WASHINGTON D.C.—The Advanced Television Systems Committee has awarded its highest technical honor, the 2021 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, to Alan Stein, vice president of technology at InterDigital.
During this year’s NextGen Broadcast Conference, the ATSC also announced that it was awarding the Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal to Sen. Gordon Smith, the president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters.
Congratulating the honorees, ATSC President Madeleine Noland said that Stein “is an extremely valuable contributor to the work of ATSC, both as an expert technologist and also as an accomplished group chairperson. We are honored to salute his dedication with the Lechner Award.”
She also praised Senator Smith for his outstanding leadership of the National Association of Broadcasters as a “steady advocate for the broadcasting industry who has taken every available opportunity to promote ATSC 3.0 since we first started this important work on next-generation broadcast standards.”
The Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal is named for the legendary former ATSC president who led the organization for two decades spanning both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0. It recognizes an individual or team that demonstrates exemplary leadership in advancing the mission of ATSC and epitomizes the vision, tenacity and leadership qualities that were the hallmark of his leadership.
“Senator Smith became President and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters in 2009, just before the technology we later termed ATSC 3.0 became a major focus of our organization,” said Noland. “Senator Smith understood the value that next-generation television could bring to the broadcasting industry and he was instrumental in promoting the potential to NAB’s board and membership,”
Richer Medal recipients include:
2019 – Mark Richer
2020 – The Phoenix Model Market
The ATSC’s 2021 Lechner Award recipient Alan Stein is vice president of technology, in the CTO office of InterDigital.
He holds 16 granted patents in the field of digital video and currently heads InterDigital’s Visual Standards Team, where he manages a global team of senior technology experts who participate in major video standards organizations.
Alan Stein has been a long-time, active contributor to many ATSC activities, first with Technicolor and now with InterDigital. Stein has been a board member of the UHD Alliance and a member of the CTA Video Board.
“Alan has distinguished himself in numerous leadership roles and in his technical contributions to the work,” Noland said. “He has served as Chair of ATSC’s Video group since its inception as an ad hoc group and now in its current form as TG3/S41 Specialist Group on Video for ATSC 3.0. Stein also serves as Chair of ATSC Planning Team 6 on Global Recognition of ATSC 3.0, assisting ATSC with overall global strategy and organizing specific efforts as needed for various countries exploring ATSC 3.0.”
The Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award is bestowed once a year to an individual representative of the membership whose technical and leadership contributions to ATSC have been invaluable and exemplary. The title of the award recognizes the first recipient, the late Bernard Lechner, for his outstanding service to the ATSC.
Lechner was the retired Staff vice president, advanced video systems of RCA Laboratories. His 30-year career at RCA covered all aspects of television and display research, including early work on home video tape recorders in the late 1950s, extensive development of flat-panel matrix displays in the 1960s including pioneering efforts on active-matrix liquid crystal displays, advanced two-way cable TV systems and pay-TV systems in the early 1970s, electronic tuning systems and CCD comb-filters for TV receivers in the mid-1970s, automated broadcast cameras and CCD broadcast cameras in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to HDTV in the mid-1980s.
Lechner award recipients include:
2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant
2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital
2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft
2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems, Inc
2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters
2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi
2006 – Art Allison, NAB
2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics
2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT
2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics
2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic
2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal
2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, MWG Group
2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group
2014 – James Kutzner, PBS
2015 – Luke Fay, Sony
2016 – Madeleine Noland, LG Electronics
2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB
2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital
2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony
2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI
2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital
