Sinclair’s One Media appeared in comments in the FCC ATSC 3.0 rulemaking to dip a toe in the water of backing tuner mandates, though it stopped well short of asking the commission to impose them. “The capabilities enabled by ATSC 3.0 are such that the marketplace will demand inclusion of those capabilities in receive devices,” One Media commented Tuesday in docket 16-142. “Commission support for inclusion of ATSC 3.0 tuners in the devices consumers use to watch television today would greatly facilitate and expedite the introduction and use of innovative new services.” Though migration to ATSC 3.0 “is a voluntary, optional deployment and it may be premature for the Commission to consider changes to the television tuner mandate adopted pursuant to the All Channel Receiver Act, to the extent that there is a marketplace failure or critical need to facilitate emergency warnings/information, the Commission can revisit the need to require 3.0 reception capacity in all receive devices,” said a footnote. Then-CEO David Smith pooh-poohed the tuner mandate when asked about it at November’s NAB Show New York (see 1611100032). “We live in a market-driven world,” said Smith, now executive chairman. “We’re sophisticated enough as marketers and delivery guys to figure out how to get the consumer to want our product,” without the need for a government-mandated ATSC 3.0 tuner requirement, he said then. Sinclair hasn't asked "in the course of this part of the proceeding for a tuner mandate," Mark Aitken, vice president-advanced technology, told us Thursday. "The light touch of government is the course that's being asked for," Aitken said. "This is a voluntary migration, a voluntary implementation, and so we see no reason for a mandate. But look, there are a lot of areas that are not addressed or are lightly addressed because one does not know how the market is going to proceed." The issue of tuner mandates "is only obliquely touched upon" in the comments "because of the nature of what's being asked for on the whole," said Aitken. ATSC 3.0 petitioners CTA, NAB, America’s Public TV Stations and the AWARN Alliance used their joint comments in the FCC rulemaking to argue against tuner mandates as "counterproductive and unnecessary.” (see 1705090056)
Disney still plans to launch an ESPN-branded subscription streaming service for live sports with BAMTech by year-end, but it’s “premature” to discuss what the service will look like, CEO Bob Iger said on an earnings call on which he took many questions about recent layoffs of on-air talent at ESPN. The cuts were “not all that significant when you consider that ESPN has 8,000 employees,” he said. The company eliminated 100 positions. Disney will continue “to be aggressive at buying live sports rights, which have not gotten cheaper, we understand, but they have gotten more valuable,” Iger said. “New entrants into the marketplace like Amazon and the talk of others like Facebook only prove the point that we just made, that live sports is important to new digital platforms, and live sports is important to anyone who is trying to reach consumers in the media business.” Disney paid $1 billion for 33 percent of BAMTech (see 1608100024). While “it's possible” that the ESPN-branded service will feature an “omnibus sports, multiple sports package” offering, “it's more likely that consumers will have an opportunity to buy the sports they want when they want it as well,” the CEO said. The ESPN layoffs point to automation as the way of the future for sports TV content, said The Diffusion Group Senior Adviser Joel Espelien in a blog post Tuesday. Pointing to the automation of FM radio DJ work, TDG said sports leagues are ahead of ESPN in providing highlight clips and short-form video in near-real time. It said BAMTech provides nearly real-time highlights from clips lifted from the traditional TV feed, while NFL.com does similarly during regular season games: "Automation is here to stay in the sports TV business, and more humans will see their jobs replaced by code."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk doubts the migration to autonomous driving will mean a “dramatic change” in a car’s “interior design,” he said on a Wednesday earnings call. Musk foresees autonomous vehicles having perhaps “an option where you have club seating instead of everyone facing forward, but I wouldn't call that radical,” he said. The “sensor hardware” and computing power required for “at least Level 4" autonomy on the Society of Automotive Engineers scale “has been in every Tesla produced since October of last year,” said Musk. “So it's a matter of upgrading the software, and we can reach Level 5. And if it does seem that we need to upgrade the compute power, it's designed to be easy to upgrade.”
Sinclair sees the recent FCC vote to restore the UHF discount (see 1704200048) as “a reasonable first step in bringing antiquated broadcast rules in line with the realities of today’s diverse media landscape,” CEO Chris Ripley said on a Wednesday earnings call. “Further modernization of the broadcast regulations will benefit consumers through economies of scale that allow broadcasters to invest more in local news and quality local programming," he said.
