Triveni Digital will offer ATSC 3.0 starter kits for low-power TV stations at the April 23 LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Repack Rally, the company said in a news release: They are "designed to bring broadcasters up to speed with the new broadcast television standard and ecosystem in a real-world environment." The kits include a quality assurance system, ROUTE/MMTP encoder and live source simulator. ”LPTV stations will play a big role in ATSC 3.0," said Triveni Vice President-Sales and Marketing Ralph Bachofen. "Whether an LPTV plans to share frequency as a light house or provide advanced local services, such as hyperlocal ads or emergency alert messaging, ATSC 3.0 will bring new life to broadcast.” Triveni Chief Science Officer Rich Chernock chairs ATSC's Technology Group 3, which is supervising the framing of ATSC 3.0.
Ultra HD video's main delivery will be via streaming, at least through 2020, due to "broadcaster foot-dragging and falling disc sales," nScreenMedia said in a blog post Sunday. It said UHD Blu-ray discs are selling well for now, but the long-term trajectory of disc sales is downward as more people opt for subscription VOD over ownership. It said Japan is alone in having a firm timetable for converting to UHD broadcasts, and there's no hard deadline in the U.S. for the rollout of ATSC 3.0, which includes UHD support. Also, major cable companies haven't said anything about supporting UHD in their traditional cable delivery. The firm said strong UHD TV set sales and the growing number of 25 Mbps broadband connections mean the number of people able to watch UHD is growing quickly, but people will still mostly watch HD video in 2020.
Small cable operators continue to push the FCC for rules restricting forced bundling. The practice, plus related negotiating practices, "causes substantial problems in various ways for operations, particularly for capacity-constrained systems and resource-constrained operators," the American Cable Association told Media Bureau staffers and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. The filing said several ACA members cited individual challenges their systems faced with forced bundling requirements by programmers. ACA told the FCC that if the agency lets broadcasters transition to the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard, it should require separate retransmission consent negotiations for a station's ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals so 3.0 negotiations "are based upon the value that carrying such ATSC 3.0 signal brings to operators and their subscribers rather than the importance of the continued carriage of ATSC 1.0." Among those at the meetings were ACA Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman, Horizon Cable Vice President Susan Daniel, Frankfort (Kentucky) Plant Board Assistant General Manager-Cable/Telecom John Higginbotham, Atlantic Broadband General Counsel Leslie Brown, TDS Telecom regulatory counsel Sara Cole and Liberty Puerto Rico General Counsel John Conrad, plus Media Bureau staff including acting Chief Michelle Carey. ACA repeatedly has criticized forced bundling practices by programmers (see 1608290048).
The FCC's planned review of the national TV ownership cap could influence how broadcasters react to the expected restoration of the UHF discount, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker at a Media Institute lunch Monday. Commissioners tentatively are to vote April 20 on bringing back the discount (see 1703300066), Though analysts initially thought the ownership cap could be pushed high enough to make some very large combinations possible, Ryvicker said she no longer believes that's likely. Companies could begin announcing deals the day after the FCC’s April 20 meeting, Ryvicker said. Numerous large broadcast entities are expected to seek acquisitions, she said, including Cox, Tegna and Scripps. “Everybody’s a buyer,” Ryvicker said, though she said Tribune is an exception, and is seen as looking to sell. With the NAB Show the week after the April FCC meeting, more dealmaking than usual could happen there, she said. Though investors see ATSC 3.0 as a positive concept, there’s too much uncertainty about the future of the new standard for it to do much to move the needle on broadcast investment, Ryvicker told us. It’s not clear if plans for broadcasters to begin offering up wireless spectrum will materialize, she said. Though Ryvicker said the Wall Street view of broadcast regulation under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been “positive,” she said unrealistic expectations for the Trump administration's pro-business policies and the recent failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act made investors leery. Investors are anxious about the growth of streaming media hurting broadcasting, and about ratings showing general decline in TV viewership and increased time shifted viewing, she said. Broadcasting is considered dependent on live viewership, she said: “That’s why there’s a perception that broadcast is dying.” Though spending on political advertisements during the presidential campaign was down, Ryvicker expects those numbers to rebound in 2018, saying the low spending in 2016 was a onetime fluke. Recent negative attention about the placement of online ads could be a boon to broadcast advertising, she said. Total audience measurement for broadcast would help compete with pay-TV and online, Ryvicker said.
