BALTIMORE—Sinclair Broadcast Group has promoted Adam Ware to senior vice president Growth Networks Group. 

In the new role, Ware, who was previously vice president and general manager of the group, will continue to oversee the company’s national multicast networks, Comet, Charge! and TBD, as well as digital and OTT streaming platform STIRR. 

STIRR, launched in early 2019, delivers 2,000+ hours of free live local TV news from across the country, 100+ FAST channels and 7,000+ hours of free on-demand TV shows, movies and news, as well as STIRR City, which offers localized content in 80+ markets across the country.

“The growth networks got their name for a reason, and Adam's background as an established network builder is a perfect fit,” said Scott Ehrlich, Sinclair’s chief innovation officer. “We're excited about the path the network team has carved, building Comet, Charge! and TBD into nationally rated networks with higher profile programming. We're really looking forward to Adam and the team building on our portfolio’s market leading position.”

“Digital broadcast networks and FAST channels represent the next generation of television channels,” said Ware. “I’m thrilled to be overseeing the Growth Networks Group and to be working with an amazing team. Combined with Sinclair’s track record of investing in new broadcast TV content brands, we’re excited to take the group to the next level.”

Prior to joining Sinclair in 2014, Ware held several senior management positions including acting CEO for CJ E&M’s K-Pop cable TV network Mnet, COO at Viacom’s United Paramount Network (UPN), executive vice president at Interactive Corp’s USA Network and Home Shopping Network and senior vice president of distribution at the Fox Broadcasting Company.

In addition, as part of the expansion of the Growth Networks Group, Sinclair announced expanded responsibilities for several executives: 

• Dan Kozlowski was named senior director, general manager, STIRR.
• Claudia Estrada was named senior director, sales and broadcast operations, Comet, Charge! and TBD.
• Ben Lister was named senior director, head of programming, Growth Networks Group.
• David Weissberg was named AVP, research and strategy, Growth Networks Group and Derek Van Nostran joins the Growth Networks Group as senior director, marketing and creative services.

The broadcast industry has been eagerly awaiting the rollout of ATSC 3.0, precisely because the next-gen technology standard empowers TV stations to do things TV stations aren’t known for doing. And finally, we’re seeing new companies and ventures delivering real-world applications that use ATSC 3.0 and other technologies in clever and possibly transformational ways. 

Startup company Evoca, for instance, has taken over the digital spectrum of two low-power stations in Boise, Idaho, to provide more than 70 over-the-air channels of high-resolution subscription programming. It’s a virtual MVPD. But instead of relying solely on the internet to delivery video, Evoca mostly uses the ATSC 3.0 over-the-air broadcast standard. 

Though Evoca has been broadcasting since last year, the service just launched an “early access” program for a limited number of Boise residents, with plans to expand to the entire city later in the year, said Todd Achilles, CEO and co-founder of parent company Edge Networks. 

“With any new tech, you’ve got to give it time to mature,” Achilles said. “Then you’ve got to evolve and iterate faster than everyone else.” 

The company plans to expand into other Mountain West markets in 2021, particularly small and mid-size communities similar to Boise, which is DMA No. 100. The two stations Evoca uses cover 80% - 85% of the Boise metropolitan area. 

“We’re looking at second- and third-tier markets,” Achilles said. “Primarily, they’re TV deserts now.” 

Evoca is actually a hybrid, using digital broadcast spectrum for high-demand, high-quality programming, while using broadband wired connections to deliver lower-quality or less-watched content. 

“We’re blending broadcast with broadband,” Achilles said. “We make a decision whether to send a show on 3.0 spectrum or over the internet in a box. It’s a function of what people are watching. The best live content gets distributed through live broadcast.”

Obvious candidates for the high-end treatment are big movies, popular network shows and live sports such as the NFL and Brigham Young football (the BYU Channel is part of Boise’s channel package, a natural given the region’s large Mormon population). 

That blended approach helps manage one of the big downsides of broadband; popular shows, at high quality, are expensive bandwidth hogs. It’s far more efficient and economical to broadcast that programming, and it’ll arrive in higher quality video and audio too, without drop-outs and other technical issues.

“Let’s say you’re delivering a three-hour baseball game,” Achilles said. “That’s 243,000 gigabytes of data. To deliver that in higher-quality broadcast is 5 gigabytes. And it doesn’t choke the system.” 

But Ecova is emphasizing the flexibility of video-on-demand too, which is where broadband shines. The approach has proven popular so far; Achilles said the company has been “hammered with signup requests” since announcing the early access program. 

A hybrid approach does mean that would-be customers need to get an internet connection if they don’t have one. That’s adding another role for Evoca.

“If people have no internet connection, there’s a path where we can plug that gap,” Achilles said. “What are the alternatives? We’re kind of going slowly into being the (internet service provider).”

