ATSC 3.0 Rollout Should Focus on Consumers and Advertisers, Panelists Say

Advertisers need more education about the timeline and capabilities of ATSC 3.0, and the consumer experience is especially important, said panelists at the NextGen TV Summit put on by SMPTE and the Society of Broadcast Engineers Thursday,

Broadcasters could have an 8 percent compound annual growth rate over the next decade with the embrace of 3.0 and the nonbroadcast revenue sources it includes, BIA Advisory Services projected. That's compared with a projected 3.8 percent growth without.

“Even if you turn it on, it's still going to take a while for enough consumers to buy the sets” to make the standard a viable platform for advertising, said BIA Chief Economist Mark Fratrik. The new standard will need close to 50 percent penetration in a market “to be interesting to advertisers,” said BIA Advisory Services Managing Director Rick Ducey. Advertisers “don't have a grounded understanding” of 3.0, Ducey said. ATSC 3.0 features such as geotargeting and attribution could cause money to move from digital advertising to broadcast ads, he said.

NAB has experimented with using data from Facebook to provide targeted content to 3.0 users, said Vice President-Advanced Technology So Vang. Multiple homes in a designated market area could receive different programming from the same channel, targeted based on interest and location, he said. Vang conceded targeting could raise privacy concerns.

Because 3.0 adoption is voluntary, broadcasters have to be especially concerned with the experience of consumers, said NAB Senior Vice President-Technology Lynn Claudy. Reception has to be “superlative” and the cost has to be kept down to ease adoption by “laggards,” Claudy said. “Cost is a huge issue. But if it doesn't work or isn't easy to use, people won't buy it.”

An ongoing FCC proceeding on relaxing restrictions for SFNs (see 1911130064) is “important” for deploying 3.0, said Skip Pizzi, NAB vice president-technology education and outreach. A paper will be presented at NAB 2020, he said. Rule changes easing the way for SFNs would be “great” for the new standard, said Osborn Engineering Director-Broadcast Communications Jeff Andrew. More use of SFNs could allow mobile users of 3.0 to take advantage of a contiguous broadcast as they travel, he said.

SFNs will increase the ability of TV stations to send signals to “all levels” of a house, said John Lynch, Electronics Research manager-broadband business development. Under ATSC 1.0, TV broadcasters are focused on getting their signals to exterior antennas, but 3.0 will need to be received by multiple devices inside the house, he said. That's challenging in dense, urban environments, he said.

Broadcasters deploying SFNs will need to be careful selecting their sites to avoid interference from ATSC 1.0 signals, Andrew said.

Announcements at CES of ATSC 3.0-ready devices mean the tech is moving out of “the conceptual stage,” said SpectrumCo Chief Operating Officer Sasha Javid. SpectrumCo can move away from signing broadcasters up to transition to the new standard and look to courting application developers, he said. The new standard “has to look good,” to attract consumers, said One Media Vice President-Technology and Strategy Michael Bouchard. “It has to be better than what they're used to seeing,” he said. Advances shouldn't stop there, said Public Media Group Chief Technology Officer Stacey Decker. If the best things that come out of 3.0 are improved picture and sound, "we've failed," he said.