It’s no secret that the broadcast engineering community continues to age with fewer younger engineers entering the ranks, and that fact was on full display in April at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

I can remember commenting to one of my friends at the show that one day soon I wouldn’t be surprised to see the walkways between the halls looking like a NASCAR track as ageing engineers vie for position in their motorized scooters.

Little did I know that I might be joining their ranks—far sooner than I ever would have imagined.

In May, I suffered a stroke that took me off my game for the better part of two weeks. Looking back, it was the oddest thing in the world because as I was going through it, the thought never occurred to me that I was having a stroke—even though years prior I happened to be present when a loved one was having a stroke and clearly recognized what was going on looking at it from the outside in.

All I knew was that my legs felt so weak I could not stand (as it would turn out that “weakness” was likely due to my lack of control on the left side of my body). Normally, my crashing to the floor would have alerted my wife that something was seriously wrong, but she happened to be on a plane at that time returning from vacation.

A call to 911 summoned the paramedics and firefighters who arrived, evaluated me and took me to the hospital.

As my case progressed, the doctors wanted to find out the source of the clot that caused the stroke, which led to a cardiac catheterization that uncovered serious cardiac artery disease. At this writing, I am days away from open heart surgery to revascularize my heart.

All of this to communicate two points. First, while most would regard having a stroke as a major negative life event, I look at it now as a bit of good fortune because it led to uncovering a serious health condition that could end my life. Now, that can be addressed. Plus, as it turns out the stroke has not left me with any noticeable deficits.

Second, as I mentioned at the top of this column. None of us is getting any younger, so it might be worthwhile to learn the acronym the medical community has given to recognizing a stroke and taking action: B.E.F.A.S.T. Or,

B –Balance, sudden loss of balance or coordination.

E –Eyes, sudden change in vision.

F –Face droop on one side or numbness.

A –Arm weakness or numbness.

S –Speech is slurred.

T –Time to call 911.

I am looking forward to successful heart surgery, rehab and getting back in the swing of covering this ever-changing industry. See you then.

Sinclair/ONE Media’s kiosk in the ATSC booth at the 2026 NAB Show said it simply and succinctly: “ATSC 1.0 Must Go!”

Sunsetting the original digital TV standard on a certain date (or dates) is essential to the future success of the broadcast industry, ATSC 3.0 proponents say.

While 3.0 channel-sharing has served its purpose, neither broadcasters nor the public can truly realize the full benefit of NextGen TV without an end to 1.0. In other words, as things stand, broadcast spectrum cannot be used to its full potential.

Laurence Zimmerman, a wireless industry veteran, agrees. On April 15 as the broadcast industry was traveling to Las Vegas for its annual gathering, Zimmerman’s company, Landover Saturn 5 LLC, filed a petition with the FCC seeking a rulemaking “to permit the repurposing of UHF Channels 28-36 (554-608 MHz) into a contiguous nationwide block of low-band spectrum for flexible 5G and future 6G use.”

In the petition, Landover proposes serving as a “neutral Sponsor” coordinating broadcaster participation, managing spectrum clearing, repacking broadcasters below channel 28 and “implementing the monetization” of the repurposed spectrum—for a cut of the proceeds.

The company says it can generate more than twice as much money for the federal government –some $15 billion—as the FCC’s Auction 1001.

Whether or not Landover’s proposal has merit is for the commission to decide. In the end, it may derail the efforts of U.S. broadcasters to make better use of their spectrum via 3.0. Ironically, it would enable 5G and 6G wireless providers to leverage the spectral efficiency of 3.0 to clear the desired 50MHz block of TV spectrum and as a consequence inhibit broadcasters’ full ability to develop a new, recurring revenue stream as wireless data service providers.

Regardless of the petition’s datacasting implications, however, the proposal identifies ATSC 3.0 channel sharing as one of two key lynchpins (the other being relocation) for clearing the spectrum without forcing broadcasters to give up their local voice. As the petition puts it: “Broadcasters retain their market presence and program distribution rights by transitioning to shared ATSC 3.0 capacity below Channel 28, at no cost to Broadcasters.

“This allows them to continue delivering their full broadcast signal while simultaneously aligning with industry-wide movement toward streaming distribution. In other words, Broadcasters will convert under-monetized spectrum into immediate enterprise value without forfeiting brand identity, local programming obligations, retransmission eligibility or the growing opportunities that ATSC 3.0 offers for data, multicast, and digital-first delivery.”

NextGen TV proponents have told the commission for some time that continued, indefinite 1.0 and 3.0 transmission is a path to nowhere. As a Gray Media senior executive has put it, the current approach delivers the “worst of both worlds” for broadcasters and viewers alike.

Perhaps the Landover petition will underscore for FCC Commissioners why there’s little room to move forward—whether that’s for licensed broadcasters or a third-party disrupter with a new point of view—when the vast majority of TV spectrum in a market is devoted to transmitting via 1.0.

While individual broadcasters may or may not favor Landover’s petition, Sinclair’s NAB message and the petitioner’s appear to have something in common: “ATSC 1.0 Must Go!”

Pearl TV’s over-the-air converter box survey, released last month, reveals the existence of a long-suspected viewer class.

As the industry awaits a rulemaking from the Federal Communications Commission it hopes will bring certainty to the end of ATSC 1.0 to make way for a full rollout of 3.0, Pearl TV appears to be attempting to reassure regulators with research showing over-the-air TV viewers are willing to spring for an inexpensive converter box to ensure post-transition reception.

The research, conducted by Magid and released in the “Pearl TV Over-The-Air Converter Box: Consumer Key Findings” report, asked 600 adults 25-65 years old who watch a minimum of two hours of OTA TV per week what they thought about the prospect of shelling out a few dollars for a one-time purchase of a converter “to maintain free access to local TV content without recurring monthly fees.”

Spoiler alert: Four out of five respondents would buy a converter box with basic features. That should give some peace of mind to the commission if it chooses to set a date or dates certain for a 1.0 sunset as NAB has petitioned rather than continue with a voluntary transition, albeit with fewer regulatory restrictions.

While highly pertinent to the transition discussion, the thing that caught my eye was the report identifying the “emergence of the ‘Omni-Viewer’ segment” of OTA TV fans.

Who are omni-viewers? The “tech-savvy group… who intentionally blend free local broadcasting with digital streaming,” the report said.

“Nearly two-thirds of antenna users also subscribe to streaming services, demonstrating that, for these consumers, broadcast television is complementing, rather than being replaced by, modern digital platforms,” it said.

I’ve long suspected this class of TV viewer exists. After all, I am one. I’ve also suspected TV broadcasters can take advantage of the existence of this set of viewers who are equally adept at streaming content via the internet and OTA TV. Here are three ways they can:

• Cement viewer loyalty and grow the OTA audience. Installing a rooftop antenna or one in the attic isn’t especially hard but neither is it particularly easy or convenient. (Was that really a brown recluse spider I saw in the roof rafters as I squirmed on my back across the ceiling joist?) But with OFDM-based ATSC 3.0, a simple indoor antenna may be all that’s needed for reliable reception. That may be enough for omni-viewers to spread the word to their friends and family.

• Enhance the viewing experience with interactivity. Broadcasters already have some experience leveraging both OTA and streaming delivery of television, à la Broadcast Enhanced Streaming Channels and RUN3TV-based program start over. How else might they enhance TV viewing and benefit economically? Targeted ads, QR code-triggered shopping carts and others not-yet imagined or at least made public?

• Hyper-local news and advertising content. Who needs the expense and headache of local SFNs and deploying LDM solutions if it’s possible to deliver specific, targeted news and commercials to neighborhoods, districts and other defined zones? Even to individual omni-viewers?

Bottom line: The omni-viewer has arrived. Broadcasters need to begin acting like it.

Email Phil Kurz at tvtechphil@gmail.com.

Time again for a look into the future as to what we can expect in 2026. Of course, I am not a clairvoyant, and you may agree or disagree with my list. But I hope my predictions—based on my perspective from covering the industry—give you something to think about:

No. 1: U.S. broadcasters muddle through another year of incremental steps towards a 3.0 future. With no date certain for 1.0 shut-off and the freedom to make the switch whenever they think best, the tiptoe towards NextGen TV will continue.

No. 2: The Digital Rights Management (DRM) faceoff between the ATSC 3.0
Security Authority, some viewers and some CE companies over 3.0 content
will be resolved—most likely leaving all sides a bit disappointed but for different reasons.

No. 3: Agentic AI makes its presence felt in the broadcast back office. Workflow efficiency has been the mantra of TV production, news and distribution for decades. With the help of agentic AI, many back-office processes will be more fully automated.

No. 4: 5G Broadcast proponents in the U.S. broadcast industry will continue to make their case but won’t find the success they seek.

No. 5: Re-evaluation of the role public cloud plays in media workflows will continue. Some media organizations will decide to repatriate their valuable content from the public cloud in favor of using a combination of cloud and their own private storage.

No. 6: “Hybrid” will be the word to watch in 2026, whether it refers to media storage, production or distribution.

No. 7: Media Exchange Layer (MXL) will continue to garner industry attention and support for its development, as broadcasters and other media creators look
to one day leverage software-defined media workflows that streamline operations and address interoperability issues.

