BALTIMORE—Sinclair will make the first public showing of a NextGen TV-enabled Android media tablet with integrated ATSC 3.0 receiver and antenna during the public-safety convention APCO 2025, to be held July 27-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The broadcaster, exhibiting with the AWARN Alliance and Digital Alert Systems in booth 3065, is debuting the media tablet during the annual gathering of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials to underscore the important role ATSC 3.0 can play in keeping the public informed during emergencies—whether at home watching TV or on the move.=

“We’ve had our eye on APCO for this demonstration because we want to show public safety officials—particularly public-safety communications officials—what 3.0 can do in the home and on the go in a public safety context,” Patrick McFadden, senior vice president for global public policy and communications at Sinclair, said.

But why should a tablet that can already connect to a cell tower or Wi-Fi network need ATSC 3.0 to receive emergency messaging? It boils down to resiliency, McFadden said.

“I’m not taking a shot at the wireless carriers, but their networks are just designed differently than ours,” he said. “If you look at some of those counties in Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, 60 to 70% of the cell sites went out of service. Our station in Asheville never went off the air.

“That resilience and reliability is tremendous for the TV viewer, but what about someone who’s out of their home when the emergency happens or someone who’s been evacuated?” he asked, rhetorically. “If we can combine our resilience with the ubiquity of mobile devices, that’s a pretty huge public-safety benefit.”

McFadden declined to identify the company responsible for making the NextGen TV-enabled tablet but said Sinclair has been “working with a number of manufacturers” to develop 3.0 mobile devices, including tablets and phones.

In October 2020, Sinclair subsidiary ONE Media Technologies surprised the industry when it unveiled production samples of the Mark One NextGen TV-enabled smartphone. Since then, it has rolled out the next-generation Mark Two smartphone.

Like the Mark One, the tablet shown next week at the gathering is not available for purchase, he said, adding, “I would characterize it as a precommercial trial.” However, the broadcaster has ordered “a large number of these devices,” a sign that the tablet is beyond the proof-of-concept stage. “We’re confident that the market will advance as 3.0 moves forward,” McFadden said.

Besides the NextGen TV-enabled tablet, Sinclair will show the Mark Two 3.0-enabled smartphone as well as NextGen TV dongles that work with mini devices. All of these devices will be used to demonstrate to the more than 5,000 show attendees what emergency alert messages and advanced emergency information could look like on these devices, he said.

Broadcasters in North Carolina, including PBS North Carolina and Capitol Broadcasting’s WNGT, along with several technology developers and vendors demonstrated a few years ago the ability of ATSC 3.0 digital broadcast paging to transmit emergency call data to first responders in the field.

Sinclair’s APCO 2025 demonstration of the version 3.0 tablet and phone, however, will focus on the consumer-facing side of emergency communications, not first responders. “One of the great things about 3.0 is it can do both [communicate to first responders and the public],” he said. “Broadcasters’ use of 3.0 to communicate emergency alerts and information to the public is a valuable service we can provide to the communities we serve, and we want to make that clear to those attending APCO.”

Of course, having the ability to receive an over-the-air TV signal on a tablet beyond emergency alerting and information is important to both the public and broadcasters. “Obviously, the way people consume video has evolved and will continue to evolve, and the opportunities for us to reach viewers wherever they are is hugely significant for the industry,” he said.

Ken Burns. Mister Rogers. Downton Abbey. Earthquake warnings? Yes. While famous for producing educational programming for the American people, public television also plays an indispensable role in ensuring the public’s safety.

Using a portion of their FCC-licensed spectrum to send encrypted emergency information to law enforcement and first responder agencies:

• California’s public television stations are working with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to dramatically improve the standard warning time for earthquakes, from 30 seconds to one second.
• Alabama Public Television is the backbone for the state’s emergency alert system and provides extensive communications support for the departments of public safety and homeland security, the State Capitol Police, and 68 E911 centers throughout the state.
• In Texas, public television stations send real-time weather alerts, AMBER Alerts, school safety, flooding rescues, and hurricane and tornado warnings.
• New Mexico’s public television stations are expanding their signals to the “Bootheel” region bordering Mexico to provide emergency alerting and other public safety services, which may ultimately include border security.
• Vegas PBS in Nevada is the primary Emergency Operations Center for the Clark County School District, connecting schools, hospitals and first responders, and providing real-time alerts to the police department.
• At the national level, America’s public television stations have partnered with the US Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate our capabilities in over-water emergency communications, rural school safety, and helping law enforcement and first responder personnel to communicate better with each other.
• Just recently, millions of Americans’ cell phones were part of a successful test of FEMA’s National Wireless Emergency Alert System. But every day, America’s public television stations and PBS partner with FEMA to send cellphone users geo-targeted emergency text messages.
• And for decades, public television stations have provided the fail-safe path for communications from the President of the United States to the American people in times of national emergency.