The arrival of 5G “fixed” wireless mobile, which is also rolling out nationwide now, may become another way to get lower-bandwidth programming into customers’ households, Achilles said. In the meantime, Evoca’s base service costs $50 a month, and uses a puck-like streaming device in concert with a digital antenna to bring in the service’s channels, record programming and get it all on screen. 

Meanwhile, other broadcasters are using online streaming as both a new way to reach audiences interested in their local content and get ready for what ATSC 3.0 will unlike. 

Days after Evoca announced its early access program, the broadcast groups Meredith and Gray launched VUit, an ad-supported free streaming service featuring more than 200 of their respective stations. Customers will be able to stream all of Gray’s stations in 93 markets, and some in Meredith’s 17. 

The companies partnered with Syncbak Inc., which Gray partly owns, to launch the service, which is designed to extend the broadcasters’ audience reach and drive incremental ad revenue.

Unlike a more traditional MVPD arrangement, however, VUit pays no carriage fee to the stations, but gives them most of the ad revenue it generates, including from local advertisers who typically haven’t been able to tap streaming services effectively. 

“We’re aiming to be the Netflix of live, local and free,” Syncbak CEO Jack Perry told the Wall Street Journal. 

PLUS: ATSC 3.0: Small Cities, Big Opportunities

Nexstar, the biggest broadcast group, has some of its stations available for streaming on Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group, the second-biggest station group and a particularly active ATSC 3.0 backer, sits somewhere between Evoca’s approach and those of Nexstar, Gray and Meredith.  

Sinclair launched STIRR in early 2019, a half-step into ATSC 3.0 that now features 121 channels of ad-supported content of its own and that of dozens of partners. 

Unlike a typical national AVOD service such as Tubi or Pluto, however, STIRR also features live local programming from its stations in 77 markets. 

Unusually, that even includes in-market deals for live and “back-five” episodes of major syndicated shows running on its stations, said STIRR General Manager Adam Ware.

Live sports is a hot commodity, too. Sinclair’s Las Vegas station, for instance, signed a deal with the WNBA’s Aces franchise to carry 15 games, which also were available on a geo-fenced basis for Las Vegas-area STIRR users. 

“It’s all about local, maximizing the programming rights the station owns, preserving and respecting the rights, working cross platform, cross division across the company,” Ware said. “To the extent that is a warmup to (ATSC) 3.0, that’s a pretty good understanding of what STIRR is trying to do.”

When you sign onto STIRR, you pick a “home” market. That gives you access to that station’s local news, public affairs, sports, the Christmas parade, the Sunday morning public affairs show and whatever else a given Sinclair station is producing.  

STIRR is purposely positioned to embrace ATSC 3.0 delivery as the technology becomes broadly available, Ware said. 

“With all the promise of ATSC 3.0, there are various things you can do now,” Ware said. “You can test the ground for what might work. I think that’s really what STIRR is. Broadcasters are accused of putting the pipe out and pushing someone else’s content out there. STIRR represents taking the next step.” 

Ware said STiRR is providing “a path to OTT for those stations. How do those stations go OTT? ATSC 3.0 means they’re going OTT.” 

His goal, he said, is that when people in a community think of STIRR, they consider it the streaming service for their local station, rather than some faraway national or international service based in Hollywood or Silicon Valley. 

“ATSC 3.0 is ‘inherently local,” Ware said, which means broadcasters, with their long-time relationships in a given community, are well positioned to decide what programming will appeal there. It’s something the national and international streaming services aren’t set up to do for any given community, though he said those services are asking him about how to get more local. 

“They’re all doing the same thing, they’re all national or international. None of them are local,” Ware said. “They were all missing local news brands. And a local brand isn’t just the city name, it’s the anchors.”

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Sinclair Broadcast Group’s OTT TV service STIRR is launching a channel dedicated to live 2020 election coverage, marking its one-year anniversary, the ad-supported streaming service said.

The channel, 2020 Live, will deliver continuous live election coverage of daily campaign event feeds from around the country. Coverage, which will include town hall meetings and stump speeches, will be presented without commentary to give viewers a bias-free perspective on the campaigns.

“STIRR’s offering of live, local news content reflects that its purpose isn’t to solely entertain, but to serve members of local communities and provide information that impacts their lives,” said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley.

In its first year, STIRR has achieved 1.6 million app downloads, providing users with access to local news, entertainment and digital-first channels. Since the 2019 launch, the OTT service has begun delivering 100 linear channels and provided more than 5,000 hours of video-on-demand content. More than 130,000 hours of live, local news have been streamed via STIRR City channels, curated 24/7 linear TV stations with lineups based on viewers’ cities.

STIRR also plans to begin offering post-broadcast on-demand viewing of popular syndicated TV shows, including “Judge Judy,” “Dr. Phil,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy” and other syndicated shows originally aired by a Sinclair broadcast station, before the end of March. Availability will be determined based on the city where the STIRR viewer is located.

