WASHINGTON—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) has elected its new board leaders and board members, who will officially begin their terms on Feb. 22.

Andrew Russell, president and CEO of PBS SoCal and KCET in Los Angeles, has been elected to the role of chair of the board. Susi Elkins, director of Broadcasting and general manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., is the new professional vice chair. David Stewart II, immediate past board chair of Nine PBS in St. Louis, will serve as the lay vice chair.

Newly elected board trustees include: Eric Easter, lay trustee of WHUT in Washington, D.C.; and Anthony Hayes, chief operating officer and general manager of New England Public Media in Springfield, Mass.

A number of trustees were re-elected this year as well, including W. Craig Fugate, at-large trustee in Gainesville, Fla.; Jeffrey Gilbert, board chair of New Hampshire PBS; Mimi Chapin Gregory, lay trustee of WGCU in Fort Myers, Fla.; and Edward Ulman, president and CEO of Alaska Public Media.

For more information, visit www.apts.org.  

WASHINGTON—ATSC has set the benchmark of launching its NextGen TV standard (aka ATSC 3.0) in 40 U.S. markets by the end of 2020, and as a number of sessions discussed during the APTS Public Media Summit on Feb. 25, public television stations can and will be a key part in that effort.

The theme of the 2020 APTS Public Media Summit, which took place in Washington, D.C., is “The Power of Collaboration.” As John Taylor, LG’s senior vice president, told attendees, “moving from the lab to the marketplace requires a huge amount of collaboration among so many stakeholders; really different teams, different leagues, even different sports. No where is the power of collaboration more evident than bringing NextGen products and services to the American public. Together, we’ll make it happen.”

LG, as well as other TV manufacturers, revealed some of their efforts for supporting NextGen TV at the 2020 CES show, but other speakers at the Public Media Summit’s Tuesday sessions spoke more directly how public media can provide assistance and reap the benefits.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly spoke about many of the new features that NextGen TV will be able to provide local stations, things like enhanced alert capabilities, better picture quality, immersive audio, datacasting and improvement with interactive educational programming.

“The importance of local television stations to their communities stems from the ability of individual stations to know best what programming and services their communities want and need, and the same will hold true for NextGen TV offerings,” said O’Rielly. He also claims that these new features are likely to help public stations compete with OTT providers. 

“Few entities are as nimble and able to experiment with new technologies as public broadcasters, so it will be very interesting to see the future develop,” O’Rielly added.

O’Rielly also was sure to encourage attendees and their stations to file any comments regarding NextGen TV in the FCC’s ATSC 3.0 proceeding, which is expected in the near future. O’Rielly’s work with KidVid rules was also discussed during his speech. Commissioner O’Rielly’s full speech is available online.

Fittingly, APTS had a representative of one of the public stations that is currently experimenting with NextGen TV technology on-hand at the summit—Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager at WKAR Public Media in East Lansing, Mich., which launched Apollo PublicTV in December 2019.

Apollo PublicTV is offering broadcasters services that include NextGen TV master classes, ATSC 3.0 receiver and transmitter starter kits, access to NextGen TV broadcast chains and the capability to conduct lab and field trials.

“We see NextGen TV and the Apollo platform as one way for public broadcasters to truly become the digital transformation agents of their local communities and the catalyst for a collaborative national footprint enabling innovations around smart cities, precision agriculture, healthcare, public safety, just to name a few,” Elkins said during her presentation, which was part of the “Collaboration with National Partners on Spectrum Opportunities” panel.

“I hope that as public broadcasters, we will embrace our roots as innovators,” Elkins continued.

Other members of the Spectrum panel included John McCoskey, COO at SpectraRep; Molly Phillips, executive director and general manager for Iowa PBS; and Lieutenant General (Retired) Reynold N. Hoover of RNHoover Consulting. They discussed how datacasting and other technology related to ATSC 3.0 can help with public broadcasting needs. “The possibilities are limited to your own imagination,” said Hoover.

In addition to these sessions, APTS Public Media Summit handed out a pair of awards to public broadcasters. The 2020 Pillar of Public Service Award was given to Tom Axtell, general manager of Vegas PBS in Las Vegas, and the 2020 National Advocacy Award was given to Marty Ryall, director of external relations at Arkansas PBS.

For more information, visit www.apts.org.  

WASHINGTON—The hype around the next generation of television, or ATSC 3.0 as it is formerly known, continues to grow. With the standards nearly finalized and examples of it in use in South Korea, a number of broadcasters that have been experimenting with the standard are eager to share what they are cooking up for the viewers, and some of them took the stage to do so as part of a panel at the 2019 Public Media Summit put on by APTS.

“It’s not often that you get a chance to have the wholesale revision of a communication system, and so this is a really exciting time to try and do this and bring it forward for the industry here in the U.S. and perhaps other places of the world,” said Skip Pizzi, vice president, technology education and outreach for the NAB, who moderated the panel.

Pizzi was joined by four public broadcasters—Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager for WKAR in East Lansing, Mich.; Fred Engel, chief technology officer at Public Media North Carolina/UNC-TV; John Hane, president of Spectrum Co LLC; and Mary Mazur, general manager of Arizona PBS in Phoenix. Each broadcaster gave a brief presentation on what their station or company was working on.