No. 8: Stations and station groups will begin to get their arms around the best that the “creator economy” has to offer, especially when paired with the content they already create, leading to a variety of benefits for broadcasters—perhaps most importantly, occupying more mindshare among younger members of the public.

No. 9: The funding nightmare public broadcasting is living through will have a bit of a silver lining for the rest of the industry, as displaced technical workers and engineers will create a talent pool commercial broadcasters can tap to help address their engineering aging crisis.

No. 10: The Department of Transportation-funded Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) will demonstrate the strength of the solution as a relatively affordable backup for GPS—especially when it comes to precise timing—and will turn heads among those responsible for national security.

That’s a wrap. Here’s wishing everyone a great 2026!

Congratulations to Brazil on its official decision to deploy DTV+ (formerly known as TV 3.0), which incorporates many components of the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards, including the physical layer.

The press release ATSC issued upon Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signing the decree mandating DTV+ noted that commercial service is expected in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, June 11-July 19, 2026—a move that echoes South Korea’s decision to transmit 4K UHD over ATSC 3.0 over the air domestically in time for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Brazil’s timing brought to mind the National Association of Broadcasters’ petition for FCC rulemaking on the shut-off of ATSC 1.0 and replacement with 3.0. NAB has proposed a two-phase shut-off. In the first phase, stations in the top 55 markets would sunset 1.0 in February 2028. All the rest would pull the plug on 1.0 in February 2030.

So here we are once again waiting patiently for our regulators to clear the decks for NextGen TV. Does anyone want to wager on which comes first: full deployment in the U.S. or Brazil?

I’ve previously written about a conversation at NAB Show several years ago with Rich Chernock, former chairman of ATSC Technology Group 3, the one responsible for developing 3.0. I asked him which he thought would happen first: Nationwide deployment of ATSC 3.0 or 5G? Well, T-Mobile settled that.

But what about tech developments? Which will come first? Full U.S. deployment of 3.0 or:

• SpaceX’s Starship Mars reaches the Red Planet with an unmanned mission. Elon Musk is targeting the end of 2026.
• Humans return to the moon. NASA now is aiming at mid-2027 for Artemis III.
• The first supersonic passenger jet flight since the Concorde flies. Boom Supersonic looks to have passenger service in 2029.
• The dawn of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts it by 2029.
• 6G rollout begins. Telecom experts point to 2030 if not sooner.
• Humans set foot on Mars. SpaceX thinks that will happen between 2029 and 2031.
• Commercial nuclear fusion power. TAE Technologies in Foothill Ranch, Calif., says that’s coming by the early 2030s.
• Publicly available brain chips. Neuralink expects to make that happen between 2035 and 2040.
• Consumer quantum computers. Experts expect that sometime between 2035 and 2040.

The singularity—the moment that artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Kurzweil predicts 2045.

That’s a whole lot of technical advancement before the proposed 1.0 shutoff. Who knows what the FCC will actually do?

If the 1.0 sunset slips much past February 2030, each passing year will look more like something out of a sci-fi movie than what you or I have experienced in our lifetimes, even when it comes to entertainment.

Who better to ask how quantum computing, possibly arriving in 2035, will affect entertainment than Google’s Gemini AI? Its answer: by “enabling hyper-personalized content recommendations and dramatically enhancing production through realistic rendering and complex simulations, while also offering advanced data compression and distribution for more efficient consumption.”

“Key areas of impact include improved AI, next-level visuals, optimized distribution, new interactive experiences,” it added.

Maybe that’s good news for broadcasters looking to cram more content into 6 MHz, but more likely it will heap on even more competitive pressure than today as these tools enhance the entertainment experiences broadcast competitors can deliver and make the battle for eyeballs even stiffer.

Maybe it’s because I still remember being a little boy, going to the movie theater and watching “Dr. No” with my dad. For whatever reason, I’ve enjoyed James Bond movies ever since, and I’ve taken special delight in Mike Myers’ tongue-in-cheek spoofs of the franchise.

That’s probably why my mind immediately went to Austin Powers’ immortal words to actress Kristen Johnston, the Russian hit woman: “I’ve lost my Mojo!”—not once but twice—while recently scrolling through YouTube Shorts.

The first time involved TVU Networks. The company is pitching its IP transmitter—the same one or similar to the one it has sold to broadcasters for news and sports contribution. This time, however, its target market is content creators and video podcasters.

The next was a YouTube Shorts ad for
Adobe Firefly, the company’s generative AI platform that makes generating images and video fast, easy and inexpensive.

For a long time, highly priced technology played a significant gatekeeper role, separating those who could afford to create and distribute video to the public from those who couldn’t. In the 1980s, when I started covering this business, a Quantel Paintbox-Harry-Encore combo ran upwards of $1 million. An ENG truck—the only functional equivalent of an IP transmitter I can think of—could cost $100,000 or more.

But as with all other things technology, prices have fallen and performance has risen. As a result, the barrier to entry has diminished to the point where it’s nonexistent in many instances.

Distribution technology has fared no better when it comes to broadcast mojo. For quite a while, broadcasters had a lock on mass distribution. Even with the rise of the “500-channel universe” that seemed so unimaginable decades ago when I first heard the term in a college lecture hall, broadcasters, through regulation and negotiations, found a way not only to survive but thrive.

But streaming services, connected TVs, tablets, smartphones, the internet and online video platforms have upset that apple cart with potentially devastating consequences for broadcasters.

An April Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report tells the story: digital video advertising is on pace to account for 58% of the TV/ad spend this year, compared to linear TV, which will fall from 48% of the total last year to 42%.

Of course, many other qualities that separate broadcasting from the 162 million content creators in this country alone. Local news, sports, weather and traffic reporting come to mind. Here, too, the number of competitors has climbed as the barriers to creating content evaporate. But at least local broadcasters maintain a leg up, especially in terms of trustworthiness.

A May 2024 report from Pew Research found 71% of Americans say their local journalists do “a good job of reporting news accurately.” That’s a real strength local broadcasters must play to to set themselves apart.

Another is leveraging their resources, including content, personnel and organizational, to compete effectively in the FAST and digital video domain. On the network level, there’s Pluto TV, Tubi, Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+. Local station groups, such as Gray Media with Local News Live and Big 12 Studios, Scripps with FAST versions of diginets like Grit and Laff and Sinclair with FAST versions of its Comet and CHARGE! are in the game as well.

The most important, however, may prove to be developing new revenue sources like commercially available datacasting services for U.S. businesses better served by a one-to-many data distribution architecture than wireless unicast transmission.

Fortunately, unlike Powers—who needed a time machine to retrieve his mojo—broadcasters possess competitive advantages and opportunities they can leverage to rekindle their magic.

I’ve competed against him. I’ve worked for him. I’ve crossed paths with him at numerous industry events, and I’ve even interviewed him a time or two. Now it is time to say goodbye to him as he retires from ATSC as its Vice President of Standards Development after 25 years with the organization.

Of course, I’m referring to Jerry Whitaker, one of the true gentlemen of the industry. With an affable temperament and love for radio and television engineering, he has conquered many career mountains over the years.

Going to work full-time for KCRA radio in Sacramento, Calif., at the age of 19, Whitaker worked as a morning news editor and later as a producer. “But my real interest was in engineering,” he said, so Whitaker got his FCC First Class License and found a job as an engineer at an AM station in Eureka, Calif., market 183, in the late 1970s.

“I loved radio engineering. It was fun. I would have done it for free. Well, come to think of it, it was almost free,” he mused. Shortly after joining the station, he recalled driving home from dinner and the station intermittently going off and on air.

“We had a Gates BC5H transmitter,” he said. “I had seen meter readings on the IPA, intermediate power amplifier, for the 5H, which had been varying over time. But I didn’t have enough history with the machine to know if it was significant or not.

“So, I pull out the exciter and looked at it. Maybe it’s the output transistor. I thought 'that’s not a very good diagnosis.' But I looked around to see what I could find, and there’s this 25uF, 50V electrolytic capacitor with goo on the one side. And I thought, I know what that is, and replaced the capacitor, put it back together, pushed on and was a hero. And the rest is history as they say.”

By 1983, Whitaker joined Broadcast Engineering as the magazine’s radio editor. Eventually, he became editorial director of BE and was then promoted to associate publisher.

One of his favorite magazine memories occurred at the Fall SMPTE Conference in Los Angeles when, as the newly minted radio editor, he visited Solid State Logic’s booth with the magazine publisher.

“We sat down at his SSL board with [the late] Doug Dickey,” he recalled. “It was eight-feet long—just enormous. And I’m used to a radio board, which if it had 10 channels was a lot. He’s telling me about this, and here’s the send, and here’s the return. And I’m thinking, 'what the heck is this?' But I managed to bluff my way through and say: ‘Mm-hmm, I see.’”

But if you do something long enough, you learn along the way, especially if you write articles read by broadcast engineers. That’s doubly so if you’re writing and editing technical tomes, which Whitaker has done in spades.

Over his career, he has written or edited some 50 books and counts the 2,500-page “The Electronics Handbook,” published by CRC Press in 1996, as his most important work.

