Broadcasters are expecting to talk ATSC 3.0, the future of AM radio in cars, and FCC regulatory fees at 2023’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, which kicks off Saturday. It's the second in-person show since the 2020 and 2021 iterations were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Broadcasters, attorneys and industry officials told us they expect the show to be the best attended since 2019. “I don't think there's any question that will be a lot more people than last year's show,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford.
A pilot project using ATSC 3.0 to disseminate advanced emergency information was launched in Washington, D.C., and Virginia’s Arlington and Fairfax counties by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and One Media 3.0. The program will provide “free, over-the-air redundancy” to emergency messaging currently sent by local governments via text, email, and social media, said a news release Tuesday. One Media’s parent company, Sinclair Broadcast, will also provide “rich” supplementary information to those messages using newsrooms at its local TV stations. The pilot program will initially use the facilities WIAV-CD Washington, D.C., and then migrate to ABC affiliate station WJLA-TV Washington, D.C, which has broader reach, the release said. “Rather than simple text crawls across a TV screen that a tornado is approaching, for example, NextGen Broadcast powers a much more robust signal that can render real time doppler radar, weather images, evacuation routes, shelter locations, flood maps -- and do it in multiple languages,” the release said. The pilot is an outgrowth of an Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance roundtable event in D.C. in December (see 2212080044, the release said. “Anyone in the WIAV viewing area who has a NextGen TV set or a NextGen set-top converter box should be able to receive the emergency messages from WIAV,” the release said. The program will eventually incorporate other devices and jurisdictions, the companies said.
A draft ATSC 3.0 order on sunsets for the substantially similar and A/322 physical layer requirements remains a moving target that's unlikely to be voted quickly, said FCC and industry officials (see 2303130068). The draft report and order circulated in February would extend the substantially similar and A/322 physical layer requirements indefinitely, but broadcasters said there should be a specified date for the requirements to end. Under current FCC rules, the substantially similar requirement would end in June without FCC action. The A/322 physical layer was to sunset in March, but that was temporarily stayed by the agency last month.
Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Todd Young, R-Ind., led 26 other senators in pressing the FCC to expedite rollout of the ATSC 3.0 Next Gen TV standard. The FCC is unlikely to vote soon on a draft report and order to extend the substantially similar and A/322 physical layer requirements indefinitely (see 2303130068). “The Next Gen TV standard is essential to the continued vitality and competitiveness of local television broadcasters’ free, local, and trusted service in our communities,” Schatz and the other senators said in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel released Wednesday. “More than 60% of Americans have access to Next Gen TV,” but streaming platforms have the potential to supplant broadcast in markets where broadcasters haven’t upgraded. That means “broadcasters’ proven, decades-long investment in local news content will be undermined and, most important, viewers will lose a competitive option that is available for free over the air,” the senators said: “A successful ATSC 3.0 transition should be a priority of the FCC going forward to ensure that local broadcasters can continue to best serve their communities as a trusted source of local news. Just as the FCC has successfully championed other innovative technologies like 5G, Wi-Fi, and the 2009 digital TV transition, we believe” the commission should “take an active role in addressing the complex -- but imminently solvable -- questions posed by the transition from ATSC 1.0” to 3.0. “We’ve received and are reviewing the letter,” an FCC spokesperson emailed. NAB hailed the letter, with Curtis LeGeyt saying the FCC’s “championing of ATSC 3.0 is critical to ensure a successful transition to this groundbreaking technology.”
Prolonging the ATSC 3.0 substantially similar requirement “risks making the backwards compatibility issue” worse because it will drag out the 3.0 transition, said NAB in a video conference with an aide to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks Friday, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Broadcasters are “hamstrung by capacity constraints” in the ATSC 3.0 transition, NAB said. “With multiple partners sharing a single ATSC 3.0 facility at the outset, broadcasters are exceedingly unlikely to have the available bandwidth to offer the compelling service enhancements needed to help spur consumer interest in ATSC 3.0,” NAB said. NAB “knows of no station that has switched its primary programming stream from HD to SD through more than 60 market launches” since ATSC 3.0 was approved more than five years ago, NAB said. The trade groups also urged the FCC to relax rules on broadcasters hosting one another's multicast channels during the transition. "No party -- even the notoriously consumer-friendly cable lobby -- has been able to provide a cogent articulation of any potential public interest harm lateral hosting could potentially cause," NAB said.