Analysts, consumer groups and think tanks see the retransmission consent market as plainly uncompetitive, but the FCC is "the only significant player who doesn't seem to get that the only 'f' word associated with the retrans market ... is 'failure' rather than 'free,'" wrote Mediacom General Counsel Joseph Young in a docket 10-71 filing posted Thursday. Mediacom said it has made these arguments ad nauseam, but the start of the Trump administration marks "time to beat our heads against the wall yet again." It said Chairman Ajit Pai shouldn't be led by an ideological deregulation drive but see the data that points to market failure -- with the smoking gun being that cord-cutting trends and ratings declines haven't slowed the growth of retrans fees. The cable operator said the agency shouldn't worsen the power balance with broadcasters by easing ownership restrictions or giving them a "free hand" in ATSC 3.0 deployment since lack of oversight could lead to millions of viewers unable to watch local channels or to skyrocketing pay-TV bills. NAB in a statement said, “This is more of the same silliness from Mediacom. NAB agrees with the FCC’s conclusion that no new retrans rules are needed. We urge the Commission to reject the anti-competitive musings of Mediacom and allow broadcasters the freedom to innovate for viewers’ benefit.”
There’s a “business upside” to ATSC 3.0 emergency-alerting capabilities, and the AWARN Alliance plans to explore that at an “executive breakfast presentation” April 26 during the NAB Show, the alliance said in a Wednesday announcement. Using ATSC 3.0, AWARN (Advanced Warning and Response Network) is “transforming the alerting landscape as man-made and natural disasters reveal the urgent need for new warning systems,” said the alliance. “AWARN is using the same features that will drive new revenue streams: geo-targeting, personalization, interactivity, deep indoor and mobile reception, and device wake up.”
The agreement between Sinclair’s One Media 3.0 and chipmaker Saankhya Labs, announced Tuesday, to “fast-track” development of ATSC 3.0 receiver chipsets is expected to bear market-ready “mobile-first” components “in less than a year,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us. The software-defined-radio chipsets Saankhya will design and build under the “technical leads” of Sinclair and One Media 3.0 will be “multi-standard” components,” Aitken said. “It’s not just a chip for ATSC 3.0.” It’s a chip that “quite literally” will support “all the broadcast standards globally,” due to “its nature as a software-defined chipset,” he said. “There are parts of the world where we see opportunities for ATSC 3.0 to flourish, and so the support of multiple standards is important.” The chipsets also will be designed out of the gate for “a mobile-first implementation,” Aitken said. “The chip is being designed based upon the requirements of handheld and portable devices that have very tight power management, space management kind of constraints.” By comparison, “the chips that Samsung and LG are in hot pursuit of are chips that were designed for television sets and set-top boxes, where there are not these kinds of constraints,” he said.
Advocates for unlicensed use of TV white spaces are concerned ATSC 3.0 could be a future threat, but supporters of the new standard say no such threat exists and the FCC shouldn’t put unlicensed use of spectrum ahead of broadcast licensees. “The idea that you would constrain broadcasting to protect unlicensed service is anathema to the purpose of the FCC,” said Pillsbury Winthrop communications attorney John Hane, who represents broadcasters pushing for the new standard.
“NextGen TV Hub” will be the name of an exhibit planned for next month’s NAB Show to showcase ATSC 3.0 “benefits and capabilities,” ATSC said in a Wednesday announcement. A highlight of the exhibit in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center will be beaming Ultra HD programming from KLSV-LD Las Vegas on Nevada's Black Mountain to an LG 4K TV with a built-in ATSC 3.0 tuner, it said. ATSC is teaming with CTA and NAB to sponsor the exhibit, which also will have the support of LG, Pearl TV, Sinclair and others, the announcement said. The NAB Show exhibit floor opens April 24 for a four-day run.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is seen as receptive to a petition from NAB (see 1703170055) for changes to the post-incentive auction repacking plan, but any changes to the repacking timeline are likely to face considerable pushback from industry, said broadcast officials and analysts in interviews. Though broadcasters repeatedly praised Pai, his previous positions in their favor -- on ATSC 3.0, and his perceived plans to roll back media ownership rules -- haven’t faced strong opposition from a competing industry. On the repacking, NAB’s requests for a looser timeline are diametrically opposed to calls for a faster transition from wireless providers such as T-Mobile, said Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics: “They need that spectrum tomorrow!”