ATSC 3.0 Needs Consumer, CE Industry Support: Broadcast Execs

ATSC 3.0's backers need to focus on attracting consumers, advertisers and consumer tech OEMs to the new technology, said executives from E.W. Scripps, Sinclair, Nexstar, and BitPath in a virtual panel Thursday. “A lot of these OEMs need to understand in a much deeper way what’s in it for them,” said Kerry Oslund, Scripps vice president-strategy and business development. If broadcasters don’t ensure that ATSC 3.0 early adopters see “a tangible difference,” 3.0 “will be 3DTV all over again.”

Broadcasters need to “leverage better content” to attract consumers, because enhanced picture quality won’t be sufficient, said Sinclair Senior Vice President-Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. ATSC 3.0 supporters need to work more closely in 2022 with CE companies such as Samsung that are already marketing TVs with 3.0 support, but also work to attract new companies to the technology such as Vizio, Oslund said. ATSC 3.0 landed support from a fourth TV brand when Hisense announced at CES 2022 that it will build integrated 3.0 tuners into all the sets in its top three tiers of 2022 product (see 2201040038). Aitken compared 3.0 to a mall filled with a variety of stores. “The object is to get people inside the mall.”

“We can screw this all up if we don’t do the right thing,” said Oslund. The first 10 million users will have big influence over whether non-early adopters become interested in the technology, he said. Broadcasters must deliver an enhanced experience to the first users, he said. “We have to keep moving the ball down the field methodically,” said Nexstar Chief Technology Officer Brett Jenkins, saying Nexstar aims to offer ATSC 3.0 to two-thirds of the U.S. in 2022.

ATSC 3.0 broadcasters won’t initially have the capacity for some of the large-scale datacasting applications envisioned, and will need to focus on low bandwidth uses, said BitPath CEO John Hane. That's likely providing spectrum for GPS location services, which he said gives the most “bang for the bit” and has a large existing market, he said. “We’re not at a standstill during the transition.” Trials of using 3.0 datacasting for location services will soon take place at Sinclair's WIAV-CD Washington, he said. Jenkins said the IoT also provides low bandwidth uses for broadcast spectrum. There “is a market for broadcast bits today,” Jenkins said.

Scripps has focused on the audience measurement aspects of 3.0 and believes addressable advertising and transactions that take place over the TV will be early revenue drivers for 3.0, Oslund said. He said ad dollars slated for digital commercials are already being “opened up” to 3.0 stations. ATSC 3.0 broadcasters could eventually offer paid subscription-based access to some content, such as higher picture quality versions of content, Hane said.

Broadcasters in markets that haven’t transitioned to 3.0 should strive to make sure spectrum capacity is sufficient to allow the shift to happen, said Aitken. Loading stations down with digital networks reduces that capacity, making the transition more difficult, he said. Broadcast companies are discussing a way to streamline the regulatory and contractual aspects of transitioning a market, Aitken said. The technical part of shifting a market to 3.0 can be accomplished in “a matter of hours, with proper foreplanning,” he said. Comments on a Further NPRM on some FCC requirements involved in the transition are due Feb. 11 (see 2111050049).