IBC2025 will celebrate one of the industry’s defining milestones: a century since John Logie Baird’s first experimental television transmission in 1925. The anniversary will be marked with a new installation in Hall 14, 100 Years of Television—a curated journey through the past, present, and future of broadcast and media innovation.

A Century of Change
Television has shaped culture and driven technology forward for 100 years. From the introduction of color and the spread of satellite TV to digital transition and the arrival of streaming, each breakthrough has expanded the medium’s reach and impact. The installation at IBC2025 will spotlight these milestones through archival material, hardware, and storytelling that highlight television’s enduring role in connecting audiences worldwide.

“Television has never stood still—and neither has IBC,” says Jo Mayer, head of marketing at IBC. “Marking 100 years since that first broadcast allows us to reflect on the legacy of our industry, while at the same time demonstrating how new technical innovation is shaping the next century.”

An Interactive Showcase
More than a retrospective, the feature is designed to bring the global media community into the celebration. As part of a campaign launched over the summer, IBC has invited people of all ages and backgrounds to share their most impactful television moments.

Video contributions recorded at a dedicated Studio Day in London on August 29 will form part of an LED wall in Hall 14, creating a living archive of television’s impact on people and society. In addition, IBC is hosting the next generation of content creators to create their own takes on what the future of television looks like—their contributions will be showcased, offering visitors a glimpse of how tomorrow’s talent sees the medium evolving.

“This is about capturing the moments that matter most, from major news events to iconic live sports moments, and showcasing the role television continues to play in our lives,” Mayer explains. “The installation is a collective celebration of industry milestones.”

Future Tech in Hall 14
The 100 Years of Television feature sits at the heart of the new Future Tech hub in Hall 14, bringing together some of the most dynamic elements of IBC2025—including the IBC Hackfest x Google Cloud, the Google AI Penalty Challenge, and the Accelerator Innovation Zone, alongside the IBC Talent Programme.

Visitors to Future Tech will encounter displays and demos on everything from generative AI and virtual production to low-latency streaming and private 5G networks.

Shaping the Next Century
Just as early television pioneers could not have foreseen today’s streaming-first, cloud-native media environment, the breakthroughs on display at IBC2025 point to another century of transformation. From AI-assisted production and sustainable workflows to immersive audience experiences, the technologies being demonstrated in Hall 14 are shaping a new era of media and entertainment.

“IBC2025 is about Shaping the Future,” Mayer concludes. “The centenary of television is a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come—but more importantly, it’s a chance to look ahead. The conversations and collaborations taking place at IBC will help define what television and media mean for the next 100 years.”

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s impossible to look forward at the state of the media and entertainment media industry without taking a glance backward at the past year. And that view is one littered with debris: shutdowns, layoffs, regulatory stalemates, cancellations. 

It’s been a year of stops, starts, overhauls and renovations. But also hope and a reaffirming of what many have known for some time: Viewers are not only clamoring for more content, they also recognize that broadcast television remains a steady force when it comes to news in the midst of a crisis.

‘INTRINSIC VALUE’ 

“I believe the pandemic has confirmed and underscored the intrinsic value of traditional broadcast television and radio,” said Adonis Hoffman, CEO of The Advisory Counsel, LLC, a D.C.-based law firm. “We cannot even begin to count the number of messages, programs and the type of content that was devoted to information, education, coverage of the pandemic.” 

The head of the nation’s primary broadcasting association agreed. “I believe the past few months have served as a reminder to viewers about the enduring value of local broadcast TV,” said Gordon Smith, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters. “From the pandemic to West Coast wildfires, nationwide protests about racial inequity to the 2020 elections, we have witnessed many historic newsworthy events over the last nine months that led to increased viewership of broadcast television.” 

In early March, the industry got a clear-eyed view of the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic impact would have when the NAB Show announced it was canceling the in-person portion of the 2020 annual Las Vegas gathering. The organization has canceled the show only one other time, during World War II. 

As the largest show in the industry, the annual NAB Show is a significant money maker for the association. In 2019, the show brought in revenue of $46 million as well as 90,000 visitors and more than 1,600 exhibitors. In an interview in March, Smith called cancellation of the 2020 show an “agonizing” decision. It not only impacted the 90,000 individuals that were expected to attend but cost untold amounts in missed networking connections—a vital reason why many in the industry attend the show in the first place. 

The organization scrapped calls to reschedule the convention for later in the year and instead put together an all-virtual event, the “NAB Show Express.” Looking ahead to 2021, NAB said more than 540 companies have contracted to exhibit at the NAB Show when it returns to Las Vegas, Oct. 9–13, 2021.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Entering a new year, it’s become clearer how significant an impact the coronavirus has had on the media business, be that on television, radio or streaming. 

“[The pandemic has had] an incredible impact on both TV and radio,” said Mark Fratrik, senior vice president and chief economist for BIA Kelsey. “Many different verticals have decreased their advertising spending by a considerable amount. Of course, the amazing amount of political advertising mitigated some of that. But many different leisure and entertainment verticals, e.g. movies, basically stopped advertising or cut back severely.”

According to an estimate by the research firm IBISWorld, M&E is forecast to see a decline of 6.7% due to halted content production. Growth that had been seen over the last few years—as broadcasters began shifting into digital distribution—bolstered revenue. But the coronavirus offset these trends, which led to a decrease in total ad spending in 2020 and halted production of new TV content for a time.

Nowhere was this felt more perhaps than in live sports. Ads run during National Football League games are typically the most expensive in the market due to their large audience share. But viewership dropped as the pandemic caused cancellations or postponements. According to The Wall Street Journal, a drop in ratings for the NFL led advertisers to drop advertising prices in 2020, an unheard of occurrence.

The NFL responded by negotiating to get the NFL Network on a larger array of OTT platforms this year, including YouTubeTV, Vidgo and fuboTV and making it available on smart TVs such as VIZIO’s SmartCast, which last month launched an exclusive specialty "NFL Channel."

2021 A TRANSITION YEAR?

Yet even without the annual convention and in the midst of a pandemic, progress across the industry has continued in several ways. Or as BIA Kelsey’s Fratrik said: “It will take some time for local TV to come back but by 2022, it should.” 

ATSC—which marked 2020 with the launch of consumer sets and station deployments— said that while many stations in the top 40 markets would deploy NextGen TV to viewers by the end of 2020, it revised that mile marker slightly to mid-2021. Deployments picked up steam by the end of the year though, with five markets launching in December alone, including its two largest markets, Seattle and Detroit. 

“I think we will continue to see the steady drumbeat of local TV stations launching NextGen TV service in markets across the country,” NAB's Smith predicted. ATSC has said that it expects NextGen TV to be deployed in more than 60 markets representing 70 percent of viewers by the middle of this year. 

Another bright spot came from the influx of political advertising dollars spent. 

Although local TV stations continue to feel the effect of new competition in both attracting audiences and in selling advertising, “the amazing amount of political advertising spent in 2020—and continuing until Jan. 5 in Georgia—shows the importance of local television in the local advertising marketplace,” Fratrik said. 

Other bright spots on the horizon include the rescheduled XXXII Summer Games to be held in July and August of 2021 in Tokyo. In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympic Games through the 2020 Summer Olympics, giving NBC rights to all media platforms including TV, internet and mobile. NBC and the IOC also agreed to a $7.75 billion extension to air the Olympics through the 2032 games. A recent article in Forbes reported that NBC had sold more than $1.25 billion in advertising for this year’s games, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the available ad space. 

That’s not to say there hasn’t been fallout. A study reported in Japan Times projected that postponing the games was predicted to reduce Japan’s annual gross domestic product by ¥7.8 trillion (USD $75 billion).

THE STRENGTH OF STREAMING

While the lack of such high-profile programming in 2020 was a significant downside, it’s hard to put a number on it, Fratrik said, as the U.S. economy was already in a downward slide and advertising plummeted in the early months. “Overall several billions of dollars were not spent by national and local advertisers as a result of the pandemic and the economic downfall and the lack of the Olympics,” he said. 

What has remained strong throughout 2020: direct-to-consumer streaming. Nielsen went so far as to say that the pandemic catapulted streaming to serve as the present—and perhaps the future—of content consumption. According to the August 2020 Nielsen Total Audience Report, streaming among OTT-capable homes accounted for 25% of the time that consumers spent watching TV. 