In the year 2000, he joined ATSC as Technical Director, a title which the organization changed a few years later to Vice President of Standards Development. In that role he has helped shepherd standards development, including the industry’s most significant effort since A/53 (ATSC 1.0) was published in 1995, namely the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards.

“When I joined the staff in 2000, I knew a lot about broadcasting, at least I thought I did, but I didn’t know about standards development. It’s a specialized thing,” he said. “I found that the people I worked with were very willing to explain the process, explain the details that I didn’t understand and were forgiving if I asked dumb questions.”

During his early days at ATSC, Whitaker found standards meetings to be a bit intimidating. “I’d walk into a room and look around the table, and there was [the late] Joe Flaherty [CBS] and there was Renville McMann [CBS], and there was Tom Hankinson [ABC]. It was like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

But with time, Whitaker grew comfortable at those meetings. “At a certain point, you’d be sitting in meetings and think, 'I’m going to ask this question, and then no, that’s probably a dumb question.' Then somebody else asks it, and the speaker says, ‘That’s a good question.’ People were willing to sit down and explain why we wanted to do things in certain ways.”

As he prepares to depart at the end of August, the industry awaits what the FCC will decide to do about sunsetting ATSC 1.0 to make way for 3.0. Whitaker was quick to point out that he does not get involved with the regulatory side of broadcast standards.

Still, sitting in the seat he has occupied for a quarter century, Whitaker seemed to be the perfect person to ask about how the industry and standards body made the decision to develop a non-backward compatible TV transmission standard—one of the biggest hurdles the industry faces in a 1.0 sunset.

ATSC put out a public call seeking input what the new broadcast standard should be, he said. “People presented their ideas on what was possible today [at the that time] and what was possible tomorrow. That detailed report led to ATSC 3.0.

“We realized clearly that if we’re going to develop a new television system, it needs to offer benefits that the current system simply cannot and so it needs to be a pull. Consumers need to want to have it. That’s what we set out to develop.”

What are his plans post ATSC? “Well, I have hobbies as you can see,” Whitaker said during our Zoom interview as he sat amidst the vintage radio gear he has restored.

“When I was in Eureka, I rebuilt the AM station and put the FM, KPDJ-FM, on the air, Class C, from a construction permit. Thanks to eBay and a lot of repair work, I’ve collected pretty much everything we had there down to the automation system and the carousel cart machines and all of that fun stuff.

“So, I’ll keep up with that and keep trying to come up with answers to the question I get from my family members, which is: ‘Why dad? Why would you do this?’”

Who knew that former FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington could be so quotable? But he let some doozies fly June 12 at the 2025 ATSC Meeting and NextGen Broadcast Conference in Washington, D.C., that one can only hope reflects the future direction of the reconstituted commission.

Looking down the road at the broadcast business, Simington said he sees datacasting as a means for broadcasters to get into the business of connectivity in a big way.

“You’ve got three legs of the stool right now: You’ve got connectivity, which is more like a toothpick than a leg; you’ve got ad sales; and you’ve got retrans,” he said. “With the pressure on others, the connectivity business is the only one that has a clear engineering advantage over any plausible entrant.”

Highlight, underscore and boldface that critical clause: “the connectivity business is the only one that has a clear engineering advantage over any plausible entrant.”

Whether that’s connectivity to back up GPS data from vulnerable satellites, connectivity to reach internet of things (IoT) devices simultaneously with a single transmission or connectivity to offload certain traffic from unicast wireless networks, broadcasters have a technical advantage upon which they must capitalize.

What makes the (now) former commissioner’s ATSC keynote even more powerful is that elsewhere he demonstrates a clear understanding of what connectivity and datacasting can mean to the health of the broadcast business.

“Long-term, I look at datacasting as enabling broadcasters to switch their primary source of revenue from connectivity and away from ad sales,” he said. And elsewhere in the speech, he said, “There’s really no option but to allow datacasting to flourish.”

All of this should be music to the ears of Conrad Clemson, the new CEO of EdgeBeam Wireless, the datacasting joint venture of four major broadcast groups. It should be the same for any broadcaster who recognizes the competition for ad spend only gets stiffer with each passing quarter or wonders how long the retrans gravy train can continue as cord-cutters chip away at MVPD subscriptions.

As this is being written, Olivia Trusty, a Republican, has been sworn in as FCC commissioner, joining FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump nominee confirmed in 2017 and named chair with the incoming administration, and Democrat Anna Gomez.

Even with Trusty now on board, the agency is still two commissioners short—and perhaps most importantly, one shy of a quorum—one can only hope that eventually it will be constituted of members who see things a bit more like Simington and a bit less like former Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

Three short years ago, Rosenworcel told an NAB Show audience that ATSC 3.0 was “the right framework for right now” and that the “voluntary market-based” transition—with no new channel assignments for simulcasting as was done during the analog-to-digital transition—gives “broadcasters the opportunity to experiment with this technology [3.0], develop use cases and try to figure out what use cases work at scale.”

Even if one were to accept that ATSC 3.0 at that time was enabling broadcasters to experiment—something that would have surprised major TV manufacturers committed to NextGen TV—it’s clear that the use case testing phase is over, and it’s time to clear the way to let that toothpick grow into a titan.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—One of the most striking developments to emerge at the 2025 Golfweek Tech Lab gathering here May 15 at the J.W. Marriott was the laser-like focus placed by several startup tech firms, the venture capital community and the PGA Tour itself on fan engagement technology.

Companies like Bleachr, Cue, Mobii and PlayANYWHERE showed the 90 attendees their unique spins on elevating the experience of fans engaging with golf and other sports via their smartphones and other connected devices.

Not to be outdone, the PGA Tour is pursuing its own fan engagement strategy. “One of the big cultural shifts over the past five or six years is meeting the fans where they are,” says Scott Gutterman, senior vice president, Digital & Broadcast, for the PGA Tour, noting the tour is “getting closer and closer to the personalization … that people want.”

Also Read: CBS Sports Adds Innovative AR to Massive PGA Championship Coverage

Speaking during a fireside chat on the way technology is being used to capture a younger audience, Gutterman discussed how the PGA Tour is using AI platforms to “tell a story about every shot”—no small feat, given the 30,000 to 32,000 shots made during a typical tour event.

Each of those mini-stories will ultimately serve as the foundation of a service that delivers highlights to fans of their favorite players on their smartphones “when they’re running around town going to [kids’] soccer games, but they want to keep up,” he said.

Of course, the PGA Tour already relies on a variety of digital platforms, ranging from streaming via ESPN+ to distributing highlights via TikTok, to keep fans engaged with daily play as tournaments unfold.

“When I first arrived at the Tour [20 years ago], the rule was to get people to watch three hours of golf every single day,” Gutterman said. “Now really our stance on this has changed. How do we bring fans to the PGA Tour in any way? How do we meet fans where they are?”

What enables this innovation to drive deeper fan engagement? It would seem to be the same thing responsible for the countless other innovations that improve the lives of people in this country: freedom and the desire to profit.

But what about television broadcasters? Are they free to leverage the latest technologies to deliver the same sorts of personalized experiences with the content they broadcast to engage their “fans,” the viewers, more deeply and unlock new sources of revenue?

Enter Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s Delete, Delete, Delete deregulation initiative. The public notice announcing it said in part: “The Communications Act directs the FCC to regularly review its rules to identify and eliminate those that are unnecessary in light of current circumstances, recognizing that in addition to imposing unnecessary burdens, unnecessary rules may stand in the way of deployment, expansion, competition and technological innovation in communications that the Commission is directed to advance.”

Setting aside comments and reply comments filed at the agency with regards to NAB’s rulemaking petition aimed at having the agency establish dates certain for the ATSC 1.0 shutoff, I can’t help but read that quote and think about how rules are standing in the way of broadcasters’ “deployment, expansion, competition, and technological innovation.”

Some in this industry seem to be most interested in delete, delete, delete when it comes to ownership rules. But for the long-term health of the industry, it is equally important that the agency eliminate rules stifling tech innovation.

AI has gained a lot of traction in the media & entertainment Industry with a new application seeming to appear every day.

For instance, AI-assisted compression and statmuxing are helping broadcasters make more efficient use of their spectrum. It is also identifying faces, objects and the written word in video frames to enrich metadata with payoffs ranging from more relevant news creation to increased revenue from content licensing fees.

AI is also making it easier to build replay lists for sports productions, create interpolated video frames for synthetic slow motion; auto-mix audio; unearth relevant content and make video shorts based on what’s found for social media distribution; make content recommendations to streaming service subscribers based on their preferences and thereby reduce churn; match ad inventory to content on a contextual basis; and optimize content delivery network traffic (CDN). The list goes on and on.

One GenAI application in particular recently caught my attention. Sinclair, working with generative AI language editing company Deeptune, ran a trial of real-time English-to-Spanish translation of newscasts from four of its stations for distribution via their YouTube channels.

Rafi Mamalian, vice president of the Sinclair Innovation Lab, told me during an interview the station group’s initial intent was to ensure it could reach and warn more people during severe weather events like hurricanes in South Florida.

“Then it dawned on us. There are probably a lot of underserved audiences in a lot of our markets where we could potentially turn on the live broadcast and see if we could expand our audience,” he said.

