Coherent Logix and Sinclair's One Media got FCC special temporary authority to operate an experimental facility that will use the base elements of the new ATSC 3.0 standard, One Media said in a news release Thursday. The facility will implement a single frequency network (SFN) using the new standard on channel 43 in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore markets, it said: “The test is designed to provide real-time assessments of quality of service using the new Internet Protocol-based standard currently being reviewed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee.” The experiment is designed to prove new capabilities of broadcasting TV under ATSC 3.0, such as being able to program the same channel in adjacent markets, One Media said. “The SFN will permit broadcasters to 'zone' programming and advertising to discrete parts of a station's market using the same channel,” it said. "We now have a place to innovate, and together with our Memorandum of Understanding partners, Samsung and Pearl TV, we can bring powerful business ideas into practical demonstrations of opportunities to monetize all of our core assets,” said Sinclair Vice President-Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. The experiment's location on the “congested” East Coast helps test the new standard's capabilities under real-world conditions, One Media said. “Our demonstration should provide regulators the evidence they need to expedite these dramatic and competitive service improvements," said One Media Executive Vice President-Strategic and Legal Affairs Jerald Fritz.
Balloting began this week on the “main elements” that will compose ATSC 3.0's physical transmission system, ATSC President Mark Richer said Wednesday in ATSC’s monthly newsletter, The Standard. If approved, those elements will be elevated to the status of a candidate standard, he said. That's significant because it will provide “a strong foundation for the industry to begin considering the launch of next-generation television broadcasting,” and will help “kickstart manufacturers to begin developing prototype ATSC 3.0 equipment,” he said. Within a month, ATSC will have a complete physical layer that manufacturers can start building to, ATSC insiders told us. The expectation is that perhaps as early as CES in January, the industry will have prototype physical devices for ATSC 3.0's transmission system available to the market, they said. ATSC will make an announcement when the ballot is voted and it’s expected that the vote on the system will pass because the companies that were involved in harmonizing ideas around a physical transmission system agreed the industry now has something that’s ready to be built, they said. CEA’s R4WG18 working group created a “gap analysis” of current and proposed ATSC 3.0 video formats for over-the-air broadcast and broadband streaming video “use cases,” said Brian Markwalter, CEA senior vice president-research and standards, in the same issue of the newsletter. From that gap analysis, R4WG18 recently reached consensus “on a lower limit for video formats that should be supported by ATSC 3.0 receivers, primarily fixed, larger screen devices, for the OTA use case,” he said, referring to over-the-air broadcasts. “With some yet-to-be-determined details, an initial list of broadband video formats has also been proposed.” The first section of the recommended practice will focus on recommended video formats for “baseline” and “advanced” fixed TVs, he said. “The final document is expected to address the audio, runtime and other aspects of both baseline and advanced ATSC 3.0 receivers.” R4WG18 hopes to complete the video formats list and give CEA’s R4 video systems committee a “progress report” at face-to-face meetings this month, he said.
The FCC should open a license application filing window for AM stations only to get FM translators, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters told Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Those groups and broadcasters were concerned that a draft AM revitalization order didn't include such a window (see 1508310046). "The best way to help the largest number of AM stations to quickly and efficiently improve their service is to open such an AM-only window," said a NABOB filing posted Wednesday in docket 13-249 and unavailable now due to the FCC partial IT shutdown. "Any other approach will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for AM stations ... to obtain the translators they urgently need."
The proposals in the Low Power FM Advocacy Group's petition (see 1508180070) amount to creating a whole new FM service, said numerous state broadcast associations and full-power FM licensees in comments posted Wednesday in RM-11753. The FCC “should be reluctant to consider replacement of that LPFM service with the entirely different service that LPFM-AG proposes in its Petition,” said a group of state broadcast associations. LPFM-AG hasn't shown “a legally adequate basis for activating the Commission’s rulemaking processes to implement a wholesale redesign of the LPFM service,” the groups said. The petition would convert LPFM into “commercial FM lite,” said a group of full-power FM licensees. “In calling for co-primary status between low power and full power FM stations, the proposals run counter to unambiguous federal law,” the full-power licensees said. “The Petition is not so much a request to alter the existing rules but to establish an entirely new service divorced from the principles, protections and understandings that undergird LPFM,” said the North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia broadcaster associations in a joint filing. The LPFM-AG proposal is “fraught” with potential interference situations, said broadcast engineering firm Cohen Dippell.
Approval of a Low Power FM Advocacy Group petition “would completely upend” the LPFM model, NAB said in comments filed Tuesday in docket RM-11753. LPFM-AG proposals to allow LPFM stations to run commercials would subject them to control by businesses and increase interference risk for FM stations, NAB said. Though NAB said LPFM stations face financial challenges, the petition’s proposals are “a bridge too far,” NAB said. LPFM group REC Networks also filed comments opposing the LPFM-AG petition. “Allowing LPFM to become a commercial service would price the service out of reach of those entities it was originally intended to serve,” REC Networks said. REC said it would support more relaxed rules for corporate underwriting for LPFM , and that it wouldn’t oppose efforts to make LPFM a primary service. Such a change should be made by Congress rather than the FCC, REC said.
A startup company financed by NAB created an online engagement platform for mobile and Web content, NAB said in a news release Monday. The company, Antenna, was financed by NAB Labs, the technology division of NAB, and created tech that allows users to offer substantial feedback to online content -- “much more than just a ‘like’ or a ‘heart,’ said NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny. Fifty-five publishers are using the free Antenna platform, including Perez Hilton and Dlisted, said the association.
The FCC should “promptly” give broadcasters “regulatory certainty” about how the agency will treat channel sharing deals, the NAB said in replies filed in docket 12-268 Friday. Parties in second-generation channel sharing arrangements (CSA) should maintain their carriage rights with multichannel video programming distributors, NAB said. In its own replies, Media General agreed with NAB but said the FCC should incentivize post-auction CSAs by compensating broadcasters that enter into them for their relinquished spectrum. Exempting such stations from the multiple ownership rules could be one such incentive, Media General said.
CBS and Tegna agreed to renew station affiliation agreements for 10 markets with “more than 10 million households,” a news release from Tegna said Thursday. The Tegna stations will also participate in CBS’ digital subscription service CBS All Access, expanding the size of the service to cover 85 percent of U.S. households by the end of 2015, it said. The agreement includes renewals for Tegna-owned CBS affiliates KENS San Antonio, Texas; KHOU Houston; KREM Spokane, Washington; KTHV Little Rock, Arkansas; WFMY Greensboro, North Carolina; WLTX Columbia, South Carolina; WMAZ-TV Macon, Georgia; WTSP St. Petersburg, Florida; WUSA Washington; and WWL-TV New Orleans.
Many cities with large populations of Latino, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese speakers have few broadcasters transmitting in those languages, said Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, NAACP and 23 other groups in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler posted Thursday in docket 06-119. Saturday marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which took New Orleans’ only Spanish-language station off air for eight days, the groups said. “During those eight days, over 100,000 Latinos had no landline service, no cellular telephony, no television, no radio, and no print media in their language,” the groups said. Civil rights organizations in 2005 proposed the “Katrina Petition,” under which stations in localities would be designated to broadcast emergency alert system (EAS) warnings in multiple languages, but the FCC hasn’t acted on it, the groups said. The FCC should require stations to certify they will help other stations transmit life-saving information in emergencies as a condition of license renewal, they said. “Stations that declare that they ‘will not transmit, or even help other stations transmit, life-saving information in an emergency’ should have their fitness to hold an FCC license formally reviewed,” the letter said. “State EAS plans can easily be amended to incorporate reasonable methods of ensuring that lifesaving information finds its way to the public in an emergency.”
NAB, the Radio Television Digital News Association, Society of Professional Journalists and other groups, plus legislators and regulators, expressed sadness Wednesday (see here, here and here) over the on-air shooting of two employees of TV station WDBJ Roanoke, Virginia. FCC Commissioners Mike O’Rielly, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel also expressed sorrow over the event via Twitter.