“We’re incredibly proud of the growth and success the platform has seen throughout the year, and look forward to providing users with more value. With the addition of local broadcast TV syndication programming coming to the platform, we’re excited for what the next year has in store for STIRR,” said Ripley.

More information is available on the STIRR website.

BALTIMORE—Sinclair Broadcast Group’s STIRR OTT linear channel has reached a milestone, achieving one million app downloads in the first six months of its operation, the group announced last week.

"We launched STIRR with the base premise that all of the national OTT services were ignoring the value of local programming, and in particular live local news," said Sinclair President and CEO Christopher Ripley.

STIRR, a free, ad-supported over-the-top streaming service delivers live, local news, TV shows and digital-first content to viewers.

“Hitting the one million download milestone, combined with the immediate success of the STIRR City channel, has confirmed our strategy, creating the foundation for continued growth.”

Sinclair attributes the popularity of STIRR to its focus on giving viewers access to live, local news and free linear TV channels.

While the STIRR OTT lineup offers more than 30 channels, including Buzzr, Comet, Charge, Stadium, Dove Channel, Dust, Con TV and Shout Factory, it is STIRR City that has garnered the service’s highest viewership.

The 24/7 STIRR City program lineup is based on a viewer’s city. It includes local news, syndicated TV shows, movies, sports and city-focused lifestyle shows.

Along with Sinclair’s announcement that STIRR has reached the one million app download milestone, the station group released other related metrics, including:

• 76% of app downloads were done via connected TV devices, such as Roku, Fire TV and tvOS;
• 85% of viewership is on connected TV devices;
• On average, viewers watch STIRR twice a week, a 50% jump since its launch;
• Viewers watch for an average of one hour at a time, a 200% increase since launch;
• STIRR City is the service’s top watched channel; and
• Live, local newscasts are the most watched programming.

According to the group, STIRR is on track to add 10 more national channels and new STIRR City channels not covered by Sinclair’s footprint over the next six months.

More information is available on the STIRR website.

Part 2

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

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

(An edited transcript.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While it hopes to one day reach the nation’s mobile consumer with ATSC 3.0-based “one-to-many” broadcast technology, Sinclair Broadcast Group wants to program smart phones in the here and now.

The broadcaster has launched OTT platform STIRR, which will bundle a collection of about 20 news, sports and entertainment channels with its own aggregated programming channels.

The service will be available on iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as popular living-room OTT platforms Roku, Apple TV and Amazon FireTV. Users can also access it via personal computers at www.stirr.com.

“We are entering a new era of broadcast television and our number one priority at Sinclair is to help advance the industry and increase access to broadcast content in the midst of a digital age,” said Sinclair CEO Christopher Ripley, in a statement. “With the launch of STIRR, we intend to offer audiences an easy, convenient and free way to watch live local and national channels, as well access a deep selection of on-demand programming.”

Channels included in the STIRR bundle will include BUZZR, Charge, Cheddar, Comet, CONtv, Dove Channel, DUST, FailArmy, Futurism, Gravitas, Mobicrush, MovieMix, NASA TV, Outdoor America, The Pet Collective, SOAR, Stadium, TBD, The Tennis Channel and World Poker.

Using content from its nearly 200 stations, Sinclair will also create for STIRR several aggregated channels themed around news, sports and entertainment—STIRR Movies, STIRR Sports, STIRR Live and STIRR City.

STIRR City delivers a curated 24/7 program lineup based on where a viewer lives. The new channel lineup includes live local news, local and regional sports, entertainment and city-focused lifestyle programming provided by the local Sinclair TV station in that city.

“Despite the explosive growth of new national over-the-top (OTT) services, local TV station’s programming, especially local news, has remained some of the most popular and desired content to audiences and advertisers alike,” said Adam Ware, STIRR’s general manager. “By creating the STIRR City channel format, local TV stations can now extend their programming strength to OTT. STIRR will offer viewers both a new local channel and an extensive local on-demand library relevant to the place they call home.”

Last week at CES, Sinclair unveiled system-on-a-chip hardware that will allow smart phones and other devices to receive ATSC 3.0 signals. The broadcaster hopes to one day deliver a national mobile programming platform through ATSC 3.0 rather than streaming.

“When all of us want to watch the same program at the same time, you’re delivering on a multiplicative basis a file which may be many gigabytes in size,” Sinclair’s top technology executive, Mark Aitken, said in an interview with sister publication Multichannel News at CES last week. “In unicast, I have to deliver, for example, a 1 gigabyte file to everybody. Multiply that by thousands. With [ATSC 3.0] broadcast, I deliver just one 1 gigabyte file, and everybody’s got it. You have this growing warehouse of spectrum that’s coming into the hands of the carriers. But we seem to have the same problems all the time. Just try to watch the Super Bowl on your cell phone. it’s very simple. Our job is to get in front of the largest population as possible. The one-to-everyone approach is a distribution technique that’s much needed in today’s telecommunications environment.”