My ears immediately perked up because I have written in this space before about this sort of thing. Broadcasters will have the opportunity to serve local viewers better, expand their audience and generate more ad revenue thanks to a future marriage of AI language translation and NextGen TV.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are some 68 million people in the United States who speak a language other than English in their homes. While Spanish-language speakers by far outnumber speakers of other foreign languages in the United States, the number of Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic speakers is significant. For instance, the bureau puts the number of Chinese speakers at nearly 3.5 million.

According to the bureau, about a third of those Chinese-speaking households are designated as “limited English-speaking,” meaning a household where no one over the age of 14 speaks only English or English very well.

In a 3.0 future with support for personalized audio and multiple channels, why wouldn’t a broadcaster in San Francisco, for example, simulcast an AI-generated Chinese-language audio translation of its English-language newscasts?

From where I sit, deploying AI foreign language translation and marrying it up with local newscasts transmitted as 3.0 signals will be a win for viewers, a win for broadcasters and, thanks to helping more people be better informed, a win for society at large.

Time to dust off the turban, cue the pungi and climb out on a limb with my top 10 TV broadcast predictions for 2025.

I certainly claim to have no psychic skill. Rather, these predictions come from my reporting over the past year and observations made along the way.

One caveat: If my No. 1 prediction turns out poorly for broadcasters, all bets are off on at least six others. Time will tell. Enjoy.

My Predictions
1. It’s make or break time for ATSC 3.0. A court decision in the Constellation Designs-LG Electronics patent case is expected in 2025. A favorable decision for LG likely means the company’s re-entrance into the NextGen TV market. A decision for Constellation Designs could mean all NextGen TV makers pull the plug, and 3.0 becomes a footnote in the history of U.S. television.

2. Cord-cutting continues its march. MVPDs have lost considerable audience since the advent of streaming alternatives. Comparitech puts the annual subscriber decline at 6 million between 2019 and 2022. Since February 2023, Nielsen says, more than one-third of U.S. TV usage is based on streaming. This trend will continue in 2025 and beyond. A study by Digital TV Research projects fewer than 60 million pay-TV households in the U.S. and Canada by 2029.

3. The number of OTA households will inch higher as the benefits of hybrid over-the-air and over-the-top delivery come into focus. In February 2024, Nielsen pegged the number of U.S. TV households with at least one over-the-air set in use at 18%. With 70% of U.S TV homes owning one or more smart TVs—14 million of which include ATSC 3.0 tuners and more on the way—an increasing number of viewers are experiencing 3.0-based hybrid OTA-OTT features. One, NBCU’s Start Over, gives viewers a TV experience more akin to streaming with the ability to start a show over. Another is Broadcast-Enabled Streaming TV (BEST) (aka Broadcast IP). Some commercial TV viewers and public broadcast fans, too, are already enjoying access to a fuller menu of 3.0 channels in their markets thanks to the hybrid broadcast-streaming technology.

4. Testing of ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast concurrently transmitted from the same transmitter. At least one transmitter vendor has told broadcasters it can be done. The proof, of course, will be in the tasting of the pudding, and that vendor will step into the kitchen to conduct a test.

5. The ATSC 1.0 logjam will break. The November election will change the makeup of the commission. The FCC will move forward with a workable plan to expedite the sunset of 1.0 and stomp down on the accelerator for 3.0. Broadcasters may find the solution bittersweet if it involves another spectrum auction.

6. ATSC 3.0-based Broadcast Positioning System gets a chance to prove itself. ATSC 3.0-based BPS offers the nation an affordable, resilient complement/backup to GPS for critical timing and positioning applications. The change of national leadership opens a path to BPS trials.

7. Broadcasters earn revenue from 3.0 datacasting. The efforts of Sinclair and OTA Wireless (the joint venture of Nexstar Media Group and E.W. Scripps) to create a new revenue stream based on datacasting begin to pay dividends. Other broadcasters take note and look for ways to cash in.

8. Public, private and on-prem clouds continue to transform broadcast and production infrastructure and workflows. From live production to playout, momentum will continue to grow for cloud-based workflows as broadcasters look for greater efficiency and savings.

9. Politicians consider shaking up their media strategies for 2026. Some politicians and consultants mulling over the results of the 2024 campaign will look to long-form podcasts to replicate the success of President-elect Donald Trump. Constrained by the equal time rule, broadcasters may decide they have to take a pass, or they may spin up new ad-hoc digital subchannels to make swallowing the equal-time pill a bit easier.

10. Internationally, ATSC 3.0 records more wins. The Brazilian government will adopt the recommendation of its SBTVD Forum for that nation’s TV 3.0 standard, choosing to incorporate major portions of ATSC 3.0, including the physical layer, into its broadcast future. The ATSC 3.0 standard will also see progress in India, Canada and Mexico.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was getting my dopamine rush the other day scrolling through some YouTube Shorts when the narrator clearly pronounced the word “boundaries” as “boun-dairies,” with the first syllable sounding like the word for a person, place or thing but beginning with “b” and the second sounding like the place where milk cows work.

It’s a pretty safe bet the narration was AI-generated with a text-to-speech algorithm. But calling attention to the mispronunciation isn’t intended as a gotcha aimed at the technology or the creator of the content. Rather, it’s a sign of just how good this technology has become. If it were not for the exception my ear registered in the form of “dairies,” I would not have thought twice about the authenticity of the voice.

YouTube itself has begun requiring content creators “to disclose content that is meaningfully altered or synthetically generated when it seems realistic.” It seems in this instance the synthetic voice made no meaningful difference to the content, so no harm, no foul and no warning label.

But what about television content, especially TV news? While many uses of AI promise great things in news, such as enriching metadata thereby making digitally stored content searchable on an unprecedented level, those that could directly touch viewers warrant careful consideration before committing to them.

AI-based closed captioning for live content like news—something that directly touches viewers—has steadily improved over the years and is successfully deployed by stations ranging from the smallest groups to the largest.

Then there is Channel 1, which has demonstrated AI-generated anchors and reporters in a 22-minute promotional video and plans a streaming newscast this year. BBC’s Chris Stokel-Walker’s Jan. 26, 2024, article, “TV channels are using AI-generated presenters to read the news. The question is, will we trust them?” is an excellent summation.

Indeed, will we trust them? At this point, the question is open, but I suspect many local news directors will resist using AI anchors and reports for the same reason many elected to step back from virtual news sets. Sure, there was concern about what to do if the engine driving the virtual set failed and left talent in front of a green screen.

But what was of more concern was building a newscast of what was supposed to be the real thing—in other words, the reality of what is happening in their local markets to the best of their ability—in a computer-generated, i.e., “fake,” environment. That idea simply rubbed many news managers wrong.

I suspect the same news cultural bias—at least in many local U.S. newsrooms—will be a major obstacle to AI-generated anchors and reporters. The uncanny valley is real, and all it will take are a few “boun-dairies”-type missteps—whether audio or video—to unleash the bull in the news china shop.

It’s amazing what can happen in just a few years. Not too long ago, ATSC 3.0 proponents and skeptics would go round and round arguing for and against NextGen TV.

But since LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony blazed the 3.0 consumer trail at CES 2020 with their introduction of the first NextGen TVs, the naysayers have had progressively weaker arguments as broadcasters and CE makers alike achieved a succession of milestones on the way to a successor TV standard. Without question, there have been some setbacks along the way, but the direction and momentum are clear.

Perhaps the last bastion for skeptics was datacasting. ATSC 1.0 supported datacasting, but it never lived up to its commercial potential. “Why should it be any different with 3.0?” they would ask.

But as the saying goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and with several important datacasting developments at the 2024 NAB Show, reported in last month’s column, it seems 3.0 proponents and skeptics alike are about to get a big spoonful and determine for themselves whether delivery of IP packets via broadcast for third-parties eager to find affordable alternatives to unicast wireless networks is a viable 3.0 business.

Presuming initial rollouts are successful, it’s likely more broadcasters will wish to jump on board, making some of their bandwidth available for datacasting to capture their own slices of the pie.

The problem at the moment is the lighthouse model used for the voluntary transition to NextGen TV leaves only a fraction of the bandwidth potentially available in markets in play for resale to data customers. 

In most markets, broadcasters share single sticks and 6MHz channel assignments to deliver over-the-air NextGen TV. They’ve reshuffled the deck on the remaining towers and assignments to maintain their DTV main channels and digital sub-channels.

The hope is that over time, consumers will replace their existing legacy DTV sets with NextGen TVs, making it possible to reshuffle available TV spectrum periodically, devoting more spectrum to 3.0 service and less to 1.0. Eventually, local broadcasters would end up sharing a tower and 6MHz channel assignment in their markets to maintain legacy DTV service—a nightlight—until consumers replaced the last dribs and drabs of ATSC 1.0 sets in their homes.

The problem is what to do about the Diginets. They require bandwidth. While it’s true broadcasters are only obligated to maintain their primary channel, it’s unimaginable that they would be willing to forego Diginet revenue by shutting them off simply on the hope of 3.0. Not only would station revenue suffer, but it’s highly likely many viewers would be miffed—some to the point of complaining to their representatives and the commission.