We could do even more, and we hope to. Because of the one-to-many communications infrastructure of broadcasting, we have the potential to send highly-targeted, localized, multi-lingual, lifesaving messages –real-time video, a building blueprint, a picture of a missing child – to one or one million recipients simultaneously, without fear of overloading our capacity. 

Congress has funded the Next Generation Warning System program to help upgrade public broadcasters’ ability to respond to public safety challenges, particularly in rural areas and those underserved by internet providers. 

Properly equipped, public television stations could also enhance the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s nationwide weather alerting system, which is currently limited to radio-only communications but could be augmented with visual information including storm tracks, radar maps, evacuation routes, and recommended actions at the first sign of danger.

And with broadcast signals reaching 75 miles in every direction from our thousands of transmitters – each fortified against severe weather conditions and staffed full-time by professional engineers -- we are the obvious solution to many public safety challenges in rural America, where cell service remains elusive, expensive, and subject to the reliability of rural commercial power systems.

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967’s “universal service” mandate — to provide all Americans with free, over-the-air access to public broadcasting's programming and services -- ensures that our signals reach almost 100 percent of the U.S. population. 

Public television stations are proud of our educational programming and services, proud of the civic leadership we provide as the “C-SPAN” of state governments and chroniclers of heartland America’s history, culture and public affairs.

But nothing is more essential than our work in public safety, and in partnership with federal, state and local authorities we are ready to play an even greater role in protecting the lives and property of citizens everywhere.

Craig Fugate is the former Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a member of the board of trustees of America’s Public Television Stations. Patrick Butler is president and chief executive officer of America’s Public Television Stations.

COWS and COLTS and Goats, oh my! No Dorothy, this isn’t Oz. It’s the Carolinas and Georgia as Hurricane Florence bore down on its way to landfall.

An interesting article by Angela Moscaritolo in PC Magazine online, “How Mobile Carriers Are Responding to Hurricane Florence,” described the steps carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile were taking to prepare for the aftermath of the hurricane.

She wrote: “…Verizon said it’s readying a fleet of mobile equipment—including Cells on Wheels (COWS), Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS), and generators on a trailer (Goats)—which can be rolled into hard-hit areas in need of extra network capacity.” The other carriers were taking similar steps, the article said.

According to the FCC report on outages as of this writing (Sept. 18), 4.1 percent of cell sites in affected counties in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina were out of service. That’s down from 10.7 percent on Sept. 15, which is impressive. However, 30 or more percent remained down as of Sept. 18 in North Carolina’s Columbus, Onslow and Pender counties.

No doubt COWS, COLTS and Goats were being used to breach the gap in coverage.

But what will happen in a 5G world where massive MIMO antennas are deployed throughout the nation affixed to telephone poles and other structures numbering in the hundreds of thousands or more?

Even though the damage wrought on the cell sites in the areas affected by Florence was minimal compared to other storms, such as Super Storm Sandy, 670,000 people in North Carolina and 59,000 in South Carolina were left in the dark according to a Newsweek story citing Duke Energy as of Sept. 16. It’s hard to imagine how COWS, COLTS and Goats could possibly help in a 5G world with so many antennas.

Of course, there will be no magic switch thrown that abruptly changes over cell infrastructure and consumer phones from 4G to 5G. A transition will take place during which a power outage created by a calamity may take down large swaths of 5G antennas, but 4G service and dual radio phones will remain.

But what about that time beyond the transition when 4G service has all but evaporated?

Fortunately for the public, broadcasters will remain on the air distributing critical lifesaving information during emergencies. According to the FCC damage report, 42 of 45 TV stations reporting remained on the air in the wake of the storm. Nearly one million more residents in the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh areas tuned into local newscasts on broadcast TV stations the week of the storm than the previous week as Hurricane Florence approached the East Coast and made landfall in the Carolinas, according to data from ratings measurement service Nielsen.

Imagine how much better stations could serve the public during future hurricanes and other dangers if cell phones were equipped with ATSC 3.0 receivers that fully support enhanced warnings delivered via AWARN.