LAS VEGAS -- It’s conceivable that a TV maker would be able to use software updates, under the right conditions, to render a set ATSC 3.0-ready when it doesn’t have that capability out of the box, Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards, told us Tuesday at the NAB Show.
LAS VEGAS -- PBS hopes “soon” to begin airing high-dynamic-range programming, but in 1080p rather than in the 4K resolution commonly associated with HDR, Renard Jenkins, vice president-operations, production, media and distribution, told the Ultra HD Forum's "MasterClass" HDR workshop Saturday at the NAB Show. “When I say ‘soon,’ within the next 24 months is what we’re shooting for,” Jenkins told us.
LAS VEGAS -- UHD Alliance President Hanno Basse concedes he wishes his group’s Ultra HD Premium logo had wider market presence than it has today, he told an NAB Show supersession Monday on Ultra HD broadcasting’s coming of age. But Basse also is happy, as he sees it, that the logo certification program raised the industry’s performance ‘benchmark’ for Ultra HD TVs, Blu-ray players and content, he said.
Qualcomm executives accused Apple Wednesday of "actively inducing" its suppliers to underpay the royalties they owe Qualcomm on shipments of iPhones and other Apple products as retribution for their bitter and now-escalating court fight over cellular modem patent licensing. Qualcomm estimates the underpayments "in the aggregate" total about $1 billion, the executives said.
Tech groups generally hailed President Donald Trump’s executive order for its clause urging federal agencies to recommend “reforms to help ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.” The Entertainment Software Association thinks an “expansive H1-B visa program, free of abuse, will drive technological advancements and allow brilliant innovators from around the world to strengthen the growing American economy,” ESA said in a Wednesday statement. ESA encourages the White House and federal agencies “to emphasize these goals as they look at potential reform,” it said. “ESA will strongly advocate for policies that energize and expand growth opportunities for our nation’s world-leading technology sector.” CTA President Gary Shapiro thinks Trump “has rightfully brought attention to the abuses in the H-1B tech worker visa program, demonstrating the need for administrative and legislative reform to this important program,” he said in a Tuesday statement. “Our country needs a new approach to skilled immigration -- one based on merit and not a random lottery, an idea shared by President Trump. Congress must take the lead by passing reforms that keep our system fair, effective and efficient. There is bipartisan support to crack down on abusers who are outsourcing American jobs, but Congress must also advance meaningful reforms that recognize the critical role highly skilled foreign workers play in growing our economy, creating American jobs and maintaining our nation's competitiveness.” H1-B immigrants “turbocharge U.S. innovation and create jobs,” said Dean Garfield, CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, in a Tuesday statement. “We need to recognize the value H-1B employees contribute through their ingenuity to our innovation ecosystem -- they help innovate and grow America’s tech economy,” said Garfield. He cited estimates that half the 87 startup companies valued at more than $1 billion in the U.S. “were founded by at least one immigrant, many of whom first came to the country on H-1B visas, and each of these companies now employs on average 760 U.S. workers,” he said.
Netflix added 4.95 million new subscribers in Q1, the company said Monday in its Q1 letter to shareholders. That was slightly lower than analysts’ forecasts of 5.3 million net additions. In Q4, Netflix added 7.05 million subscribers and 6.74 million in Q1 a year earlier. In the U.S., Netflix added only 1.42 million subscribers in Q1, the letter said, down from 1.83 million added in Q4 and 2.23 million added in Q1 a year earlier, it said. As of Q1, 48.5 percent of Netflix subscriptions came from outside the U.S., up from 47.3 percent in Q4 and 42.4 percent from Q1 a year earlier, the company said. It bears watching Tuesday how the Q1 results will affect the company’s volatile stock price. Minutes before the company released results at 4:05 p.m. EDT Monday, Netflix shares closed 3 percent higher at $147.25. The company is seeing “a small but steady migration” to its four-stream Ultra HD “video quality tier” with high dynamic range, “which is our high end plan. That will keep revenue growth slightly above membership growth.” Netflix investors often ask the company about “ecosystem change” in the competitive environment, including the advent in the U.S. of “virtual MVPDs” like PlayStation Vue and DirecTV Now, the letter said. “We believe VMVPDs will likely be more directly competitive to existing MVPD services since they offer a subset of the same channels at $30-$60 per month, and may appeal to a segment of the population that doesn’t subscribe to a pay TV bundle.”