NEW YORK—The WNET Group has partnered with Japan International Broadcasting (JIB) to launch the NHK World-Japan channel in the New York DMA.

The service became available on April 1 on public media station WLIW’s digital channel 21.3 and on local cable providers including Optimum, Spectrum, Comcast, Verizon Fios, and Astound/RCN.

NHK World-Japan is the English-language international service of Japan's sole public broadcaster, NHK.

"We are excited to partner with Long Island's WLIW to bring the NHK World-Japan channel to an even broader New York audience," said Mr. Hiroshi Maeda, the president & CEO of Japan International Broadcasting. "We look forward to continuing our relationship with its parent company WNET and collaborating with them to highlight this unique perspective on Japanese culture, lifestyle programming, and international news to English-speaking viewers in Long Island and the entire tri-state area."

"NHK World-Japan has been providing viewers of the tri-state area high-quality, diverse content for nearly a decade, delivering programs on Japanese society, history, food, politics, and more," said Neal Shapiro, President & CEO of The WNET Group. "We're proud to continue this partnership expanding the reach of NHK's exceptional programming from Asia and around the world by adding NHK World-Japan to our WLIW digital channel lineup for our local communities."

Digital antenna viewers will need to rescan their tuners after April 1 to receive over-the-air channel updates including NHK World-Japan on WLIW 21.3 and the World Channel, which is moving to 13.3 (THIRTEEN WORLD) on April 1.

Viewers can check your local listings or wliw.org/HowToWatch for additional channel information.

NEW YORK—NextGen TV broadcasts were launched in New York City on October 16, making ATSC 3.0 signals available in the nation’s largest TV market for the first time. 

As part of the launch, public television’s WLIW21 of The WNET Group converted to the ATSC 3.0 standard and is hosting NextGen TV broadcasts for six local channels.

The launch means that viewers in the #1 television market in the country will be able to receive NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, broadcasts from WCBS (2), WLIW (21), WMBQ-CD (46), WNBC (NBC 4), WNET (13), and WNJU (Telemundo 47) 

WLIW21 is simulcasting the signals but they will appear on their originally assigned local station lineups on all NEXTGEN TV receivers.

“WLIW21 is the first full power station to convert to NEXTGEN TV in the largest television market in the US — this is broadcast television history in the making,” said Neal Shapiro, president and CEO of The WNET Group. “We welcome the opportunity to collaborate with WNBC, WNJU and WCBS on ATSC 3 as we navigate the challenges and opportunities of this digital evolution. I’m confident this partnership will ensure the best possible outcome for our New York area viewers.”     

The WNET Group was uniquely positioned to become the host or “lighthouse” in this commercial/non-commercial station partnership as the local operator of two full-power signals because it had moved WLIW21 to One World Trade Center in 2019 in anticipation of the upcoming ATSC 3.0 technology.

As part of the launch The WNET Group said that datacasting and location services are being explored to support mission-driven public television programming for educational and underserved audiences.

Heartland Video Systems has been the project consultant and integrator for The WNET Group.

As ATSC 3.0 continues to roll out across the country broadcasting in more than 70 cities, NextGen TV is expected to reach 70% of US television households in 2023.

TV Tech has been tracking all the launches of NextGen TV broadcasts around the country. Our complete coverage of the issue is available here and our complete list of markets that have launched 3.0 signals can be accessed here. 

NEW YORK—Public broadcaster WNET is coming up on the one-year anniversary of a successful remote production control deployment.

In early 2018, the station enabled remote control of WLIW in Plainview, Long Island, production via a JPEG 2000-based transport solution from Nevion. Since then, the company’s Virtuoso software-defined media node platform has been used to transport audio and video streams from the Plainview station to WNET’s New York City headquarters.

The system has proven to be reliable and agile “with no faults” since its rollout, said Frank Graybill, Director of Engineering, WNET.

Virtuoso seamlessly backhauls multiple camera and audio feeds from the WLIW studio to WNET’s Manhattan control room without requiring production personnel in Plainview.

This approach does away with the need for guests and staff to travel to the Manhattan studio to produce WLIW programming as well as eliminates the costs involved in building a staffed facility for these productions in Long Island, Nevion said.

Rather, WNET repurposed an existing WLIW studio and deployed the Nevion Virtuoso low-latency, high-quality transport with JPEG 2000 encoding for live remote production controlled in Manhattan.

This setup makes it possible for the broadcaster to conduct interviews on short notice, which allows WLIW to produce more timely, relevant content to tie into local breaking news stories.

“We have been thoroughly impressed with the Virtuoso solution. Its GUI is user-friendly, and the software is easy to understand, which allowed us to have the system up and running within a matter of hours,” said Graybill.

WNET purchased the Virtuoso solution from Dynamic Performance Technology, a Nevion certified business partner.

More information is available on the Nevion website; information on Dynamic Performance Technology is available on its website.