Legacy broadcasting companies are going all-in with streaming, perhaps best marked by the launch of VUit, a new OTT app developed by Syncbak, which aggregates local programming. Backed by Gray TV, Raycom and ViacomCBS, among others, the new service, which debuted in September, touts itself as the “Netflix of Live, Local and Free.”

“Large TV groups such as Tegna, Sinclair and Gray are heavily involved in providing local streaming services and selling advertising on those platforms,” Fratrik added.

Another way to put it: “The media industry is surprisingly optimistic given the totality of 2020 events,” said Josh Steinhour, an analyst with the research firm Devoncroft Partners “This is perhaps due to the near singular fascination of the industry and investor communities with direct-to-consumer subscriber counts.”

According to the Nielsen report, streaming comprised one-fourth of all television minutes viewed, led by Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Amazon and Disney+. Nielsen also found that the pandemic is having a significant impact on news consumption. “As consumers are spending more time at home and in their local communities, the pandemic is causing a spike in local news reliance and consumption,” Nielsen said.

According to Peter Katsingris, senior vice president of Audience Insights at Nielsen, local news providers are showing they are dialed in to this new way that consumers are consuming news, and local news has responded by reaching consumers in an effective way.

“When it comes to the consumption of local news, we asked [in the survey] about genres of what they watched during the day [and] news was the top genre,” he said. “Local news is something that is really hitting home for… people who are impacted and working from home. They’re home and really [want to] have up-to-the minute information on what’s going on.”

Not surprisingly TV viewing soared in 2020. The October 2020 Nielsen Local Watch Report revealed overall weekly news viewing is up nearly one hour and 20 minutes when compared to September 2019. And the demographic of those who are watching is changing as well with news viewing by younger audiences aged 18–34 increasing by 134% from 2019 to 2020.

A report from the firm Research and Markets found that the M&E market is expected to stabilize and reach $133.7 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5% through 2023.

‘TIL WE MEET AGAIN

What else lies ahead? The makeup of trade shows is certain to change, Steinhour said. “To my knowledge there is no data set in existence describing a negative impact to the industry from the lack of trade events in 2020,” he said. “We need global events to bring together the industry community. I do not claim to have the answer for how trade events will evolve, but I can say with confidence future shows will not resemble the 2019 vintage.” 

What the industry should look at now involves action outside of the U.S. According to Steinhour, several European countries have or are in the process of passing Netflix-type taxes. “These are taxes on revenue, levies, or in-country spending mandates on large, familiar U.S. digital companies,” he said. “Regardless of the structure of the tax, the intention is to protect local content production. This will happen everywhere.” 

Others point to the ongoing importance of improving diversity in the broadcast world and embracing the rollout of ATSC 3.0. 

And others, including the NAB’s Smith, said that the most important thing broadcasters can do is to meet with their legislators and explain how legislation, regulatory actions and judicial decisions affect the day-to-day operations of stations. “Members of Congress are aware of the influence local broadcasters have in their communities, and they want to hear from them,” he said. 

Fratrik added that all broadcasters need to remain aware of their local economic conditions as we head into 2021. “There is wide variation among the states as to the severity of the lockdowns, the impacts on employment, and thus, the level of advertising being spent,” he said. “There is significant hope that the distribution of the vaccine will lead to more states opening up. Local broadcasters need to monitor those events and plan accordingly.” 

BALTIMORE—The abbreviated regular season for Major League Baseball (MLB) is already more than half over, but the big story in this COVID-19 scarred season doesn’t seem to concern what’s happening on the field.

Some viewers might say it’s about heightening the fan experience. The season has featured, at various points, cardboard cutouts of fans in the pretty people seats, groups of virtual fans that fill a 40,000-seat ballpark and sounds of the game that are piped in and accentuated during tape-measure homers or a game-ending strikeouts—often against a background of virtual ads that are appearing in areas of the venue where they are not normally seen.

That’s about making today’s game more appealing to players who aren’t used to playing in empty steel and concrete caverns and fans who are used to heightened broadcast production.

For MLB, Fox Sports is using augmented reality, “with graphic recreations of fans from video game engines and tracking them with four cameras to make the event look real,” said Michael Davies, senior vice president, field and tech operations for the sports net. “At the moment, it has its limitations. For instance, when a player appears between the camera and the fans, it breaks the illusion.”

Still, the Fox Sports approach is a far cry from the first sporting events that aired post-COVID-19 this spring, such as ESPN’s Korean Baseball Organization [KBO] broadcasts that featured not only the cutouts, but stuffed animals.

THE COMEBACK

Davies said Fox Sports has been using “balanced crowd sounds, which don’t react too much to the action. We’re doing a separate crowd mix for TV, which is a bit more reactionary and dynamic. Overall, we have found that viewers notice when crowd noise isn’t there, but you don’t notice when it is; so we’re looking to make the viewing experience seem somewhat normal.”

Fox Sports got in the game, so to speak, with auto racing, with real drivers in virtual cars, then real NASCAR races in May. “We didn’t need crowd audio for NASCAR because it’s normally not a big factor in the mix,” he said. “Then NASCAR gradually began adding fans, which got us back to work during the COVID-19 era—and we got through the broadcasts with no infections.”

That’s due, in part, to fewer people on site working on the productions. “We moved some of our replay and graphics people to our base in Los Angeles, and the announcers and producers to Charlotte,” Davies said. “The distributed production, with the crew’s cooperation, allowed us to keep our on-site employees safer.”

He said Fox Sports has cast a keen eye on the different strategies other broadcasters and leagues are using, noting, “Everyone has a slightly different take: the MLS had virtual Zoom windows, the NBA has live fan feeds on LED boards and then there were [KBO] baseball games with stuffed animals—some have been using different levels of crowd audio, some have not.”

Oddly enough, someone who had been thinking about supplemental sound for more than 10 years guided Fox Sports’ new approach to the sounds of the game.

“When COVID-19 started, I got a phone call from Fred Vogler, an audio engineer who runs an L.A.-based sonofans. He had worked with Pete Carroll when he was head coach at USC,” he said. “Fred would go to different PAC 12 stadiums and record crowd noise so the team could get a flavor of what playing their opponents on the road was like.”

Fox ended up hiring Vogler and his team “to work with us on MLS, MLB and even boxing, which has never been done with audio,” Davies said. “It’s old school, because there is nothing tied into a data feed. It’s simply someone watching the game and orchestrating the crowd reaction based on what it would normally do. It’s almost like they’re musically ‘scoring’ the game with the crowd.”

SOUND FROM ALL AROUND 

For Vogler, the union with Fox Sports is a great example of the power of persistence. “We suddenly have sporting events with no one in the stands, so we’re using live recordings of baseball crowds,” he said.

“We have layers of sounds, as well,” Vogler said. “For broadcasts, our crew of four uses a left-right front and left-right rear mics to get a quadrophonic atmosphere that gives us almost the usual amount of crowd noise. The idea is to have an operator who loves baseball and knows what reactions come at certain points, and give them access so they can react at the right time with the right sounds.

sonofans’ “focus is to create a dynamic bed of sounds that can increase in level with the varying intensities of the game,” he said, via the MADI protocol and trigger pads, plus hybrid software packages (some propriety) “that allow us to access hundreds of files ranging from cheers to clapping to boos—and up to about 30 variations of each.

“You can also hit all three at once, which is often just as a crowd would respond at a game,” Vogler said.

It’s also important to know that a typical non-COVID-19 fan base sounds completely different in each sport. “We’ve also done some MLS matches and they were a hoot,” he said. “Soccer fans have their own chants and cheer to drum beats that provide the crucial pulse of a match; and boxing crowds are aggressive; you can hear their intensity. They have a staccato approach, with tight, percussive voices.”

At Silver Spoon Animation in Brooklyn, N.Y., Executive Producer Laura Herzing and her crew are providing virtual crowds and on-screen graphics via a custom platform called “Crowded” which incorporates Unreal Engine and Pixototte, which enables real-time compositing via a live camera feed and tracking data that is live-composited into the crowd shots.

