encompass only linear distribution and consumption. “Digital” often is the moniker for everything else, encompassing online, broadband, OTT and mobile distribution and consumption. Silicon Valley companies have been narrowly tagged with the “Technology” industry name.

The narrow and divisive use of these names is problematic because it implies that somehow these sectors are distinctly different and non-overlapping. The implication is that the “broadcast” industry is neither digital nor a driver of technology

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the broadcast industry has always been both a digital and an advanced technology pioneer. Netflix, Amazon and Google are clearly in the television/broadcast business today, and their presence and impact continue to grow at a dramatic pace.

PBS TECHCON

I am happy to say that at the 2016 PBS Technology Conference there was finally a refreshing blurring and blending of these naming silos. This annual conference has been held just prior to the NAB Show in Las Vegas for nearly four decades, and draws more than 500 attendees.

The agenda at the PBS Technology Conference this year combined what in the past has been separate sessions (and even separate conferences) for broadcast, digital and technology cohorts. The conference blended both topics and attendees in a way that I had not seen previously. From the opening session, a keynote by Robert Tercek, author of “Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World,” to the closing “Town Hall” session that encompassed broadcast, online, interactive, over-the-top and new technologies, the conference shed the historical separation that I had seen so many times in years past. Tercek shared his perspective that broadcast is not dying, despite headlines to the contrary; instead, it is in the process of reinvention, leveraging the dynamics of digital transformation, innovation and disruption. He went on to show how multiple vectors of digital change are rewriting the rules of TV and other industries.

Throughout nearly 70 sessions over three days, discussions blended broadcast, digital and technology. We learned how the PBS News Hour innovates on digital platforms to complement their nightly broadcast, and provides stations tools to do the same in their local markets. We saw stations who have re-imagined media operations to approach production and delivery across all platforms using a holistic model. PBS Digital Studios, a multichannel YouTube network, shared their successes with more than seven million subscribers and 450 million views across 15 active online shows. These are high-quality shows made specifically for online audiences and delivery that are tightly aligned with the PBS brand. Of course, there were also several deeply technical sessions, covering such topics as HDR, UHD/4K production and workflows, IP routing, disaster recovery, and ATSC 3.0.

WELL-ROUNDED

The result? A richer dialog, more collaboration and increased strategic thinking. Public television organizations seem to have figured out that they are in the “media” business where a strategic and blended view of creation, distribution and monetization of content has led to better efficiencies, new revenue models and vastly improved consumer experiences and relationships – all based around a single coherent view of broadcast, digital and advanced technology.

But what does this blending of technology mean for your organization—regardless of whether you consider yourself to be ”broadcast,” “digital,” “technology” or some combination of those? What’s the impact on how you will go to market? Your customers? Or better yet, your people? Through this column, I’m going to take advantage of my perspective—looking back to look forward—to explore what the future might just look like.

John McCoskey is Industry Lead Executive - Communications, Media & Technology at Eagle Hill Consulting in Arlington, VA. He can be reached atjmccoskey@eaglehillconsulting.com.