However, I can only wonder if 3.0 datacasting revenue potential will prove to be so great that someday broadcasters themselves elect to pay for ATSC 3.0-to-1.0 converters for dwindling DTV viewers. That way broadcasters can complete the transition, maintain their OTA main channels and Diginets for first-gen DTV viewers and maximize the earning potential of their channel assignments by allocating a substantial portion of available bandwidth to meet the datacasting demands of a new group of clients.

The 2024 edition of the NAB Show will be remembered as a turning point in the effort to make ATSC 3.0-based datacasting a profitable proposition. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group advanced its goal of monetizing spectrum from datacasting with the announcement of its Broadspan datacasting platform (see p. 25). AT&T Business was on the show floor in the ATSC booth discussing a significant upcoming trial of 3.0 datacasting that will lead to a Q4 2024 commercial launch for business clients, and a new venture, Peak3, informed public broadcasters at Public Media Venture Group (PMVG) TechConnect one day before the show about its efforts to sell 3.0 datacasting services to Internet of Things (IoT) customers.

Data Verification
The new Broadspan platform gives businesses a way to distribute data over the air to any device with a 3.0 receiver. Leveraging the broadcast core network Sinclair announced at the 2023 NAB Show, the platform enables customers to plan, order and validate delivery of their data. 

“They [customers] can immediately visualize network availability and order distribution tailored to their needs with a full picture of the path their data will take through the network,” said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley during the company’s NAB Show press conference. 

Initially, Sinclair is making Broadspan available in the 30-plus markets where it is serving as the 3.0 host station; however, the company wishes to work with other broadcasters to grow the service, he said.

There are a couple of key takeaways from the Broadspan announcement. First, Sinclair already has a taker for Broadspan. Content delivery network Edgio will use the platform to deliver data over the air that supplements internet streamed content from OTT subscription services to give viewers access to 4K video. 

Second, the excess bandwidth available on Sinclair’s 3.0 host stations available for Broadspan is 9Mbps for delivery to stationary receivers, said Ripley. While at first glance that may seem paltry when compared to median U.S. mobile and fixed broadband speeds of 130Mbps and 250Mbps, respectively, such a comparison misses the point. 

“It’s apples and oranges,” said Ripley. “When we say 9Mbps, that covers an entire geography…. multiply that by the number of people it covers, you’re going to get very, very big numbers in terms of total capacity.”

AT&T Joins ATSC
On the floor in the Las Vegas Convention Center West Hall, AT&T Business was full of surprises. The first was that the company joined the Advanced Television Systems Committee within the past two months. It is interested in using ATSC 3.0 as a business solution for wireless data delivery, said Cy Smith, founder and CEO of CY Networks, which recently has been hired by AT&T Business to provide engineering services related to 3.0 datacasting.

(Read: NextGen Datacasting: There's Money to be Made)

CY Networks makes a small, portable ATSC 3.0 receiver called Caros>>l (pronounced Carousel) that can receive and parse a 3.0 data stream and offers support for linear, real-time as well as non-real-time datacasting.

The second surprise is AT&T Business this summer will launch a pilot program using 3.0 OTA data delivery to Caros>>l receivers for digital signage applications at its own retail locations—rather than fiber circuits or 5G, said Smith, adding that if all goes as expected AT&T Business will launch a 3.0-datacasting service for businesses before the end of the year.

AT&T Business is talking to “OTA Wireless”—the E.W. Scripps-Nexstar Media Group datacasting venture—about securing 3.0 bandwidth and is “hoping to work with everybody that wants to work with us” to secure bandwidth, said Smith.

IOT Potential
Peak3 also sees the potential of 3.0 for datacasting and has raised venture funding to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to provide data IoT solutions for enterprises, said Alp Sezen, Peak3 CEO, who spoke at PMVG TechConnect.

Peak3 has inked a deal with Sinclair for 3.0 bandwidth and is weeks away from signing a deal with OTA Wireless as well, said Sezen, who was at the conference to find a way to work with public broadcasters as well. The company already has customers that will soon deploy, including a June rollout in Seattle and another that will launch later in Denver, he said.

IoT customers do not care about whose network is used to deliver their data; they simply care that their IoT devices can receive that data when it’s transmitted. “We feel we can do that on a national basis [leverage ATSC 3.0]” he said.

Sezen noted Peak3 has overcome a pricing impasse that made its launch difficult. The problem stemmed from the newness of 3.0 datacasting. Broadcasters, fearing they were leaving money on the table, were reluctant to assign a value to their 3.0 bandwidth available for datacasting. The solution proved to be a revenue split that would assure broadcasters their capacity was optimally priced.

Together, all of these developments demonstrate ATSC 3.0-based datacasting isn’t just technically possible, but more importantly that it is a viable, new revenue source that will benefit the bottom line of broadcasters.

Perhaps at the 2025 NAB Show, there will finally be some movement on a way to sunset ATSC 1.0 so that NextGen TV—including ATSC 3.0 datacasting—can begin living up to its full potential.

During a recent interview I had with Hadassa Gerber, the chief research officer at TVB underscored the importance of communicating to companies and their ad agencies the synergy between linear broadcast television and their websites.

“The reason that we make it such a point about television motivating people to go online is [because] so many advertisers are just looking at the last click,” says Gerber. “Well, how did they get there in the first place?”

TVB’s 2024 Media Comparisons Study makes a strong case that in many instances it’s television. Of the 4,000 respondents to its survey, 60% said TV ads motivate them to begin doing research on a product that’s caught their eye. For autos, that figure climbs to 72%.

Granted, TVB is a trade association representing local TV broadcasters. But the group hired German research firm GfK to conduct the research, and it would be in neither the interest of GfK nor TVB to risk losing credibility by fiddling with the results.

The takeaway for broadcasters is linear TV and websites work well together in serving the public and advertisers alike. Just as important is the effect the combination has on reach. Combining the reach of broadcast websites and broadcast television extends total reach by 4%. 

To put that into perspective, consider cable TV and broadcast. “If you take broadcast as a base, and you add on cable, that doesn’t even add a whole reach point. It’s 0.8%,” she says.

While this may seem obvious, Gerber says she has a slide in her presentation for members that explicitly lays out this fact to drive home how important the two together are to advertisers.

Perhaps it’s a good time to begin reiterating to advertisers that the consumer journey that ultimately ends up in a web click often begins by raising awareness via linear TV. One other thought: as NextGen TV, an IP-based television/data delivery mechanism matures, broadcasters would be well-served to begin planning how to leverage it to amplify their web presence.

Once again, it’s time to look at where television technology will take us in 2024.

It’s hard to believe that it is once again time to dust off the cobwebs from the crystal ball and make my Top 10 predictions for television technology-related developments in 2024.

Fair warning: My crystal ball is as clear as yours. So, the following is really based on the conversations I’ve had, stories I have written, the stories from others and a bit of noodling on my part to develop the list. 

In no particular order, here it is. For those reading online, I’ve added links to many to help you understand how I have arrived at these prognostications. Enjoy.

• It will be go-time and “oh-no” time for 3.0 data delivery. Broadcasters like Sinclair and Nexus Connect (ARK Multicasting and Gaian Solutions) will earn revenue via 3.0-based data delivery. At the same time, Starlink Direct, in combination with T-Mobile, will launch with a 2025 target on the IOT market, a business segment 3.0 datacasting advocates have long coveted.
• Data security will take center stage as AI and quantum computing threaten the security of existing encryption standards, leading broadcasters, especially those previously burned by data breaches, ransomware attacks and other digital dirty doings, to redouble IP security efforts and seek new technology and mechanisms to protect their valuable content assets.
• Free OTA and FAST channel audience size will grow. Inflation pressure continues to motivate consumers to economize as SVOD streaming and traditional pay-TV increasingly come into the crosshairs of consumers looking to cut household spending. Many will stream ad-supported TV; others will rediscover the TV antenna; and some will do both.
• Most of the public in the United States will remain clueless about NextGen TV.
• Hybrid workflows will continue to grow among broadcasters as many look to squeeze maximum value from existing baseband infrastructure and investment while enhancing their workflows with AI, ML and the cloud.
• TV broadcasters will face a tougher, two-front battle for political advertising dollars as campaigns step up their use of highly targeted ads—even at the neighborhood or household level—with increased spending on digital and Connected TV ads.
• Additional 3.0 sticks will light up in markets currently with only one lighthouse as TV industry, government or a combination of the two address the voluntary transition logjam, enabling broadcasters to begin exploring the fuller potential of the standard.
• The number of large OB production trucks at individual events will continue to decline as technology and workflow developments reduce concerns about IP network latency.
• A few broadcasters in markets with various large ethnic communities will combine the power of AI and the availability of multiple NextGen TV audio channels to hyperlocalize newscasts and other programming by translating shows in near-real time to better serve their diverse audiences. The same combination could drive language-specific broadcast emergency warnings.
• Sustainability—i.e. energy conservation and lower carbon emissions—commitments in the U.S. among broadcasters and society at large will waver, as clean, boundless fusion-generated electricity looks closer than ever. Commonwealth Fusion Systems expects to feed electricity from a commercial fusion power plant into the grid in the early 2030s.

With the beginning of the 2024 campaign season and elections just around the corner, video watermarking expert Verance announced in November a collaborative watermarking initiative it’s spearheading along with the help of TV and digital news organizations as well as CE manufacturers to combat deepfakes.