Herzing said Silver Spoon started working with Fox Sports on three MLB games on July 25 and has worked on a few games a week since; like Vogler, she also noted that such an approach wasn’t needed until this season.

“What we’re doing is similar to using elements of video games in broadcasts,” she said. “Unreal is widely used in the gaming industry, so what we basically did was take that technology and use it another way, for real-time rendering and in the broadcast. We don’t want to trick the viewers, but we want to lend the usual atmosphere they find at the ballpark.”

She and Vogler both appreciate the progressive approach they find working with Fox Sports, which “exhibits an edge when it comes to experimentation,” she said. Vogler agreed, adding, “Most sports broadcasters are just using field mics [to air] the sounds from the empty ballpark. Not Fox Sports.”

Davies shared praise as well, saying companies like sonofans and Silver Spoon “are creating a cottage industry and have emerged as leaders.”

LIVE AND VIRTUAL COUNTERPARTS

Videogaming professionals are not surprised at this sudden melding of two seemingly different worlds.

“This really provides an in-depth look at how closely both live sports and their virtual counterparts are,” said Trevor Williams, CEO of esports events company Capitol Underground in Washington, D.C., “Games like 2K, Madden, FIFA and MLB are constantly trying to create immersive worlds that replicate their live-action counterparts, so when the major [sports] leagues take a play out of the gaming playbook, it doesn’t strike me as shocking.”

Those words were echoed by William Collis, co-founder of Boston-based Oxygen Esports and author of “The Book of Esports.” “I don’t think what’s happening now is any different than what’s happened over time with instant replay, enhanced graphics and other augmentations of sports broadcasts, like the down lines appearing on screen in football,” he said, “so why shouldn’t this trend continue with borrowing from video games?”

Collis offered an example from recent Summer Olympics broadcasts. They “were already enhancing and remixing the sound for rowing,” he said, “for which it’s virtually impossible to acquire broadcast-quality audio.”

Also noting the burgeoning popularity of Statcast, he said, “What separates a video game from the TV broadcast is the interactivity, so it makes sense to incorporate elements from video games to make broadcasts more interesting.”

“What this is about,” said Collis, “is two similar industries evolving their broadcasts. And sometimes with a powerful video game engine and the best software, it’s hard to tell if a video game broadcast on TV is actually a real game or not.”

Such innovation often involves risk, but typically not those of the health variety. Davies reiterated that Fox Sports is bringing its viewers back toward as normal an experience as safely as possible.

That includes the basic masks, sanitizers “and spacing the crew in the truck,” he said, with UV light technology on hand to sanitize the truck’s surfaces “and anything else lying around.”

Of course, the protocols make everyone’s job more difficult. “It takes 100% more time to get the show on the air. You can’t crowd elevators, for instance, and the buffets are over for now; everyone gets a box lunch,” he said.

However, the changes haven’t been all disruptive. Davies thinks much of what Fox Sports is doing will continue post-COVID-19, but in a more expedient fashion.

“Technology has sped up,” he said.

When I was asked to review what had happened in television media over the past decade, the breadth and depth of changes in this industry reminded me of the changes I saw in my daughter as she moved from an adorable, wide-eyed 10-year- old to a more sophisticated young woman attending college and plotting out the course of her life. This analogy is further enhanced as I spend time with my 14-year-old grandson and try to comprehend the tumultuous times and “interesting” choices he makes as he navigates through adolescence. So let me welcome you to the end of the adolescent years of the first century of 2000 millennium. But where to start?

DIGITAL TELEVISION

While digital OTA technically began in the first decade of this century in the United States and a few other countries, it is really in this decade that we have seen terrestrial digital television become the primary standard and analog television service cease operation. The conversion to digital has enabled some very obvious benefits when it comes to the quality and quantity of services offered. Widescreen HD has become the baseline standard for content delivered to home receivers with pristine quality. Multicasts abound as even at my own Iowa Public Television we broadcast four independent program streams, two in high definition and two in standard definition, all with surround sound enabled, descriptive audio and closed captioning. I would venture the majority of OTA television platforms are now multicasts offering as wide a variety of content choices for over-the-air consumers as they may find in the basic subscription of the available MVPD’s.

But digital is not without its more subtle challenges. There are those who viewed the transition from analog to digital as a journey from one location to another location. However, digital was never a destination on a map but a continuum whose ultimate end is still beyond the perceivable horizon. I think the recognition of this fact by everyone involved in this industry is crucial because we have started on the path and we are accelerating. Case in point—NEXTGEN TV.

In 2009 as we joyfully shut off our aging analog transmitters, some here at Iowa Public Television were approaching 30 years old—how many of us were thinking that in 10 years we’d be contemplating shutting off our 15-year-old digital television transmitters? Not to mention convincing the entire viewing population to purchase new televisions because their “old sets” can’t receive the new OTA services. I’m not a big fan of quoting Moore’s Law because I believe the under-lying principle is an unsustainable growth pattern. However, I do believe there are corollaries that should be added if we are going to use it. One of these corollaries is that nothing digital is ever finished.

INFINITE CHANNEL UNIVERSE

While the internet certainly isn’t a product of the last decade, some of what it has enabled is. The internet has transitioned from an optional service to a utility, not unlike power and water. Technology has increased the speed and capacity of internet connectivity, both wired and wireless to enable a plethora of new over-the-top, streaming and on-demand services to be added to the over-the-air and MVPD subscription-based services available. The 500 channel universe that John Malone envisioned in the 1990s has morphed into an infinite selection.

Let’s not overlook another change, probably the most significant one of all: Mobility! I started my career as talent working in radio and back then we knew that the audience was mobile. I was never a good enough disc jockey to land one of the coveted drive time slots on the air but we knew that the vast majority of our audience was listening to us while they were on the go in their cars or laying on the beach on the weekends. The audience was taking the receiver with them and with an audio service it was pretty easy. Video services obviously presented a real challenge since one of the traditional driving forces in consumer television sales is increasing screen size and that the belief that the audience will opt to wait and watch content when they have access to the larger fixed screen.

In many cases however convenience trumps quality and just as people will skip going to see a movie in a theater and wait for it to come out on Netflix, they will likewise watch content on their smartphones while riding and sometimes even driving rather than wait to get home. The industry as a whole now has to come to grips with creating content that will be, not may be consumed on whatever device is most convenient for the audience. In my opinion, this nomadic consumption model is probably one of the most significant changes in our industry—not only bringing challenges to creating content but also new competition as wireless providers evolved, bringing 4G to market in the early part of this decade and the promise of 5G in the next decade.

COMMODITY CONTENT

Looking internally at the industry, the angst of the adolescence analogy still holds up as we adjust our business models, workflows and long-range plans to create content for audiences that have little knowledge or loyalty to the scheduled appointment, channel-based infrastructure of the past. An important concept to grasp is that the vast majority of consumption of preproduced content is still basically streaming in real time. What has fundamentally changed is that the scheduling of the stream has migrated from the content distributor to the content consumer.

Add to this environment the challenge of the ease of distribution and the growth of user-generated content. We saw this in its infancy when shows that took funny, cute and/or embarrassing home movies from VHS tapes and created hit television programs watched by mass audiences. Commoditized technology now allows anyone to purchase a 4K camera for under $100. While there are still “hit” shows based on user generated content easily found with a Google search, there are actually talented story tellers creating compelling content and making it available for free or by donation. This commoditization of the very content being created presents a whole raft of trials for the industry.

My friend and colleague Fred Baumgartner, director of NextGen TV Implication at ONEMedia once suggested I read the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen. It is a book I have actually read a few times because I want to be reminded that my mindset needs to be open to all possibilities.

One of the fundamental takeaways from the book is that when dealing with disruptive technologies, you cannot use the same metrics for success that are used to measure the success of the existing technology. The proof of that in our industry is apparent when you look at who is driving the market and who is struggling to survive. Companies that were barely blips on the radar of content creation and distribution at the beginning of this decade like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) are now the big dogs and the long established leaders are consolidating to try and stay relevant.

VIRTUALLY EVERYWHERE

Digital’s entrance into the world of television began decades ago with the first time-base correctors, character generators and still store that allowed analog tape to replace film chains, paper graphics superimposed over video and 35mm slide projectors. Analog tape became digital tape, character generators became graphic systems and still stores became clip stores.