One can only hope that wireless companies and broadcasters put aside turf wars for the sake of public safety, or in the absence of magnanimity, that regulators take the needed steps to enhance emergency communications nationwide by one day mandating 3.0 receivers in wireless handsets.

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At the NAB Show in April, I had the privilege of moderating a panel that explored the growing role of the public media system in supporting public safety. I was joined by Roger Stone, assistant administrator of National Continuity Programs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Tom Axtell, general manager of Vegas PBS; Dana Golub, senior director of Public Programs for PBS; Lisa Trapani Shumate, associate vice president and general manager of Houston Public Media; and Lonna Thompson, executive vice president, COO and general counsel of America’s Public Television Stations.

This group has plenty of firsthand knowledge and experience, and our discussion yielded some very compelling information about the role of the public media system in supporting safety:

· Some 90 percent of survivors are saved not by first responders but by their fellow citizens and neighbors. Arming the public with information and tools helps turn potential victims into survivors.

· Public television stations reach more than 97 percent of the public. In some rural and tribal areas, public broadcasting represents the onlysource of information during a disaster.

· Many local, state and federal agencies—including FEMA—have longstanding and successful partnerships with the public media system. These collaborations give public agencies access to infrastructure and services that would cost millions for them to replicate on their own.

Of course, the role of public broadcasting in supporting public safety isn’t a closely guarded industry secret. In fact, new research from Eagle Hill Consulting affirms that 80 percent of the public is already aware of the role of the public broadcasting in supporting public safety. What’s more, 87 percent see a role for public media in educating underserved populations—including low-income communities, individuals with disabilities and rural communities—about responding to emergencies. Even more (91 percent) view public television as an effective channel for educating children about responding to emergencies. The Eagle Hill research tells us that public trust is there. And, increasingly, so is the technology.

INNOVATIONS IN EMERGENCY INFORMATION & COMMUNCATION

For more than a decade, FEMA has partnered with public television—relying on public broadcasters as one of the vital channels for the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, which receives and authenticates messages from alerting authorities and then routes them to appropriate public alerting systems. The IPAWS system is highly redundant to maximize the probability of important messages reaching citizens. Public television transmitters provide one of those redundant paths for messages, using a robust infrastructure that includes backup generators at nearly every transmitter. This ensures continuity when conditions are challenging, just when such a system is likely needed the most.

More recently, many public television stations have begun making the investments necessary to support high-speed datacasting. This technology is a game-changer when it comes to educating the public about emergency preparedness and communicating following an incident. High-speed datacasting makes it possible to use TV to deliver rich, real-time information that would normally be available only on the internet. Imagine the ability to send and receive tornado tracking maps, evacuation routes and photos of a missing child as part of an Amber alert. First responders can also use datacasting for secure incident response communication, such as providing a remote fire commander the real-time video feed of a drone to help firefighters on the ground. All of these capabilities exist today, using the datacasting features available with ASTC 1.0. 

PUBLIC SAFETY AND NEXT GEN TV

When it comes to public broadcasting and public safety, what will the future bring? Along with my fellow panelists at the NAB Show, I foresee significant opportunities to further expand and enhance these collaborations. By implementing innovative technologies—and supporting them with effective change management—the public media system can add even more value.

With the recent significant focus on the ATSC 3.0 next gen TV standard, emergency alerting and public safety support are even more integrated. Rather than an afterthought, ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting has been considered with the standards from the beginning and is a key focus throughout. Features such as a “wake up” function for receivers and location-specific targeting have been built in from the start. Coupled with a new modulation scheme that will support mobile devices and deep indoor penetration, ATSC 3.0 will provide a new level of public safety support—one that will no doubt be embraced by public television stations to further their missions as important resources in the communities they serve.

John McCoskey is the Industry Lead Executive –Technology, Media & Entertainment at Eagle Hill Consulting in Arlington, Va. He can be reached atjmccoskey@eaglehillconsulting.com.

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Ohio Public Stations Datacast EAS Messages Over ATSC 1.0

SpectraRep Datacasting System Helps Share Public Safety Info

WASHINGTON—America’s Public Television Stations has announced that its member stations will allocate 1 Mbps of their public TV spectrum to participate in the FirstNet nationwide public safety network. The vote took place during the annual membership meeting at the APTS Public Media Summit.

With this spectrum commitment, public broadcasters can further their public safety commitments at both the local and national levels. The commitment is expected to help FirstNet reach its public safety objectives.

The APTS is a non-profit organization established in 1979 to conduct strategic planning, research, communications, advocacy and other activities to promote the public television system.