This was the second year in a row that Elkins participated in the Public Media Summit, so she was able to showcase the progress that her station has made. This includes the launch of its experimental license for ATSC 3.0 prior to September this past fall and development of its Media Innovation Lab, scheduled for March. The station is currently trying to extend its license for ATSC 3.0 and move to a new channel as part of the repack.

Elkins also showed a demo of what ATSC 3.0 capabilities would add to a program like one of the station’s children’s show, in this case, an interactive graphic that corresponds with the show. The example was something that Elkins says her engineers were underwhelmed by, but she sees it differently.

“The thing to remember is that almost everything that we take for granted in a rich, enhanced, exciting media world is something we can’t really do yet,” she said. “So this looks sort of rudimentary what we’ve been able to do, but I think the backend side of it is revolutionary what it will allow us as broadcasters to do in terms of … our own ability to manage the user, viewer, listener experience.”

Engel elaborated on last week's announcement of a partnership between UNC-TV and a public safety research center that focuses on ATSC 3.0 and its uses for first responders and other public safety needs. Eyeing a three-year rollout, the partnership hopes to develop technology and standards that will help cut down on the time that it takes for first responders to receive emergency information.

“We have to know that ATSC 3.0 will work,” said Engel. “We cannot guess, we cannot assume. We have to test in a laboratory environment to make sure that this indeed will work. That’s the idea behind what the research center is.”

Mazur, whose station is part of the Phoenix Model Market that is testing ATSC 3.0 through a number of stations, shared some of what they are working on, including encrypted OTA services like sharing emergency info to first responders and conditional access features, as well as pinpoint broadcasting features like geo-targeted storytelling, addressable advertising and hyper local content.

Providing a bit of a different perspective was Hane. “My work is focused on building markets for our ATSC 3.0 capacity outside of the core business, which really, really excites me,” he shared.

Hane said that among his primary goals is to convince entities outside of broadcasting to invest in the development of the next gen standard and how it can be beneficial for them. “We have to make it easy for people to come in and take advantage of our ecosystem”

He also said that Spectrum has plans to launch ATSC 3.0 in more than two dozen markets by the start of the 2020 NAB Show. This, he hopes, will get set makers to take steps to supporting ATSC 3.0 by 2021. However, he acknowledges that goal is reliant upon the FCC completing its application form, which some speculate may not be ready until June.

“There are three or four markets that could happen by the end of the summer, but not if we don’t have an application form,” he explained.

While many of the things that people focus on with ATSC 3.0 are capabilities like 4K and immersive audio, this panel stressed what the standard could do for its public broadcasting audience.

“To me, this is just the beginning, a very good start to see could we actually use some of the content we already have, pre-position it for those without broadband and see if we can give them a user experience that those of us who can afford to pay for it have been enjoying for a long time” said Elkins.

“I think especially for the or the universities and the state networks, it’s this added value of these other potential services that will be available that could resonate with the legislatures, the university systems and eventually, we’re hoping in North Carolina, that through this it could save lives,” Engel shared.

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

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Federal Communications Commission has granted a new experimental license to Michigan State University and public TV station WKAR, who plan to launch a next-generation TV broadcasting station and a new media lab driven by the next-gen ATSC 3.0 standard.

The announcement was made by FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly during a visit to WKAR Public Media studios.

“We have authorized a new broadcast standard and it’s going to open up the doors to what television may be in the future,” O’Rielly said. “WKAR is now authorized to test out ATSC 3.0 in their new lab and work with public broadcasting stations covering 200 million Americans.”

WKAR is the first public broadcasting station in the United States to receive FCC authorization to begin experimental ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, the station said, and expects to begin ATSC 3.0 experimental broadcasting in September. The license is good for six months and then WKAR will be required to petition for an extension to continue the broadcasts.

[Read: ATSC Meeting Explores 3.0 Deployments]

“Next Gen TV has great potential to enhance our media experience by merging the best of broadcasting and broadband,” said Prabu David, dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, which houses WKAR. “The experimental license offers MSU and WKAR a test bed to explore new media innovations in education, information and even autonomous vehicles in depth and in the field.”

WKAR’s experimental ATSC 3.0 station will broadcast in Michigan on digital frequency 35 with a broadcast reach of approximately 40 miles. The technology allows for features such as 4K ultra high-definition video and multichannel immersive audio.

With the ATSC 3.0 station as a test bed, the university also plans to open a new research facility within WKAR and the College of Communication Arts and Sciences called the NextGen Media Innovation Lab. The lab will focus on the creation of education and public media content including early childhood education, telehealth and distance education, connected and autonomous vehicles, agriculture and emergency response.

One of the first projects planned for the NextGen Media Innovation Lab will be how to use ATSC 3.0 to improve early childhood education, said Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager of WKAR. “We intend to focus on ATSC 3.0 applications that are central to the core values of noncommercial television licensees — education and the betterment of our communities.”

In partnership with the Public Media Venture Group and in collaboration with other noncommercial educational television stations, the NextGen MI Lab will provide an opportunity to test ATSC 3.0 applications and share findings.

The capabilities of ATSC 3.0 continue to be front and center at events like the May Advanced Television Systems Committee Annual Meeting where representatives from the likes of Pearl TV, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Capitol Broadcasting discussed just how far Next Gen TV has come over the past few years. Consumer labs are being set up to gather feedback from viewers while field tests continue to roll out at stations around the country.

It was at that event that Michigan State’s David revealed that the university would be focusing on exploring opportunities for creating interactive content via ATSC 3.0.

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