So the transition was from proprietary, on-premise analog hardware running no software to proprietary, on-premise digital hardware running proprietary software to commodity off-the-shelf (COTS), on-premise digital hardware running proprietary software (exhale). They still require the content creators to make a significant investment in hardware that has a significantly shorter useful life and software that is never finished and undergoing constant updates and improvements. Improvements that while increasing the capabilities of the system are simultaneously accelerating the end of life of the very systems they run on.

Enter the cloud and virtualization. The cloud is basically remote hardware and virtualization is running software on that remote hardware. Initially the low hanging fruit in virtualization was storage. Who didn’t love the idea of having their content available to them from anywhere they were at any time they want as long as they had an internet connection?

Initially concerns about security moderated the charge forward including some well publicized hacks at the major film studios. However, we are currently seeing some significant improvements is securing access and making the idea of more permanent cloud storage pick up speed.

At IBC, MovieLabs discussed their 10- year vision for the future of production, post production and creative technologies. One of the key elements is that their pristine content is in the cloud and the applications and software they use work on the content in the virtualized space. So clearly some of the largest creators of content are committed to the concept of virtualized workflows.

My colleague Chris Lennon, CEO of MediAnswers has been talking about microservices for awhile. Microservices for me is somewhat reminiscent of my early days writing programs where the computers had limited memory and the largest program you could execute was 64 kilobits. Pathetically small by modern standards, it required us to write code efficiently to fit the program into the space available and we also had to learn to modularize our programs to allow for seamlessly running a module and then using the results to execute the next module and so on.

This is how complex programs were designed. The commoditization of memory allowed for programs to grow in size so that they were a single large complex of code rather than separate modules. A microservice architecture harkens us back to the original modular programming and therefore allows some modules to run on user equipment and other modules to run on virtualized equipment.

While this is a complex arrangement, if properly managed and executed it brings some of the most astounding and compelling tools into the hands of anyone who wants to use them in a “pay by the drink” arrangement. Chris and other colleagues at SMPTE are in the process of putting together a working group to develop the standards and recommended practices for the development and application of microservices.

THE ENEMY OF GOOD

One of the other key concepts that I picked up for “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is that within a business there is often the push to develop the quality of the product or service far past the expectations and pocketbooks of the end users.

In some ways I think we are seeing this in the home television display marketplace where 4K and 8K television displays are being marketed as the next big thing. I had a conversation with another friend and colleague about this, discussing the shift in what content creators were looking for and what manufacturers were working on, with John Ive, director of Strategic Insight for the International Association of Broadcast Manufacturers.

“With technology I’m noticing that content image quality is maturing with small incremental improvements because we’ve reached the limits of perception,” he said. “So now more money is spent on the management of content and the business processes with image quality and content increasingly taken for granted.”

To an engineer or scientist who may believe that every improvement is worth the resource investment, this may sound a little like heresy but in the real world “good enough” is a valid metric that determination is made by the end user. The technologies needed to create and distribute content are mature and while they will improve and become even more affordable, that simply means that the sea of content will grow.

To be successful will require a focus on making content discoverable and available and this is why as the adolescent decade of this century comes to an end we are seeing a focus on business processes and content management.

So let’s raise a glass to a decade of change and upheaval. I hope that in 2029, I am asked and still capable of writing another decade in review. I wonder if I’ll even be able to recognize the business.

Bill Hayes is the director of engineering for Iowa Public Television.

BETHESDA, Md.—The American love affair with anything that has a screen starts early with 1-year olds logging 53 minutes a day watching TV, looking at a computer screen or gazing at the screen of a mobile device, finds a new analysis from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Albany and the New York University Langone Medical Center.

That figure nearly triples by age 3, with this group of toddlers spending 150 minutes per day watching a screen, according to the analysis, which appears in JAMA Pediatrics.

"Our results indicate that screen habits begin early," said Edwina Yeung, Ph.D., the study's senior author and an investigator in the Epidemiology Branch of NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). "This finding suggests that interventions to reduce screen time could have a better chance of success if introduced early."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children under 18 months have no exposure to digital media. Eighteen- to 24-month-year-old children should have a slow introduction to screens, and 2- to 5-year-old children should be limited to an hour a day, according to the academy. The latest research found 87% of children studied spent more than the recommended time watching a screen; however, viewing pares back as children reach 7 and 8 years of age, most likely because of school-related activities, the researchers said.

While early childhood screen time is far higher than the academy recommends, it pales in comparison to the average time spent each day by U.S. adults 18 years old and older. In the first quarter of 2019, this group spent 9 hours and 45 minutes per day with screen media (11:27 total media time minus 1:42 spent with radio), according to “The Nielsen Total Audience Report: Q1.”

The NICHD researchers analyzed data from the Upstate KIDS Study, which followed children conceived after infertility treatments and born in New York from 2008 to 2010. Nearly 4,000 mothers took part and responded to questions about their children’s media use at 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 months of age. When their children were 7 and 8 years old they responded to media-related questions as well, according to the researchers.

Children were classified into two groups based on their increase in average daily screen time from age 1 to 3. Seventy-three percent had the smallest increase—from an average of 51 minutes per day to 1:47 per day. Twenty-seven percent had the highest increase—from 37 minutes to nearly 4 hours per day, they said.

The researchers found that the higher the level of education of parents the less likely their children would be in the group with the greater increase in screen time. Girls were slightly less likely to be in the group with the higher increase in viewing time than boys, and children of first-time moms were more likely to be in the group.

They also found that children in home-based care, whether by a parent, babysitter or relative, were more than twice as likely to have high screen time.

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters has added a “resource designed to equip new employees with information they need to succeed in their new roles,” according to NAB Executive Vice President of Industry Affairs Steve Newberry.

This new online educational program, dubbed “Broadcast Essentials,” is intended to help broadcast stations and new employees of both radio and TV stations. NAB members can access the content for free, and nonmembers can purchase each suite for $499 per station or cluster.

The first course is entitled “Radio Employee Onboarding Suite” features six videos that address:

• Radio station licenses and content delivery methods
• A typical station’s organizational chart
• Content and revenue streams
• How commercials are created, scheduled and aired
• Radio’s role in the local community and economy

More courses are slated for the coming months.

YARDLEY, Pa.—After 17 years at NBCU in key senior technology positions, Glenn Reitmeier recently left the network to form GlennReitmeierTV, a consulting service with a focus on helping industry thought leaders at the intersection of technology, business and legal issues.

Reitmeier, who rightly could be considered one of the founding fathers of digital high definition television, played a key role in the development, testing and ultimately standardization of the digital HDTV system that eventually became ATSC A/53 (subsequently called ATSC 1).

(Those interested in a retrospective on The Grand Alliance may wish to read “Richard Wiley Recalls The Grand Alliance on Its 25th Anniversary.”)

After spending more than 20 years with Sarnoff Labs and a Sarnoff incubator company, Reitmeier joined NBC Universal as vice president, Advanced Technology, and subsequently was promoted to senior vice president, Technology Standard and Policy, at the network.

During that time, Reitmeier planted the seed among those serving on the board of the Advanced Television Systems Committee that a next-generation digital television system was not only doable but necessary. That “What? You’re crazy” proposal, as Reitmeier describes it, ultimately grew into the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards.

In this first part of a two part interview, Reitmeier opens up about his new consultancy, compares ATSC 1 and 3.0 standardization, sheds light on the transmission system chosen for ATSC 1 and why it was the best solution at the time, discusses 3.0 vs. 5G rollout, talks about where broadcast management stands with NEXTGEN TV and puts future industry advancement into context.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:Glenn, you recently retired from NBCU and started the GlennReitmeierTV consultancy. Tell me about your plans for your new company.

Glenn Reitmeier: I believe I can provide unique expertise and value at the strategic intersection of business, legal and technology issues. It’s amazing how intertwined they have been throughout the course of my career. Any media business or any business in the supply chain is inherently dependent on technology to create and deliver content, and that content itself is intellectual property that needs to be protected.

So technology and intellectual property become key considerations in the strategic plan of any business in the media supply chain. Likewise, technology is often an explicit part of agreements for affiliation, distribution and other content uses—as well as government regulation. I am looking forward to operating at that intersection and being a resource for the industry thought leaders who will find advantage from combining those elements in the right way.

TVT:You were a part of the engineering team that helped usher in the first era in digital TV, specifically digital HDTV, and you played an important role, including being an ATSC board member, in helping to make ATSC 3.0 a reality. How would you compare the two, and what lessons, if any, from the ATSC 1.0 experience helped in 3.0 standardization?

GR: Boy were they different. In ATSC 1, we had broadcasters petitioning the FCC and the formation of an advisory committee in 1987. The FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS) provided intense oversight and rigorous testing of proposals for a new television system.

ACATS developed 10 selection criteria, and the premise was that a single winning system would be selected based upon the test results. A fierce competition raged among proposed systems. By 1989, there were, I think, 23 proposed systems, all of which were analog.

The digital proposals emerged after FCC Chairman [Alfred] Sikes really raised the bar. He said, “No, we don’t have enough spectrum for a multiple channel HDTV approach. We want full HDTV, not anything less, and there’s only one 6 MHz channel.”

Lo and behold, within six months we had the four digital proposals emerge, and they slugged it out for a few years. And after testing and sort of a stalemate, we formed the Grand Alliance in 1993 and began the collaborative phase of the process, confirmed and validated by ACATS testing that we had met the best performance attributes from all of the four previously tested digital systems.

And in those days, the role of the ATSC was to document everything and make sure there was an open standard that could be implemented by all of the manufacturers in the ecosystem. It was government regulation that kind of paced the launch of 1.0 on both the broadcasting side and the receiver side.

ATSC 3.0 couldn’t be a more different story. I think I was probably the first person to begin to talk about the need for a successor standard. Seeing the Grand Alliance system being a decade old and seeing the development of new video compression and advancements in communications, I started with a white paper that I submitted to the ATSC board in 2006.

Sometimes it feels like the history of my career is people saying, “What? You’re crazy.” I heard that a lot in the early days of the digital proposals. After a couple of years of hearing that about a next-generation digital system, the idea started to get some traction in 2009 when we had the digital transition complete and the NTSC analog service was shut down.

In 2010, the ATSC board created a planning team to investigate the viability of new technologies and whether they would substantially advance the prospect of a next-generation standard. In 2011, after the team reported that there were significant new developments here that were substantially advanced from the technologies of ATSC 1.0, the board agreed and realized that it would take time to do the work of setting a new standard.

So, the board formed the new TG3 group, called for input and began the standard setting process. The standards were completed and approved by the FCC in 2017, and the commercial launch of 3.0 is being paced by voluntary industry efforts.

As far as lessons learned, first, on a technical level, we learned that hardware testing was unnecessary for a modern digital system design. You do that these days with rigorous simulation and evaluation, which allows you to avoid the long and costly process of hardware development.

TVT:Right, because when you were doing 1.0, there was nothing. You were starting from scratch.

GR: Oh, yeah. We were completely starting from scratch, and to be fair there was a degree of skepticism about whether a digital system would be viable at all. “What? You’re crazy. Those many racks of research lab hardware are going to become affordable broadcast equipment and consumer receivers?” Well, with a little help from Moore’s law and thanks to the work of many terrific engineers who designed generation after generation of ATSC 1 products, that’s exactly what happened.

Be that as it may, obviously the process of building a system and debugging and fine-tuning the performance of real-time hardware can be done much more quickly and efficiently in the software simulation environments we have today.

At another level, I think we made a step forward because people realized that the industry is capable of cooperating to create its own voluntary next-gen standards and that we didn’t necessarily need the oversight of an FCC advisory committee. This wasn’t a once-in-50-years event anymore.

I don’t mean to say that the advisory committee was burdensome, nor that there was government interference in the industry. I consider Chairman Wiley one of my role models and mentors for his tremendous leadership during the advisory committee process. But I think we learned that we could do the work in ATSC. That was certainly one of my messages, which I have championed, that we are capable of coming together and doing the work and setting the standard.

But at the highest level, I think that we tried to repeat the ACATS formula of establishing goals and requirements, soliciting competing approaches, rigorously evaluating them, recognizing the best virtues of various approaches and then fostering the collaboration needed to combine the various elements into a complete system.

In retrospect, the ACATS process and the Grand Alliance achieved a truly revolutionary result with ATSC 1.0—it was the world’s first digital television standard. Time will tell how we have done with ATSC 3.0.

TVT:How did 1.0 end up with 8VSB?

GR: It turns out that how the analog signal played with the digital signal was absolutely the lynchpin. [Editor’s note: OTA DTV had to exist in an environment that maintained NTSC transmission for more than 10 years, until analog’s eventual turn off.]

It was finding that knife’s edge balance between the coverage area performance of digital systems and its interference impact on existing analog service. It was absolutely critical to enabling the simulcast transition that we had.

The example I like to use is to achieve that [avoiding interference into a neighboring station’s NTSC service], the digital signals were actually one-sixteenth of the power of the analog signal. So, I have to drop the digital power a factor of 16 in order to not make noise, ghosts and artifacts in the analog service, and at the same time at one-sixteenth the power I have to replicate the coverage of the analog signal in the presence of interference from a high-power, high-tower analog signals all around [i.e., the RF environment].

So, digital signal carrier-to-noise ratio for random noise was a primary attribute in determining coverage, and that’s actually what drove us toward QAM or VSB alternatives. We had to meet that challenge.

I don’t think many people know this, but before the Grand Alliance, we at the Sarnoff-Thomson-Philips-NBC team had actually built both OFDM and QAM transmission systems. We had them both running in the lab, and there was a substantial noise level disadvantage to OFDM at the time that just made it unsuitable for a simulcast environment. At the time of the Grand Alliance, VSB had about a 9db power advantage compared to OFDM, which made a huge difference in our ability to get the largest possible coverage with a digital signal.

Now there are many benefits [to OFDM] like single frequency networks, and the OFDM implementations have gotten substantially better over time, and it obviously was the right choice for ATSC 3.0, but those system choices are highly dependent on the simulcast environment and the transition environment that we are trying to operate within. There are a big set of constraints on the system parameters that you have to choose and balance.

It’s not just the new system and its parameters; it’s the old system and its constraints. You can’t destroy the old business while you are launching the new one.

TVT:What do you think will be fully rolled out first, 3.0 or 5G?

GR: I believe that ATSC 3.0 will be fully deployed before 5G. When you talk about 5G, there are often a lot of assumptions being made. But are you talking about 5G at 900 MHz or mid-band spectrum deployments of 5G? Obviously, as you go up to higher frequencies, you gain higher capacity, but your propagation and coverage area shrink.

To your point, if you are going to be using mid-band and higher frequencies, the cell sizes are going to have to shrink pretty radically, and of course that’s going to require time and investment to build out those higher density cellular networks. You have to compare at least an order of magnitude more cell sites than there are broadcast towers.

When you look at the infrastructure and the investment, I think it becomes a pretty easy conclusion that ATSC 3.0 can be fully deployed before 5G when you look at it on a nationwide basis.

TVT:I ask because it seems as if, like it or not, broadcasters have a relatively narrow window in time to make the most of their spectrum before they face unprecedented competition when it comes to wireless delivery of entertainment and likely regulators and lawmakers who may push for more TV spectrum in a future auction. Is 3.0 the tool to that can help broadcasters remain competitive and stave off further spectrum auctions?

GR: Leaving the spectrum policy questions aside, I will just observe that spectrum is already a scarce resource. ATSC 3.0’s improvements in efficiency, the flexibility to configure signals to achieve coverage and reduce interference, as well as the single frequency network capabilities will all be important in any scarcity of frequency environment, whether today’s allocation stays intact and unchanged or there are further spectrum auctions. I think broadcasters and the country are going to need those improvements in the RF characteristics that 3.0 brings in order to provide reliable service and exist in a crowded spectrum environment.

TVT:From my point of view, the television engineering and academic brain trust of the industry have given the television industry 3.0 with many possibilities and a new level of performance. How would you assess where TV broadcast management is in terms of its interest, understanding and plans for 3.0?