The “time has long since passed” to be concerned that broadcasters might degrade their ATSC 1.0 service to roll out 3.0, wrote BitPath CEO John Hane in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 16-142 Friday. A draft item on sunsetting some ATSC 3.0 requirements is on circulation on the 10th floor (see 2303130068). After four years of transition, “with stations in many dozens of markets providing well over 800 streams of programming in ATSC 3.0,” no one “has heard the slightest whimper of complaint of any actual service loss or degradation to viewers, or of any inconvenience to MVPDs,” Hane said. Broadcasters aren’t seeking to relax some rules on the transition to degrade their services, he said: “They need different transition rules to continue introducing and to improve NextGen TV service while continuing to preserve the greatest possible degree of legacy DTV service.”
An FCC task force on ATSC 3.0 should include a recommitment to using the standard to provide advanced emergency information, said Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance Executive Director John Lawson in a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr Monday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 15-94. The task force effort should also involve an external stakeholder dialogue on creating a voluntary industry plan to improve alerting, Lawson said. Lawson is a partner in a company working to produce alert-enabled set-top boxes and dongles, and the filing said the task force should also look into options for federal support of such devices. “These devices, working in tandem with broadcast stations, which have back-up generators and days of fuel, will be a lifeline for those impacted by disasters when cellular networks and/or the electric grid go down,” said the filing.
The FCC draft ATSC 3.0 report and order circulated to 10th-floor offices would extend the substantially similar and A/322 physical layer requirements indefinitely (see 2303030064), grant NAB requests on multicast hosting in part, and doesn’t take up the matter of a 3.0 task force, FCC and broadcast industry officials told us. The item is expected to lead to a lot of lobbying from industry and negotiating among commissioners, and isn’t expected to be voted soon, industry and FCC officials told us.
The FCC should continue to make progress on ATSC 3.0, support AM radio, and relax broadcast ownership rules, the Florida Association of Broadcasters said in ex parte calls with FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington March 1, according to nearly identical ex parte filings in docket 22-459. “Protecting and revitalizing the AM band serves the public interest by maintaining the public safety, news, and entertainment content provided by AM stations,” the filings said. “Ensuring the industry remains economically viable will allow broadcasters to continue serving the public interest by delivering local news, public safety information, and entertainment to their audiences.”
Extensions for the ATSC 3.0 substantially similar and A/322 physical layer sunsets shouldn’t be open-ended, said the NAB in an ex parte call with an aide to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, according to a filing posted in docket 16-142 Wednesday. In a separate letter to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the National Religious Broadcasters said continuing to require broadcasters to transmit in both 1.0 and 3.0 is “financially wasteful and unsustainable.” An open-ended extension of the substantially similar requirement would be "a dramatic shift from the Commission’s previous approach for no reason at all,” NAB said, arguing market incentives will keep broadcasters from transitioning in a way that leaves their viewers unable to receive their signals. Letting the market control the transition is how the FCC treats the wireless and tech industries, NAB said. “This process should not be different simply because a different bureau within the Commission is currently responsible for shepherding the transition.” An “overly prolonged transition would be a failed transition, and may prove fatal for OTA television broadcasting, particularly for smaller broadcasters,” said NRB, seconding NAB’s call for an FCC ATSC 3.0 task force (see 2302160056). For ATSC 3.0 multicast hosting, the agency should require only in limited circumstances that broadcasters submit showings that they aren’t using more capacity than they could transmit on their own, NAB said. Such showing should be required only in response to a commission inquiry or a complaint from a cable operator “that made a prima facie case the Commission deems worthy of a response,” the filing said. The full FCC temporarily stayed the sunset of the ATSC 3.0 A/322 physical layer requirement Monday, said an order. The requirement was to expire that day. A report and order on the physical layer sunset and the 3.0 substantially similar requirement was circulated to the 10th floor last week (see 2303030064), and the stay will last while that item is pending, Monday’s order said. NAB said in the ex parte filing that it doesn’t object to an extension for the physical layer standard if it isn’t open-ended. “We find the public interest is best served by preserving the status quo during this brief period of time in order to consider this open question,” said the order.