Fox Television Stations became the first owned and operated station group to join ATSC 3.0 alerting group the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance, AWARN said. “We support the Alliance’s broader mission to develop a framework for providing emergency information beyond the initial alert,” said Fox Executive Vice President-Engineering, Operations and Technology Richard Friedel in the release Thursday: “ATSC 3.0 will enable FOX Television Stations to use its local news assets as never before." AWARN said it will hold roundtable discussions with “TV news thought leaders” in the months ahead: “The goal is development of a voluntary framework for packaging a TV station’s news assets and using ATSC 3.0 to engage with viewers as their trusted information source across multiple devices.” Also last week, a 3.0 conference was held in Washington (see 1905310007).
Now that the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards is complete, “our goal is not to stand still, but to march thoughtfully and deliberately into the future,” ATSC President Madeleine Noland told the Next-Gen TV Conference Thursday. In her maiden policy speech before the group since taking over May 15, Noland said ATSC “in the near term” needs to be “laser-focused on the successful commercial deployment of ATSC 3.0 in the U.S.”
CTA recently finished canvassing consumers for a project in partnership with NAB to fashion an ATSC 3.0 certification logo that would adorn compliant TVs and other receivers when those products arrive at retail, Lesley Rohrbaugh, CTA director-research, told the ATSC Next-Gen TV Conference Thursday. She wouldn’t comment on which logos emerged as the biggest winners.
Broadcasters aren't sure precisely what the most profitable application for ATSC 3.0 will be, but the financial viability of the new standard isn't dependent on getting the tech into phone handsets, said industry officials from Fox, Nexstar and Tegna at the 2019 Next Gen TV Conference Thursday. Inclusion in mobile phones “would be nice to have, but none of us were counting on that when we made the investment,” said Tegna Senior Vice President-Strategy Ed Busby. NAB President Gordon Smith at the 2019 NAB Show expressed concern about smartphone makers including 3.0 tech (see 1904080066).
The biggest challenges to setting up an ATSC 3.0 station are legal rather than technical, said Pearl TV Engineer Dave Folsom Wednesday on a panel. Technical issues are “straightforward,” but programming agreements, sharing arrangements and rights issues generate an “immense amount of legal work” behind the scenes, said Folsom, who oversees Pearl's ATSC pilot project in Phoenix. “The legal piece is going to be by far the long pole in the tent,” said Sasha Javid, chief operating officer for the Spectrum Consortium, at the ASTC event.
The FCC will begin accepting applications Tuesday for TV stations to transition to ATSC 3.0, said a Media Bureau public notice Thursday. Though the commission’s ATSC 3.0 order was approved in November 2017, broadcasters have been waiting for the agency to create a form and process in the FCC’s license management system (LMS) for the transition.
Entravision's Esteban Lopez Blanco stepping down as chief strategy officer ... Fox News names from Viant Technology Jeff Collins as executive vice president-advertising sales ... Socket Mobile promotes Lynn Zhao to vice president-finance and administration, secretary and chief financial officer, also nominates her to board; David Dunlap retiring, continuing as consultant ... Akash Systems, RF satellite communications firm, hires industry veteran Fabrizio Montauti as vice president-radios.
The Eurovision Song Contest is testing ground for Next Generation Audio (NGA) in the MPEG-H format, said the European Broadcasting Union Thursday. Content is being made available to broadcasters for testing via the Eurovision FINE network. NGA is said to deliver an immersive aural experience that can be personalized to any home or portable device. Audio mixers can adjust the relative volumes of the performers, commentary and background ambience or switch between different languages,. Headphone users will be able to experience 3D binaural sound, and those using NGA-enabled sound bars can experience audio “on all sides," it said. The three standardized solutions for NGA are MPEG-H, Dolby AC-4 and DTS-UHD. MPEG-H is the designated ATSC 3.0 audio codec for South Korea, while AC-4 occupies that role for 3.0 in North America.
Macom Technology adds its board member Stephen Daly as CEO-president, succeeding John Croteau, resigned ... Returning to Entravision: Karl Alonso Meyer as chief revenue and product officer ... At CommScope, where Kevin Keefe rose to senior vice president-segment leader of network and cloud and professional services (see this section, May 16), he had succeeded Dan Whalen, who has left the company, a spokesperson tells us.
Sinclair executives think broadcasters made a strong case to DOJ on advertising and remain optimistic about ATSC 3.0, saying they also expect a bump from political ads starting later this year. The company's Q1 sales gained 9 percent to $722.1 million from the year-ago quarter and it expects by year-end to start feeling the political advertising boost from the 2020 election, said CEO Chris Ripley and others on Q1 call Wednesday. Ripley said the broadcaster’s recent deal with Disney for 21 regional sports networks was the largest in his company's history (see 1905030059), saying Sinclair is “diversifying its revenue mix.”