GR: I’m very encouraged and excited about the level of industry support and commitment that is already evident in the 3.0 rollout. Obviously, it is thought leaders who are most intensely interested and moving forward and making ATSC 3.0 deployments and tests.

But there are always leaders and followers when it comes to any new technology or industry change. I look at it like this, here we are just about two years after the standard was approved by the FCC, and we already are seeing voluntary industry lighthouse efforts and transition plans and an industry looking at how to move forward.

Compare that to ATSC 1 two years after the standard was set at the end of 1996, we were just seeing the launch of commercial receivers and there were a handful of stations on the air. But really, in a sense, the industry all looked to the FCC to set rules and requirements and we had the [Michael] Powell plan thanks to Chairman Powell’s leadership.

In ATSC 1, we were all waiting for the government to tell us what to do, and here we are with ATSC 3.0 and the industry leaders who get it are trying to move us forward. I applaud the initiative that is being taken on the commercial front. So, I am encouraged.

TVT:How do you think 3.0 will play out at Comcast/NBCU?

GR: No comment.

Part two of TV Technology's conversation with Glenn Reitmeier will be published next week.

More information about GlennReitmeierTV is available online. 

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

NEW YORK—When it comes to the top type of media that influences consumers at purchase time, traditional television remains king, according to the 2019 Purchase Funnel study conducted by GfK.

The study found that 96% of in-market consumers first find out about a product from media, with 85% saying that media directly influences their purchases. TV was the most important driver of this awareness for 56% of consumers; all other media combined trailed at 40%.

The influence of TV is also able to bridge the age gap, with 85% of adults and 91% of millennials saying TV advertising influenced their online searches. TV ads also spur action, as 78% of opinion leaders said they responded with some kind of action after seeing TV ads.

In addition, the report found that both adults and millennials believe local broadcast TV news and local newspapers are the most trusted sources of news, while social media is the least.

“The most important insight for marketers from the GfK study is that exposure to an advertising platform does not guarantee its importance to consumers—with the exception of television,” said Hadassa Gerber, TVB chief research officer. “With more options for advertisers to deliver their messages than ever before, television continues to have the greatest impact on driving awareness and motivating consumers to take action.”

The full report is available on tvb.com.

ADDISON, TEXAS—The U.S. market leads the world in adoption of OTT (over-the-top) services with 70 percent of its broadband households subscribing to at least one OTT service.

The findings, part of the newly released “OTT Video Services: Disruptive Globalization 2018” report from Parks Associates, underscore the success OTT services are garnering in the United States where about 226 OTT video services competed for viewers in 2018.

While the report finds that competition in United States is intense, OTT service providers are looking to other markets to enhance revenues from existing content. “Of the 226 services competing in the U.S., two-thirds are available in at least one other international market,” a summary of the report says.

In Canada, 64 percent of broadband households subscribe to an OTT video service, and in the U.K. 52 percent of such households subscribe. On a global basis, about 200 million households subscribed to at least one OTT service at home last year. Bollywood’s T-Series YouTube channel alone has 74 million subscribers.

[Read: Research Finds Live TV Viewing Shrinks In North America]

By the end of 2024, more than 310 million connected households –including broadband and/or mobile—will account for 586 million OTT video subscriptions, predicts Parks Associates.

The research organization forecasts that between 2019 and 2024, the number of households subscribing to OTT video services around the world will grow by 71 million, representing a 6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The volume of subscriptions will increase by more than 170 million during the period, an 11 percent CAGR and annual global revenue will grow more than $33 billion, nearly a 16 percent CAGR for the period.

OTT viewers in different countries have different viewing device preferences. U.S. viewers favor smart TVs and streaming media devices; U.K. viewers prefer smart TVs; and Canadians use game consoles more frequently than their U.S. and U.K. counterparts to access OTT video content.

For OTT service providers, winning rights to or developing desirable content is biggest challenge and most important task for OTT service providers, the Parks Associates report says.

“Multiple licenses per content often exist, providing rights on a geographic or sub-set basis,” says the Parks summary. “Garnering rights to popular content can be impossible if rights are already taken or expensive and limited.”

More information is available on the Parks Associates website.

Fremont, CA - January 9, 2019 - Blackmagic Design today announced that season one of the popular Australian television comedy “Stage Mums” was shot using its URSA Mini 4.6K and Pocket Cinema Camera digital film cameras. The show’s editing, audio editing and color correction were also completed using DaVinci Resolve Studio.Airing on a Network Ten in Australia and available on Tenplay, “Stage Mums” takes a tongue in cheek look at the lives of two stage mothers who will go to any lengths to give their daughters opportunities to showcase their amazing talents, most of which don’t work out exactly as planned. Created by Anna Waters-Massey and produced by SundayArvo Productions in association with OZPIX Entertainment, the series was filmed on Australia’s Gold Coast, and recently had its debut broadcast season, which comprised of an entirely Australian cast and crew.With a highly stylized look and feel to match its over the top comedy, “Stage Mums” combines a familiar run and gun reality show look with the bright, warm and hot feeling that comes from shooting on the Gold Coast. Director of Photography Andrew Condor and internationally acclaimed filmmaker, actress and producer Amie Casey decided to use URSA Mini 4.6K as the main camera for the most recent season in order to capture the stylized look.“We definitely wanted ‘Stage Mums’ to be bright and colorful and relative to the style of high quality Australian television, allowing us to build a product that Australians can get behind and be proud of while becoming a beloved series internationally,” explained Casey. “As a producer, one of the great things I loved about working with both Blackmagic Design cameras was the portability. Our production days were fast paced and largely location based, and working with such easily maneuverable cameras while not having to compromise on quality was a dream come true.”Condor used an URSA Mini 4.6K as the A and B camera and the Pocket Cinema Camera for BTS and as a second unit insert and pick up camera. Both cameras made use of a Rec. 709 LUT and were used in multiple locations and in a variety of different natural and artificial lighting situations.“The Ursa Mini 4.6K is a giant for quality in a lightweight, compact body! It was the perfect camera for ‘Stage Mums’ as I wanted a smaller camera package for a run and gun feel, but I didn't want to compromise on quality of the image. Its compact size allowed us to get shots where bigger cameras just would not fit, and we often found ourselves in very small shooting locations, but we were always able to fit both cameras to keep the style of the show consistent,” said Condor. “The 15 stops of dynamic range and the low light capabilities really came in handy with our tight schedule and even tighter lighting budget.”Shot on a very tight schedule, and with the reality, on the run production style, Condor wanted to work with a smaller team of people around the cameras.

“That's where the URSA Mini 4.6K comes into its own. My excellent B camera operator, Colin Larsen, and I were able to control everything in an instant and keep the flow of the show going. We had a few slow mo shots, and being able to shoot up to 120fps without quality loss was fantastic. We also had a lot of locations where we were constantly dealing with different levels of illumination, and I loved the quality of the built in ND filters so that we didn't have to concern ourselves with ’in front of lens’ filtration,” he said.Post production for the series is completed at Sound Vision Studio by post producer Robert Merlini. DaVinci Resolve Studio was used for color correction, audio and video editing and final HD and UHD delivery for the various channels, including Australia’s Channel 10 Peach, Tenplay and US platform Seeka TV.“DaVinci Resolve Studio was the obvious choice for the overall look and feel of the show. Its color features helped to no end in our final product. I also used the Fairlight audio editing page for the the sound mix and was amazed at the functional mix features that helped create the end sound,” Merlini said.He continued, “We really benefitted from DaVinci Resolve Studio not having unnecessarily complicated processes for preparing final deliverables. On the Deliver page, we were able to batch compile and process the file in all of our delivery file formats. DaVinci Resolve Studio made this a breeze. To be able to deliver to the broadcaster exactly to their specification was the perfect way forward for us.”Stage Mums can also be viewed at www.stagemums.com.

Press Photography

Product photos of URSA Mini 4.6K, Pocket Cinema Camera, DaVinci Resolve Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com

Samsung, LG and Sony – the biggest TV manufacturers – have recently joined Fox, NBC and Telemundo Owned Stations Group and a growing list of leading broadcasters in voicing their commitment to ATSC 3.0, which powers Next Gen TV.

With ATSC 3.0’s large-scale introduction now looking assured for 2020, broadcasters will be able to introduce a variety of cool, new internet-enabled business and consumer features with the standard’s advanced transmission technologies.