The idea is to give viewers a way to tell if the media they are consuming has been tampered with or modified during distribution. 

While on-target—a recent poll showed more than half of Americans are concerned about the impact of deepfakes on the election—the effort raises a troubling question. Does the public even have enough confidence in the media to believe what it reports in the first place, regardless of whether the video is legit or a deepfake?

Consider the findings of a September 2022 Gallup poll. Thirty-eight percent of respondents had no trust in the media. Only 14% of Republicans said they trusted the media, while 27% of independents said they did. Driving the average of all respondents who trust the media to 34% were Democrats, seven out of 10 of whom said they trusted the media. Overall, only 7% of respondents said they had a “great deal” of trust and confidence in the media.

Perhaps Pew Research uncovered the reason why. Polls conducted in February and March 2022 found that 76% of the public said journalists should work to give every side of an issue “equal coverage.” Journalists on the other hand didn’t show a similar level of commitment to “bothsidesism,” as Pew dubbed it. Only 55% of journalists told Pew all sides of an issue should receive equal coverage.

Or maybe it can be chalked up to the public’s general inability to distinguish between fact and opinion. A February-March 2018 Pew Research poll gave respondents five fact-based and five opinion-based statements and asked them to identify what type of statement each was. Only 26% could correctly classify all five statements. Twenty-four percent got four right. The results for correctly categorizing opinion statements were somewhat better, but still poor. Thirty-five percent identified all five opinion statements correctly, and 24% got four correct.

While Verance’s effort to protect the public from deepfakes is commendable, it seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse. It proposes to use technology to solve a problem that is much more deeply rooted.

Before the public can ever trust a watermark the media provides for its content to head off deepfakes, they first must begin trusting the media in greater numbers. Maybe good places to start are more balanced coverage, a hard separation of fact and opinion and clearly identifying each.

“Intelligence is knowing the right answer, but wisdom is asking the right question.” –Author, Unknown.

I have been thinking a lot about Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and media since conducting my interview with Diesel Labs founder and CEO Anjali Midha.

Her company assists M&E enterprises in the use of Generative AI and massive data sets to make better decisions about media content. The specifics will vary from client to client, but in general it’s safe to say that a lot of what the company does is to help media companies improve the likelihood that a specific piece of content will resonate with the public.

In one case, that might mean predicting which film is most likely to succeed so a studio knows where to focus its marketing budget. In another instance, it might mean offering insight on which story concept should actually proceed to production.

One day, her company’s Generative AI and massive data set sifting might even help news directors and assignment editors make some news judgments about which stories to pursue—at least in some instances.

Why not all news decisions? Why not every show to be green-lighted? Why not each marketing decision? Simple, there is a difference between intelligence—even artificial intelligence—and wisdom.

The unique quality humans bring to these and the thousands of other decisions that must be made daily in our industry is wisdom, forged in the kiln of life and professional experience, a broader view of the context in which decisions must be made and an understanding that the broader goals of an organization may dictate a particular choice is selected—even if it seems to be the wrong one on a micro level.

To be completely fair, Midha never posited that her company’s service and use of Generative AI should replace people in the M&E industry. Rather, she was quite clear about Diesel Labs’ offering being a tool to make better decisions, not a replacement for deciders.

Why? Because I suspect that bottling the wisdom factor humans bring to life is elusive and will be for the foreseeable future.

Free Ad-Supported Television, or simply FAST, channels are garnering a lot of attention these days, and there seems to be at least three good reasons local TV broadcasters should seriously consider launching their own.

First, the lift might not be as heavy as it looks at first. From a technology and workflow perspective, broadcasters know the infrastructure necessary, may already have excess capacity to support a FAST channel launch and are well-versed in the sales, traffic and master control processes to support a new channel effort.

Programming might prove to be somewhat of a challenge. However, most all broadcasters programming a local FAST channel likely have an abundance of locally produced content in the can. There may also be no shortage of local talent, educators, experts and others with something to offer. Look no further than YouTube for examples of these sorts of people. Think local versions of James Stephen Donaldson, otherwise known as “Mr. Beast,” or Elizabeth Zharoff and her channel “The Charismatic Voice.”

Given the massive geographic footprint of many station groups, how unreasonable is it to think local talent in markets around the country could coalesce in a program schedule for one or more FAST channels?

Second, interest in and booking of ads delivered via video streaming/OTT channels is climbing on a local basis. During a Borrell Associates webinar in July laying out the findings of recent research on local ad buying, Borrell CEO Gordon Borrell and executive vice president Corey Elliot revealed 21% of nearly 2,000 local ad buyer respondents annually purchase streaming video/OTT, spending an average of $39,000. 

That’s about 40% of what they spend each year on broadcast TV. Based on the growing popularity of streaming video/OTT among these buyers over the past few years, Borrell said he can see a day when there will be high adoption and high spending on this delivery path.

(One caveat: Borrell used the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) definition of “streaming video/OTT” in the research, a broader term that includes FAST, but also many other subsets, like social media platforms, such as YouTube, streaming sVOD and aVOD channels and others.)

The pair also referenced Borrell research into local ad agencies, which found that among the 380 agency respondents, streaming video/OTT was No. 1 when it came to where agencies are seeing the most interest from clients across the wide array of media available.

Third, there may be a snug fit for FAST channels into the game plans of some broadcasters for ATSC 3.0. Both FAST and NextGen TV can be targeted to meet the interests of smaller audiences than a broadcast audience—even if the latter is delivered over the air by leveraging strategies and technologies like single frequency networks (SFNs) and Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM).

Both can also be offered to local advertisers on rate cards with pricing far lower than the price of broadcast TV simply because of this targeting. Think of a restaurant serving a clientele from a given neighborhood that could never afford the market reach of a TV broadcaster but would be willing to pay lower rates to reach viewers living nearby. 

While there may be other good reasons for local broadcasters to consider FAST channel launches, these three are a good place to start for stations looking at this emerging opportunity.

Filmmaker James Cameron stamped some indelible images into the minds of fans of “The Terminator.” In his post-apocalyptic world where AI-driven Skynet unleashed a nuclear holocaust, that same artificial intelligence set about a cleanup operation driving gun-wielding killer robots to handle the survivors, crushing human skulls under metal feet in the process.

No wonder the public is worried about AI. So too are AI leaders, scholars and public figures. In May, a statement from the Center for AI Safety expressed their concerns about the “severe risks” advanced AI poses. 

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemic and nuclear war,” it said.

While they may be right, there’s no denying AI and machine learning are having some profound positive effects on television and its workflows. From optimizing video compression to achieve greater efficiencies and automatically generating closed captions to driving content recommendation and enriching metadata, AI/ML is improving the M&E industry.

However, that doesn’t mean broadcasters are immune to potential peril—not apocalyptic in nature when it comes to society, but perhaps to themselves.

If one starts with the premise that trust based on credibility is the foundation upon which television newsrooms (whether on-air, online or via social media) build audiences and ratings and ultimately generate revenue for their organizations, it should not be too hard to see some of the potential dangers of advanced AI.

The Center for AI Safety lists eight examples of AI Risks on its website, at least four of which could seriously erode viewer trust. They include: misinformation, proxy gaming, value lock-in and deception. I won’t elaborate here because they are easy enough to read about on the center’s website. 

The key to guarding against these possible threats and others at this point unknown is good journalism, including all of the leg work that goes into reporting a story and consistently checking facts.

Could something slip by on occasion? Sure, that’s the nature of the business. But promoting excellence in journalism should make AI-generated deceptions, misinformation and other possible pitfalls rare occurrences. 

Here’s an eye-opener. Three times in March, hackers targeted Russian broadcasters, taking over their emergency alert system to warn the public falsely of attacks. 

The most recent as of this writing occurred on March 9, according to a story by William Mata on “The Independent”’s website.

“Radio and television broadcasts in Moscow and the western Sverdlovsk area were interrupted with a phony warning of a missile strike on the country,” the story said. The public was told to don gas masks, take potassium iodine and head quickly to shelters.

Given current geopolitical tension, perhaps it is a good idea to conduct regular security audits of the EAS system in this country—something the government regards as critical infrastructure. In August 2022, Homeland Security Today reported FEMA was advising of “certain vulnerabilities in EAS encoder/decoder devices” that did not have the latest software. Those vulnerabilities could make broadcasters susceptible to attacks from hackers, allowing them to take over the alerting system. 

FEMA made three recommendations: Update systems to run the latest software; make sure EAS devices are behind firewalls; and regularly monitor EAS devices and supporting infrastructure and review audit logs to seek out unauthorized access.

At the moment, neither FEMA nor the FCC require security testing of EAS devices. Digital Alert Systems has strongly supported a FEMA suggestion to introduce a baseline security component to the evaluation and certification of EAS encoder/decoders in ex parte filings with the commission, said Edward Czarnecki, the company’s vice president for global and government affairs.

In October 2022, however, the agency launched a rulemaking to improve security and reliability of EAS and Wireless Emergency Alerts.

While the industry waits, now might be an excellent time to confirm EAS software is up-to-date, the efficacy of firewall protection and whether or not regular audits of access are occurring to see if bad actors have penetrated the system.

