There needs to be “a business entity” that drives the commercial adoption of ATSC 3.0, and “those pieces are being lined up,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us. “If you ask me, what’s going to drive this thing forward, it’s going to be the equivalent of something like the Wi-Fi Alliance,” Aitken said of the group formed by big tech companies in 1999 as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (see 0209170020) and later renamed the Wi-Fi Alliance to promote and certify Wi-Fi products and services. “Think of this Wi-Fi Alliance being called something like the IP Broadcast Alliance,” Aitken said. “There was a standard in the analog days built around being able to convey pictures and sound over the air,” he said. “TV was the one thing.” But in ATSC 3.0, “we’ve got this broadcast platform, and it’s all IP-based,” Aitken said. “It’s a tremendous economic engine, but TV is only one of the services that it has to offer.” Aitken sees ATSC 3.0 as an opportunity to use existing TV services as an economic springboard “to get into new services that are possible because we have a wireless IP platform,” he said. “For me, that is the story. The story is IP broadcast.”
Digital stations’ annual DTV ancillary/supplementary use services report (Form 2100-Schedule G) is due Dec. 1, the FCC Media Bureau said in a reminder public notice Thursday. Forms must be submitted for each station explaining whether they provided ancillary or supplementary services at any time during a 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, the PN said.
Channel 61, licensee of WNMN Saranac Lake, New York, agreed to pay the FCC $30,000, said a consent decree released by the Media Bureau Wednesday. The settlement is for violations of the commission’s public file rules, the decree said. “The Licensee failed during some periods of time to timely place issues and programs lists into its public file and to timely upload elements of station’s public files to the online Commission hosted website, failed to timely file children television programming reports, and to construct at an authorized location,” the consent decree said.
Thirty-four nations at the World Radiocommunication Conference support maintaining the current UHF spectrum allocation for broadcast TV, said the North American Broadcasters Association in a news release Wednesday. “A large and diverse group of countries continue to recognize the importance of broadcasting as an instrument of freedom of expression and the most effective and efficient means of using spectrum to deliver educational and emergency information to an entire population,” said NABA. “Despite some pre-emptive efforts from the wireless industry to spin the facts, only a handful of countries actually support reallocation.” The WRC is ongoing in Geneva, with FCC and other officials (see 1511030062).
High dynamic range “will ultimately be part of the ATSC 3.0 video specification, allowing broadcasters to compete effectively with other distributors of HDR content,” such as over-the-top (OTT) video providers and marketers of Ultra HD Blu-ray players and discs, said Alan Stein, Technicolor vice president-research and development, in an interview in the November issue of The Standard, ATSC’s monthly online newsletter. The S34-1 ad hoc group on video technology that Stein chairs reached consensus on the use of the H.265 video codec and its Main-10 profile, Stein said. “HDR solutions will need to be 10-bit and compatible with this specification." Stein agrees “there’s huge interest in broadcast HDR,” he said. But over-the-air HDR faces “some particular challenges” that are “quite different” from streaming HDR over the top or delivering HDR through physical media like Ultra HD Blu-ray, he said. Broadcast TV’s live production environment, regional opt-outs and interstitial advertising all “contribute to an environment that is quite different from offline-produced content,” he said. “That said, there is a real fear of fragmented HDR solutions entering the marketplace, which could confuse consumers and hurt adoption. It’s important that ATSC specify technologies that are adapted to our unique environment and can be deployed at scale across various devices when ATSC 3.0 launches.” So elusive was consensus within S34-1 on HDR that it’s possible the candidate standard draft for ATSC 3.0 video wouldn't have HDR included, Stein told the ATSC 3.0 Boot Camp conference in May (see 1505130058). ATSC President Mark Richer thinks his group is “still on track to have most ATSC 3.0 elements approved or balloted for Candidate Standards by year end,” Richer said in his “President’s Memo” column in The Standard. Coming soon to ATSC 3.0 “are middle and upper layer standards for video and audio coding, closed captioning, and more,” Richer said. “Although ballots for some areas like interactivity and transport are expected in early 2016, the majority of the overall ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard will be in place for manufacturers to build equipment to support field testing as the standard moves to Proposed Standard status next year.”
NAB Labs is joining Maryland-based incubator program Dingman Center Angels as an angel investor, NAB said in a news release Tuesday. The incubator invests in early stage companies and startups in the mid-Atlantic region, the release said. “We will be on the lookout for new technologies and ideas that could help shape the future of broadcasting.” The Dingman Center Angels portfolio includes Astrapi, which deals with tech designed to combat interference and improve spectrum efficiency, NAB said.
The FCC will begin an inquiry into whether foreign ownership rules were violated by the relationship between several California radio stations and the Chinese government, said spokesman Neil Grace in a news release Tuesday. The inquiry is based on information released by Reuters in a recent series of reports.
Gray Television will sell all radio stations included in its proposed buy of Schurz Communications' broadcast properties, Gray said in a news release Monday. At the closing of Gray/Schurz, Schurz will transfer its radio stations in South Bend, Indiana, to Mid-West Family Broadcast Group, its stations in Lafayette, Indiana, to Neuhoff Communications, and a radio station in Rapid City, South Dakota, to The HomeSlice Group, the release said. The stations will be sold for a total of $16 million, and “such proceeds will reduce the total consideration payable by Gray to Schurz for the television station assets,” it said. "We originally intended to acquire and operate the Schurz radio stations for the long-term," said Gray Senior Vice President-Business Affairs Kevin Latek. "In recent weeks, it became clear that experienced radio broadcasters could better lead these successful radio stations into the future than we could hope to accomplish." The radio station deals will close simultaneously with Gray/Schurz, which is expected to close in Q4 2015 or the Q1 2016, Gray said.
The New York office of the FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a $10,000 fine for an alleged Passaic, New Jersey, pirate radio operator who the bureau said continued operating his unlicensed station La Consentida FM despite several warnings from the bureau, said a notice of apparent liability released Friday. It said Jose Luis Hernandez, called “El Emperador,” received a warning notice from the bureau in March, but didn't respond and was found operating his station out of a house in July. The superintendent of Hernandez's building removed the unlicensed antenna after the bureau issued him a notice of unlicensed operation, the NAL said.
Broadband access is a necessary tool for addressing the "homework gap" in the Hispanic community, Univision and Common Sense Media told Chairman Tom Wheeler Monday, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 09-197 Thursday. The company and group's Avanzamos Conectados! (Connected, We Advance) initiative intended to help Hispanics get access to broadband has seen 50,000 people sign up to receive information on obtaining service, 21,000 people attend education fairs promoting the program, and registered more than 60,000 calls for information, they said. Univision supports “responsible programs, whether public or private, that help U.S. Hispanics gain access to affordable broadband in the home,” it said.