These features will let broadcasters offer more channels along with better picture and sound quality, while improving broadcast reception for both TV and mobile viewers. In short, broadcasters will have the opportunity to redefine themselves by offering lots of new viewing experiences including those comparable to OTT subscription and ad-supported internet providers.

And why not? People love OTT services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu for their phenomenal original content and, at an even more basic level, how they make TV fun with appealing user interfaces and tailored content recommendations. For broadcasters and content providers looking to compete in this dynamic new world, creating seamless viewer experiences between broadcast channels and their growing subscription OTT services could help close the gap.

Yet these promising new premium content profit centers will be doomed, even before they begin, if broadcasters miss the opportunity to incorporate necessary technological safeguards and defend themselves against competing pirate services bent on destroying what could become a boon for the industry.

The Next Gen TV standard has the usual assortment of Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools, but neither DRM nor the standard, itself, include anti-piracy measures. Ultimately, the revenue from this new market will depend on broadcasters’ willingness to target pirate streaming services by protecting their high-value content and services against theft. Without the additional layer of anti-piracy protection, these new broadcast services will suffer the same fate as the music industry.

The movie studios sought to prevent what happened to their music brethren by encrypting DVDs with DRM at the outset of that industry, letting DVD player manufacturers know they would be excluded from this profitable new market if they failed to agree to their content protection rules.

What they did not see coming, however, was the loss of billions of dollars with the emergence of DRM-only DVD as a format for piracy growth. Pirates embraced the convenient discs over the original VHS format, because they could be perfectly replicated and easily transported all over the world.

Not for long, though. Realizing the financial hit they were taking, and that DRM alone was not enough to protect their DVD business, content providers required manufacturers to install playback control watermarking for their Next Gen Blu-ray format, effectively shutting down the pirated optical disc market. (Full Disclosure: I represent Verance, the company behind the Cinavia anti-piracy technology utilized by major movie studios, as well as Aspect, a foundational element of the Next Gen TV standard.)

Today’s broadcasters and content providers should follow the same lead as movie studios when it comes to content protection in the era of Next Gen TV, but first they will have to overcome manufacturers’ resistance to Next Gen TV anti-piracy measures.

I believe this can be done. The consumer electronics industry operates on the theory of “perceived obsolescence,’” which means that to stay in business it must convince consumers of the constant need to upgrade. So even though your iPhone or Galaxy may work perfectly well, the perception is you need to get the next shiny new phone.

As multiple recent consumer surveys have made clear, when it comes to selling the next generation of TVs starting in 2020, Next Gen TV is the motivator. Potential customers say they are drawn to a variety of its new personalized audio and video features including access to multiple languages, hometown announcers for national broadcast games and selecting multiple camera angles, as well as interactive capabilities such as catch-up TV and start over.

Without the support of broadcasters or streaming services, the adoption of Next Gen TVs will be challenging at best and TV sales will lag. New business models that make broadcast competitive with SVOD and OTT will be at risk. Now is the time for the content side of the business to encourage TV manufacturers to promote legitimate broadcast services.

Bill Gates knows this. In his now-famous 1996 essay, Content is King, the Microsoft founder looked at long-term winners in the television revolution and predicted the next big upheaval would come with internet-delivered content. More broadly, Gates knew that new distribution channels and supporting hardware cannot exist without compelling content.

For Next Gen TV and its new revenue-generating broadcast OTT services to thrive, broadcasters and studios must start thinking like Gates and realize Kodi and other black boxes for what they are – direct competitors offering reliable, high-quality offerings at prices far lower than legitimate OTT services. A report released by Sandvine indicated 6.5% of U.S. households are stealing live TV service at a cost to service providers of $4 billion in annual revenue.

Next Gen TV empowers content providers and broadcasters like never before, handing them the cards to stay competitive. In order for that to happen, however, they must remember what the studios learned in their earlier successful quest to end DVD/Blu-ray disc piracy: content is king, and these assets must be protected with more than DRM.

Mitch Singer, formerly Chief Digital Strategy Officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is an industry media and technology consultant.

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

The concept of streaming media over IP (also known as “over the top”) is more than two decades old, with the pace of adoption now steamrolling towards total dominance in the media transport sector—in short, the state of television distribution worldwide is now OTT.

Advances in streaming technologies and markets present a daily but vital challenge for today’s media professionals. In our latest guide to streaming, we provide a snapshot of where the industry stands and take a look at the influence of recent network neutrality decisions as well as growing markets.

Live television is proving to be a great way for OTT services to differentiate themselves from competitors. But live production is expensive, or least it has been. Now a new generation of IP-based technology enabling signal transport via an unmanaged network is changing the game for live remote sports, music and entertainment production.

This white paper explores this new production methodology and how it is making it more affordable to offer live programming. Download to learn:

• How broadcasters like Fox Sports are using live capture to enable at-home production
• How at-home production is changing the cost equation of live remotes
• Why encoding once and packaging IP for multiple devices is the smart thing to do
• Importance of monitoring live capture and live streaming quality

Click here to read the full white-paper.

Television use grew in April for the second straight month, thanks to a huge increase in viewing on connected devices.

Despite the talk during last week's upfront presentations about reducing commercial loads to advertisers, the amount of commercial content rose 2.4 percent in April to 11.1 minutes per hour,

Overall viewing was up 1 percent in April, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group. Viewing was down, however, among adults 18 to 49, a key demographic for ad sales, by 3 percent.

Consumption on connected devices such as the Roku platform, Apple TV and Chromecast was up 38 percent from a year ago. Such over-the top viewing accounted for 9.7 percent of all viewing and 14.4 percent among adults 18 to 49.

 Viacom had the largest share of C3 commercial impressions at 15.6 percent, although that was down from 15.8 percent a year ago.  

Commercial impressions were down among viewers in the 18 to 49 demographic by 3.3 percent in primetime and by 6.4 percent in total day. Commercial impressions were up at Time Warner- and Disney-owned networks thanks largely to the NBA playoffs.

“Overall, our interpretation is that while TV in its totality may be relatively stable, results remain negative for ad-supported national TV as a medium, consistent with recent trends,” Wieser said.

“Viewing of unrated programming through internet-connected devices and of premium video on PCs, tablets and mobile phones [is] undoubtedly accounting for some of these declines, and probably would bring year-over-year trends closer to flat figures if related data were included in standard measures of viewership,” Wieser said, adding, “However, it doesn’t seem likely that this data will be included in any comprehensive, industry-wide total audience metric any time soon.”  

SALT LAKE CITY—A decision to replace a statue of the father of television as a representative of the state of Utah in the U.S. Capitol has citizens of the Beehive state all abuzz.

At issue is a recent vote by the Utah Senate to remove a statue of Philo Farnsworth—who is credited with inventing the cathode ray tube—in the Capitol with a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, the state’s first female senator. Supporters of the move wanted to use the occasion to mark the 2020 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote and mark 150 years since women in Utah were given the same right, according to the Cottonwood Holladay Journal.

Each state has two* statues in the U.S. Capitol’s visitor center representing a prominent figure from that particular state and the statues can be replaced anytime. Supporters of changing the statue note that Cannon will only occupy Farnsworth’s place until 2020, but that didn’t stop Farnsworth supporters from objecting.

[Read: The Farnsworth Invention]

“I don’t think the legislators realize what all Farnsworth did not only for our state but for the nation and the world,” Treva Barnson told the Journal. Barnson spoke on behalf of her husband Bruce, who led the campaign by elementary school students to have Farnsworth represent Utah in the Capitol 30 years ago. “We’re hoping that the Farnsworth statue will be placed in the Smithsonian and that in 10 years, he can rotate back to the Capitol.”

Choosing Cannon to replace Farnsworth wasn’t unanimous either, noted Salt Lake City Recorder Adam Gardiner, who introduced the bill a year ago. In addition to her role as an early suffragist, she was also a polygamous wife. There was “a lot of uproar,” Gardner told the Journal. “I got more phone calls, hate mail, some love mail, on this bill than any other.”

Barnson hopes that legislators will reconsider their decision.

"If you’re going to remove a statue from the U.S. Capitol, take Brigham Young down,” Barnson said. “Farnsworth was a scientist and inventor who inspires so many students.” 