We all remember the panic that residents and tourists in Hawaii experienced five years ago when a miscommunication during a drill by the state’s emergency management agency caused a false missile attack alert.

With tensions running high, this country does not need hackers taking control of EAS and needlessly scaring people, and in the process jaundicing attitudes about future, legitimate warnings whether they are for severe weather or something else.

There was a time some 40 years ago that my college roommate and I would compete to get to the Columbia Missourian first—specifically the Op-Ed page to see if Mike Royko’s syndicated column appeared.

Maybe we liked Royko’s take on Chicago, which seemed so far away and different from Columbia. Maybe it was the chuckle we’d get, especially on the days his alter-ego Slats Grobnik made an appearance. Whatever the reason, Royko spoke to us in a way we looked forward to, enjoyed and appreciated.

A decade later when he arrived at The Kansas City Star, Jason Whitlock began building a 16-year rapport with readers not unlike our relationship with Royko. I know many, many people here who couldn’t wait to read his perspective on a game, a player or coach and who were sorely disappointed when he left.

This story undoubtedly has been repeated millions of times over the years as successive generations of readers and columnists engage with one another in newsprint and now online.

Enter OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-driven tool that generates well-written copy. How good is it? Better than the majority of writing the average teacher or professor sees, in the opinion of Daniel Herman, a high-school teacher in Berkeley, Calif., and author of “The End of High-School English,” appearing in The Atlantic online. 

Somehow, I doubt, no matter how human-like ChatGPT’s prose may be, that my roommate and I would have looked at its musings as anything more than a curiosity and then would have begun scouring the page looking for Royko. 

Ditto Kansas Citians looking for Whitlock’s observations and insights when he was here. For others, it might be Maureen Dowd, George Will or Thomas Friedman. I’m sure that the same was true of readers and William F. Buckley Jr. and even H.L. Mencken in the distant past. 

The point is simple. People like people. Perhaps more accurately, people enjoy the unique perspectives—informed by life experience—of other thoughtful people. 

Word to the wise for television reporters toiling away on their next story and deadline: Draw on your life experience made fresh daily by your interactions with sources and viewers alike to bring humanity and perspective to your stories.

Otherwise risk someday having a Sophia-like AI creature reciting words from a ChatGPT-type program that will be your undoing.

Sure, people like the real thing. Just consider the millions who tune in on Sundays to watch an NFL game. Then again, there’s eSports, too. 

Take a hike Nostradamus. Step aside Jeanne Dixon. Move over Miss Cleo. With a reverential turban tip to the late Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, Kurznac the Magnificent is in the house.

What follows are my 2023 predictions for the television industry, especially when it comes to technology. Of course, I’m not really psychic—these predictions are based on equal parts of my observations and conversations with broadcasters throughout the year and my sense of humor. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is which.

In no particular order:

A broadcaster earns additional revenue from ATSC 3.0: Expect to see early, incremental deployment of 3.0-based data delivery over vast geographic areas and revenue from companies eager to leverage over-the-air broadcast to transmit their data.

Broader adoption of the cloud for production, master control and playout: Whether it’s a reporter in the field accessing files and footage for a story, a production company covering a sporting or entertainment event or a station looking for greater master control and playout efficiencies, the cloud will be where it’s at in 2023. That cloud, however, might be public, private, on-prem or a combination of any or all.

Cracks widen in traditional relationships: Sports— à la “Thursday Night Football”—will continue to find new homes over the top. Networks and local broadcasters also will continue to jockey as FAST channels and VOD OTT services chip away at the ties that bind.

Early indications of a TV news reboot emerge: As ties loosen, local broadcasters will give serious consideration to how they devote time during their broadcast day. Some will conclude there’s simply no viewer appetite for more news and will look for new spins on news presentation or entirely new ways to inform and entertain local audiences.

Rumbles grow in D.C. for Repack 2.0: I personally know of two occasions when those in the know have thrown out the prospect—one by no less than former FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly. With the wireless industry’s insatiable appetite for spectrum; the clear demonstration that multiple 3.0 broadcasters can successfully share the same stick (and channel assignment); and the perennial funding shortfalls of the federal government, look for “Repack 2.0” rumbles to intensify. Don’t be surprised if someone proposes paying for millions of consumer 3.0 dongles for 1.0 sets with a portion of auction proceeds.

Broadcast engineering availability crisis continues: Broadcast engineers keep getting older, more are deciding to retire every day, especially now that the repack is in the rear-view mirror. Efforts continue on multiple fronts to recruit new talent. But on the whole, it appears those leaving the industry far exceed those entering.

Trade show/industry gathering attendance continues to grow: While a far cry from yesteryear, attendance at major trade shows this year reminded tens of thousands of people of how important face-to-face meetings and networking are, even though video conferencing was and continues to be useful. Short of some unexpected calamity, look for attendance at these events to grow in 2023.

A deep fake slips by: Somehow, some where a deep fake slips by making air, ultimately causing a good deal of embarrassment and soul searching once the falsehood becomes widely recognized.

Local FAST channels gain traction: Experience with Free, Ad-Supported Television channels streamed to viewers grows, unlocking new revenue streams for stations. Content ranges from live coverage of popular high school and small college sports and repurposed library footage of local news and events to special interest channels and pop-up political and weather/disaster channels.

Sustainability concerns become unsustainable: It’s not that a clean environment or greater efficiency and the cost savings available aren’t important. It’s just that the U.S. Department of Energy announced in mid-December that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Dec. 5, 2022, achieved breakeven from a fusion reaction, paving the way for “clean fusion energy [in the future], which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.” In other words, small, incremental steps to achieve sustainability will pale in comparison to limitless clean energy. Ultimately, they will be regarded as futile.

PORT MELBOURNE, Australia—Blackmagic Design today introduced its next-generation of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 with adjustable touchscreen, a larger battery and optional electronic viewfinder.

The new model, which replaces the existing 6K model, offers the same generation 5 color science as the high-end URSA Mini Pro 12K and delivers image quality enhancements, such as accurate skin tone and faithful color production in each shot, the company said.

The camera offers support for a new dynamic 12-bit gamma curve to enable capture of more color data in highlights and shadows. The color science behind the new camera also handles some of the complex Blackmagic RAW image processing, so color and dynamic range data from the sensor is preserved via metadata, which customers can use in post-production, it said.

Key features include:

• Carbon fiber polycarbonate composite design
• 6144 x 3456 sensor with 13 stops and dual native ISO up to 25,600
• Compatible with a wide range of popular EF lenses
• Up to 25,600 ISO
• Adjustable LCD screen
• Includes full DaVinci Resolve Studio for post-production

Priced at $1,995, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 is immediately available from the company’s resellers around the world.

The company released a YouTube video of Grant Perry, Blackmagic Design founder and CEO, discussing the camera and accessories, including the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Pro EVF (electronic viewfinder) and Blackmagic Pocket Camera Battery Pro Grip.

Blackmagic Design also released its 7.9 camera software update for Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera models, including the 4K, 6K and 6K Pro. The new release offers an updated user interface, support for focus assist intensity adjustments via sliders, custom pre-set and LUT retention after software updates and improved lens and auto-focus performance, it said. 

More information is available on the company’s website.

Skip Pizzi, NAB’s vice president of technology education and outreach, simply nailed it during a NextGen TV panel at the HPA Tech Retreat in February.

“OTT is anything but live and local,” said Pizzi during the panel as reported by James O’Neal, TVTechnology correspondent.

“This live, local-focused service can co-exist on a more even parity in terms of quality and interactivity with those other [steaming] services. NextGen TV really gives broadcasters a level playing field going forward.”

Setting aside ATSC 3.0 for a moment, television broadcasters in the U.S. have always shone brightest when serving their local communities—both from a news point of view and as a commercial endeavor.

Sure, TV networks and cable news networks can swoop in to cover local stories of national prominence, such as the slow grinding progress of a hurricane’s destruction or devastation left in the path of a tornado.

But it’s always been the local broadcasters who—sometimes at risk to life and limb—are on the ground or in the studio delivering up-to-the-minute information live to viewers to help them remain safe while the destruction is happening and the news to help them pick up the pieces in the aftermath. (Read about WLOX in Biloxi, Miss., and WPXL in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina for examples.)

Ditto the commercial side of the business. Yes, car and truck manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and national politicians leverage network and cable TV to assemble and reach huge audiences.

But it’s the local broadcaster that gives area car dealers, grocery stores, pharmacies and local politicians the path to reach the people who matter most to them. (Watch the presentation of Abby Auerbach, EVP, Chief Communications Officer of TVB, during this webinar to learn what happened when a local car dealer cut off local TV ad spending in favor of digital alone. Let’s just say the dealer quickly reversed its decision.) 

Now, layer on just some of the more obvious benefits of NextGen TV, such as microtargeting of viewers with commercials based on their interests and desires and tightly geotargeted emergency alerts to TVs that wake up in neighborhoods threatened by severe weather or some other potential catastrophe.

The picture that emerges is one of a future in which broadcasters not only can compete with OTT and digital media from what Pizzi described as “a level playing field,” but also can play best to their greatest strengths.