   [*corrected]  

Media agency GroupM has forecast that time spent with online media worldwide in 2018 will surpass time spent with linear TV.

The report comes during NewFront week, a time when digital programmers are pitching advertisers on the importance of reaching consumers via online and social media.

Consumers worldwide will spend 3.69 hours per day with online media worldwide, compared with 3.63 hours spent with linear TV, according to the GroupM report. That gives online a 38% share and TV a 37% share of the media day, weighted by local media investment.

That compares with 2017's 3.53 hours with digital media and 3.71 hours with linear TV.

In the U.S., TV still holds an edge over online media, with 4.59 hours per day forecast for TV in 2018 versus 4.20 hours for online. But TV’s share of the U.S. market is declining. GroupM pegged it at 39% in 2018, down from 41% in 2017, while online will rise to 38% from 36%.

[Read: Cord-Cutting Spreads Beyond U.S. Borders, Says IHS]

The increase in time spent on digital corresponds with a increase in e-commerce. GroupM predicted worldwide e-commerce will increase 15% in 2018 to $2.442 trillion, or 10% of all retail.

GroupM also looked at how media was being transacted. It found that 44% of online display advertising was transacted programmatically in 2017, up from 31% in 2016. GroupM forecast that rising to 47% in 2018.

Only 22% of online video was transacted programmatically, but that’s up from 17% in 2016 and will rise to 24% this year, GroupM said.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—A new study finds the Trump Administration’s proposed tariffs on TVs from China would boost the price Americans pay for sets, costing an estimated $711 million next year.

The study, commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and National Retail Federation (NRF), finds the proposed tariffs will increase the price of TVs from China by 23 percent and increase prices for all TVs by 4 percent.

"These proposed tariffs are bad for the economy, businesses and American consumers," said Gary Shapiro, CEO and president, CTA.

The study relies on a model that reflects shifts to other sources that would occur if the tariff on Chinese products in four product areas –televisions, monitors, batteries and printers—were imposed.

[Read: The Top 10 Tech Trends For 2018: Juniper Research]

The results “show that, even accounting for alternative sources of supply, the proposed tariffs would have a negative impact on American consumers,” the study said.

As relates to TVs, the tariffs would result in U.S. consumers cutting back on television purchases by 7.8 percent, it found. “The net impact on the economy (the value of U.S. producer gains plus tariff revenues to the U.S. government, minus the value of consumer losses) is a hit of $322 million,” it said.

"China's unfair trade practices must be addressed, but as this study shows, tariffs aren't the answer and will punish U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices," said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.

HERTFORDSHIRE, UK--Global consumer spending on entertainment content—including TV, video, music and games—will reach $439 billion by 2021, according to a new report from From Futuresource Consulting. The trend, outlined in the U.K. research firm's “Global Entertainment Content Outlook” is fueled by the use of smartphones, and represents a 17 percent increase over 2017 spending levels.

Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, are rapidly dominating the home video entertainment sector, including DVD, Blu-ray, VoD, SVoD, and EST (Electronic Sell-Through). While this sector was just 13% of consumer home video spending in 2013, by the end of 2017, SVoD alone comprised almost half of the $42 billion spent worldwide.

Global SVoD subscription spending, estimated at $19 billion in 2017, is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% between 2017 and 2021, when it will account for 70 percent of total home video spending, largely due to households taking multiple services.

[Read: The Top 10 Tech Trends For 2018: Juniper Research]

Yet, SVoD still pales when compared to PayTV, which is a $200 billion global market, with U.S. spending alone accounting for half. The Futuresource report identifies bundling PayTV services with broadband/telephony, the early availability of premium content, and access to exclusive fare like sports as key factors driving its appeal.

For consumers that want to bundle their own TV content, services like Hulu, YouTube, Sony PlayStation, DirecTV and Xfinity had sold 4.8 million PayTV Lite subscriptions in the U.S. by 2017, and the trend continues.

Since offering compelling content is key to driving consumer spending on entertainment video services, the report indicates that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are on the rise, and cites Comcast’s bid for Sky and Disney’s move to acquire 21 Century Fox as evidence that global media conglomerates are seeking to broaden their audience and market reach. And, all combined, the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) companies are expected to spend $20 billion on video content in 2018 to gain a competitive edge. 

WASHINGTON—CBS is urging federal regulators to make sure TV manufacturers are following the rules with regard to broadcast tuners.

“The FCC should take appropriate enforcement action against such equipment manufacturers,” CBS said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. “The need for FCC action is particularly important given that the impact of such equipment performance problems is likely to be exacerbated once broadcast television stations are operating on fewer RF channel following the upcoming incentive auction.”

Specifically, a situation on the East Coast has revealed that TV receivers may not be decoding the Program and System Information Protocol, or PSIP, which enables a TV to display and tune in virtual channels, such as dot-twos, or channel numbers that are different from the actual channel assignment of a station, but perhaps the same as its brand identity.

These virtual channels appear in electronic program guides rather than the actual channel assignment of the station. In some cases, they are one and the same, but many are not. (Notwithstanding accuracy,Wikipedia has a pretty good illustration of actual versus PSIP assignments.) PSIP was instituted in the ’09 digital transition to help minimize viewer disruption, is part of the current broadcast transmission standard and includes components required by the FCC.

The decoding anomaly was revealed in a proceeding involving PMCM, licensee of WJLP-TV in Middletown Township, N.J. PMCM previously owned KVNV-TV of Ely, Nev., and won approval to move the station’s community of license to Middletown Township after the 2009 digital transition left the state with no full-power VHF TV station. Federal law calls for each state to have at least one.

Thus, when KVNV, which occupied analog Ch. 3 in Ely, moved to Middletown Township, PMCM wanted to use Ch. 3 there. The commission first denied the request but was overruled by a federal court. PMCM was allowed to move its license to Ch. 3 in Middletown Township, and also wanted to use virtual Ch. 3.

While that may have worked in the Southwest backcountry, the Eastern Seaboard is a different animal, one crowded with TV stations. CBS, licensee of KYW-TV in Philadelphia, and Meredith, licensee of WFSB-TV in Hartford, Conn., raised red flags over PMCM’s request to use virtual Ch. 3 because both were already using it in adjacent markets with “significant” overlap of signal contours. This overlap would confuse receivers within those areas about which signal to decode and display.

After about six months of regulatory volleyball, the commission ruled in June that Meredith and CBS had dibs on virtual Ch. 3, and that the WJLP folks would have to make do with virtual Ch. 33.

And so they did, while their attorneys at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, a D.C. law firm with a well-known broadcast practice, filed an Application for Review in July that challenged the FCC’s application of rules in the case.

By September, however, according to PMCM, it received “numerous reports” from viewers seeking WJLP but finding yet another station—WCBS-TV out of New York—which is transmitted on Ch. 33 and virtually identified on Ch. 2. (WJLP tramsmits from the Conde Naste building in Manhattan; while WCBS is on Empire State, less than a mile away.)

“According to PMCM's engineer, Jim McGowan, who conducted the testing, the majority of receivers tested produced the complained-of results,” PMCM said in an Emergency Request for Relief. “That is, when Ch. 33 was selected through the receiver’s remote, the receiver tuned to WCBS-TV—which broadcasts on RF Ch. 33. When Ch. 3 was selected through the remote, the receiver tuned to station WJLP. When Ch. 2 was selected, some sets received no signal, while others tuned to WCBS-TV.”

According to PMCM, the TVs tested were all supposed to decode PSIP. Manufacturers included Panasonic, JVC, Phillips, Sony, LG, Hisense and Samsung, ranging in size from 19 to 60 inches, including SDTVs, newer smart TVs and two digital converters.

CBS informally confirmed WJLP’s results, PMCM said, but the network did not say as much in its filing. It did, however, get behind PMCM’s assertion that receivers were not performing according to FCC rules.

“… It appears that such equipment fails to ‘be capable of adequately receiving all channels allocated by the commission to the television broadcast service,’ as required by the FCC’s rules,” CBS said in its filing.

CBS further said that while the FCC ought to enforce its on rules on receivers, that it should not allow WJLP to use virtual Ch. 3.