Speaking of localism, I wanted to give a tip of the hat to KMOV-TV and KSDK-TV in St. Louis. Both stations reported on the recent theft of catalytic converters from vehicles used by LifeBridge Partnership to provide door-to-door transportation for area children and adults with disabilities. Their stories mentioned the group’s GoFundMe page effort to raise $4,000 to cover replacement expenses not reimbursed by insurance and helped LifeBridge reach its goal.

Did you happen to see T-Mobile’s commercial for its 600 MHz wireless network a couple of months ago?

“T-Mobile knows nobody buys this,” the announcer intones as the video shows a smartphone. Then he says, “for that,” and the picture changes to a cell tower.

“You buy it for this,” he says, with the video showing a young woman dolled up with Animoji ears, nose and tongue; “this,” with a video of a guy and his barber enjoying a baseball game on a phone; “this,” a picture of an online purchase of a horse head mask and the recipient wearing it as he sits on his couch; “and this,” as the picture shows a smartphone displaying “Your Food Is Arriving,” cutting to a delivery car pulling up.

Imagine that. A company actually promoting its 600 MHz wireless network, or more accurately all of the great things that a 600 MHz 5G-ready network can make happen for people. In other words, not selling the “steak” but the “sizzle” of its new wireless network.

How did the previous occupants of that same spectrum promote the sizzle of its 600 MHz product? On the whole, pretty well. Who can’t recall promos for NFL and MLB games and championships, the Olympics, political debates and conventions, syndicated game shows, network dramas and comedies, local news teams and stories? The list goes on and on.

However, with the dawn of Next Gen TV, the game has changed. No longer will it be enough to promote upcoming programming; it will soon become as important, if not more so, to sell the benefits of the 3.0 wireless network—in other words “the sizzle.”

It’s easy to visualize a promo touting the wakeup feature of Next Gen TV alerting a sleeping family to life-threatening weather event. Or, a senior citizen customizing his TV’s audio so he can better hear dialog. Or, an immigrant family accessing dialog in its native tongue (not Spanish because that’s already commonly done on SAP channels today).

These only scratch the surface of 3.0 sizzles with so many other possibilities, including interactivity, personalized content and portable/mobile reception, left to explore.

Some might say it’s too soon to begin selling the sizzle of Next Gen TV. Perhaps, but being early isn’t stopping T-Mobile from promoting its 5G service. According to the company’s own website, it’s not waiting for 100% market coverage to begin selling 5G. For the rollout this month, the company is only covering 60 percent of the U.S. population with its 5G network. And even if it is early, it’s not too soon to get serious about planning how best to sell the 3.0 sizzle.

The television industry can’t leave promoting the sizzle to the Antenna Man on YouTube. (Nice job Antenna Man on your Nov. 12 video.) Nor, can the industry leave it to the Advanced Television Systems Committee with its ATSC 3.0 Next Generation Broadcasting animation. Two-minute stories on the noon news, won’t cut it, and neither will leaving selling the sizzle to set manufacturers.

If the public is to get excited about Next Gen TV, it will be up to TV broadcasters—on a group-wide or industry-wide basis and the professionals they hire to help—to sell its sizzle.   

The Advanced Television Systems Committee announced Feb. 20 that Madeleine Noland of LG Electronics is taking over as chair of TG3, the technical group responsible for development of the ATSC 3.0 Next-Gen TV standard, from Dr. Rich Chernock, chief science officer of Triveni Digital.

[Noland to Replace Chernock as ATSC Tech Group Lead]

Before closing the book on Chernock’s tenure as TG3 chairman, it seems appropriate to reflect on what has been accomplished and to offer a hat tip to the former TG3 chairman for his leadership in the quest to ensure a brighter future for broadcast television.

Chernock has successfully led the world’s brain trust of television technology through a standardization process in which those with various competing interests had to find compromise without compromising the standard.

One ATSC 3.0 member called Chernock’s demeanor “perfect for the time of going through the angst of birthing a new standard,” adding that he could “cut through the bull with the technical chops to back it all up and have the respect of everybody in the room.”

Mark Richer, president of ATSC, described Chernock as “a really good listener” and a “good reader” who digested “everything” in the detailed, technical correspondence of members of the various specialist groups that laid out the nuanced thoughts that needed to be considered and debated.

[What Tom Said: Recognition for the Past and Future]

“Nobody is an expert on every part of ATSC 3.0, but Rich was able to expand his knowledge and skills very quickly to lead the whole effort forward,” said Richer. Equipped with that constant, newly acquired stream on information, Chernock was able to “set direction based on a great deal of knowledge,” he added.

As a result, the TV industry has been given a remarkable gift—a standard that is equally adept at delivering 4K UHD TV over the air as it is at transmitting mobile TV. One that supports IP-based datacasting, interactivity, AWARN alerting, OTT, immersive audio and so much more. Perhaps most important, ATSC 3.0 is not frozen in time but can be updated as new, more powerful generations of technology come along.

The TV industry owes a debt of gratitude to the many people who volunteered so much of their time and so many of their talents to make the Next-Gen TV standard a reality, but none more than Dr. Rich Chernock.

News in general, but television news in particular, has been on the giving and receiving end of “fake news” accusations at least since the 2016 campaign season.

Even if the media or politicians were partaking in this nefarious manipulation of public opinion, those who subscribe to the notion that the truth ultimately wins out in a free market of ideas could take some solace in the belief that reality is eventually revealed through seemingly endless rounds of reporting, analysis and debate.

That’s all well and good in a Fake News 1.0 world where the battle of ideas isn’t skewed by undetectable gaming of the process.

However, I fear that A.I. technology is about to usher in Fake News 2.0, an era in which it will be impossible to believe one’s own ears and eyes. Look no further than LyreBird, an A.I. app that in the words of the company “allows you to create a digital voice that sounds like you [or anyone else, for that matter] with only one minute of audio.” If you are unfamiliar with LyreBird, you might want to check out https://youtu.be/YfU_sWHT8mo.

Now sprinkle in a couple of other A.I. developments. The first is a paper presented at SIGGRAPH 2017 entitled “Audio-Driven Facial Animation by Joint End-to-End Learning of Pose and Emotion,” which describes the use of machine learning to drive a real-time 3D facial animation from an audio input with low latency. 

The second is a paper by Berkeley A.I. Research (BAIR) researchers entitled “Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks.” The paper describes “an approach for learning to translate an image from a source domain X to a target domain Y in the absence of paired examples.”

Jun-Yan Zhu, the lead author of the paper, has posted a short YouTube video of this approach being used to transform a horse into a zebra.

The obvious danger is that some ambitious reporter one day will use perfected versions of these technologies to create the A.I.-based equivalent of “Jimmy’s World.”

However, it seems to me that the less obvious, but even more pernicious effect will be the use of these technologies to mislead reporters and editors by government entities, industry and others with an ax to grind or reason to deceive.

As one who has spent years reporting on emerging technologies that TV broadcasters could use to better inform the public –Ku-band SNG, IP newsgathering, dual polarization weather radar and mobile tech to name a few– I am truly saddened that the next wave in technology will make it extremely easy to lie to the public.

How long will television news endure when viewers no longer can believe their own eyes and ears?

NEW YORK—NewBay has announced that technology journalist and broadcast advocate Phil Kurz, who has covered the industry in magazine and digital outlets for more than three decades, is partnering with the company’s NewBay Plus marketing services team as contributing editor.

Phil Kurz

Kurz, who most recently was Technology Editor for NewsCheck Media LLC, will work with the NewBay Plus team to help manage and develop custom content for their customers’ audiences within broadcast and professional video production markets. In addition, Kurz will serve as the technology correspondent for TV Technology and tvtechnology.com.

Kurz has an extensive background covering the broadcast industry, having had more than 2,000 articles published in industry trade magazines. He is a former editor of Television Broadcast, AV Video, and Video ToasterUser magazines and also served as the editor and primary author of several e-newsletters published by Broadcast Engineering covering a variety of topics, including RF technology, HDTV, ENG, news technology, OTT, and IPTV.

“Over his 30-plus years covering the broadcast industry, Phil has documented the rapidly changing world of broadcast technology, from the early days of the DTV transition to the current landscape of multichannel and next-gen TV,” says Joe Braue, VP of Marketing Services for NewBay. “He has ample experience understanding the needs of manufacturers who serve broadcasting, cable, and OTT markets and he is uniquely qualified to help in the creation of powerful custom programs to drive thought leadership, brand awareness, and lead generation for them.”

In addition to his work for NewBay Plus, Kurz will contribute regularly to TV Technology. “For many years, Phil and I have crossed paths at industry events and I’ve always admired his enthusiasm and passion for the broadcast industry,” says Tom Butts, Editor-in-Chief of TV Technology. “I look forward to working with Phil as we continue to improve and expand our coverage in print, online, and via our industry-leading events.”

Kurz comments, “I am pleased to have the opportunity to work with Tom and his team on TV Technology and Joe on NewBay Plus projects. Both are highly regarded in the industry, and I look forward to contributing my abilities and talents to the overall success of the entire enterprise.”

For more information about NewBay Plus custom content programs, contact Joe Braue at jbraue@nbmedia.com, 212-378-0467. Contact Phil Kurz at pkurz@nbmedia.com, 816-582-5949.