Gray Television’s Tallahassee ATSC 3.0 station is using Pearl TV’s Run3TV app, not Sinclair’s open-source broadcast application (see 2204260057)

The NAB Show 2022 drew 52,468 registered attendees, according to a preliminary NAB estimate Wednesday, the Las Vegas event's final day. That figure is in line with NAB's pre-show estimated attendance of about 50,000. "All numbers are based on pre-show and onsite registration and subject to an ongoing audit," said NAB. It estimated nearly 11,600 attendees came from outside the U.S., from 155 countries. NAB 2023 will be in Las Vegas April 15-19, said the association. The last in-person NAB Show, in 2019, had 91,460 registered attendees.

Many of the remaining filing types left out of the FCC’s transition from the consolidated database system (CDBS) to the licensing and management system (LMS) earlier this year (see 2201110077) will be moved by mid-May, said FCC Audio Division Chief Albert Shuldiner on a panel at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas Monday. A public notice announcing the transition is expected in the next few weeks, said Shuldiner, speaking via teleconference. Shuldiner also said similar work on the system used for reserving station call letters will be resolved toward the end of June or the start of July. The transition's final phase will involve forms for AM radio, he said. Communications attorneys should verify client contact information in the LMS, said Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman, also speaking via teleconference. Kreisman said the Media Bureau regularly sees LMS listings for licensees that have incorrect contact information for companies and their attorneys, which slows the license renewal process.

Multiple stations are using Sinclair's open-source broadcast app and it's being used to offer ATSC 3.0 viewers interactive content, said Rob Folliard, Gray Television senior vice president-government relations and distribution, on an NAB Show panel Tuesday. Folliard said Florida stations are using the app, and So Vang, One Media vice president-emerging technology, said it's running on every Sinclair 3.0 station. When the app is in use, “essentially a browser appears on your TV set,” Folliard said. U.S. broadcasters are looking to Europe for use cases and applications that can be adapted to 3.0 from Europe’s hybrid broadcast broadband TV (HbbTV) internet television standard, said Francesco Moretti, CEO international for Italy-based Fincons Group. HbbTV has close similarities to 3.0 and its IP backbone, so systems built for the European standard can be made to work with 3.0 in just a few days, said Kerry Oslund, E.W. Scripps vice president-strategy and business development. The app also enables broadcasters to collect data on viewers and to create “flash channels” offering specialized or geotargeted information for consumers that choose to use them, said Vang. Such channels could be used to convey weather warnings to a small segment of a broadcaster’s market, or offer a secondary camera view of live sports, said several broadcasters. Interoperability between the app and MVPDs is still being tested, Folliard said.

“It’s great to be back on a trade show floor, here with our community,” Sony Electronics President Neal Manowitz told an NAB Show news conference Sunday in his first Las Vegas appearance since taking the top Sony role in July when Mike Fasulo retired. “Since we last met here over three years ago, our industry has gone through a major, major change,” said Manowitz. “In many ways, the global pandemic has acted as an accelerant for great progress. We’ve seen an increased demand for high-quality content, a rapid expansion of streaming platforms and a shift to remote production workflows.”

Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle expects the NextGenTV logo for ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs to become “widely adopted,” she said on a prerecorded NAB Show video preview that debuted Monday on ATSC’s YouTube channel. “Once we get past 80% household penetration” on 3.0-compliant sets, “you’ll see some of the big-box retailers really jumping in” to promote and support the logo, Schelle told ATSC President Madeleine Noland in an interview on the video. “More and more consumers, with our advertising, are going in the store and they’re asking for NextGen. The more that happens, the more you’ll see the logo out there.” Schelle sees the industry “doubling down” on 3.0 marketing in 2022 and into 2023” she said. “It’s incredibly important that we get that message out there, to let consumers know. We need that consumer pull. That consumer pull drives retailers, talks to the TV manufacturers.” The industry needs to “get to scale as fast as we possibly can, because that then brings in the opportunities” for broadcasters' return on investment, said Schelle. “From there, I think you’ll see a lot of the activity around datacasting, which is a longer-term play, but it’s definitely a viable play,” she said. “We need to have a really successful television play in order to get to that datacasting play.”

Petitions to deny Standard General’s $8.6 billion purchase of Tegna and the related deal between Standard and Apollo Global management (see 2202220062) are due May 23 in docket 22-162, said a public notice Thursday. The deal involves a financing arrangement between Standard and Apollo and would leave Apollo with a nonvoting interest in Standard. Apollo already owns broadcaster Cox Media Group. Opposition filings in the proceeding are due June 7, replies June 17, the PN said. Comments on a foreign ownership request for the deal are due May 23, replies June 7, said a separate public notice. Teton Parent, a subsidiary of Apollo Global Management, is seeking FCC permission to be more than 25% foreign owned because 50% of Standard General's equity is controlled through investment funds in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands (see 2203110066).

The FCC should link the sunset of ATSC 3.0 multicasting arrangements to a station’s sunset of its ATSC 1.0 signal rather than imposing a five-year time limit, said NAB in calls with Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer and 10 other Media Bureau staffers March 25, said an ex parte filing Thursday, posted in ECFS Friday. “Any effort to freeze broadcasters” by restricting their content to what they aired under 1.0 “can only harm consumers,” NAB said. The FCC also should allow a station’s license to cover multicast streams that are broadcast only in 3.0 rather than simulcast under both standards, the filing said.

Sinclair plans to offer HDR content in the Technicolor format for its Bally Sports regional sports networks beginning in Q3, it said Thursday. It plans demonstrations at the NAB Show, it said. SL-HDR1, part of the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards, uses a backward-compatible approach, letting content producers deliver a single video stream to new and legacy TVs that's viewable as HDR on newer devices and standard dynamic range on legacy sets, it said. Sinclair's "no compromise" approach renders "the highest quality viewing experience possible today, supplementing events captured in HDR," said President-Technology Del Parks. "On the distribution side, it is the smart way to deliver SDR and HDR content efficiently in a single, universal transmission format.”

Big Tech platforms increasingly attract news consumers and advertisers to reach those audiences, but Big Tech needs to start fairly compensating local broadcasters for distributing that news content on their platforms, the Big Four broadcast affiliates told FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, per a docket 14-261 ex parte post Friday. They cited the lack of regulatory parity between broadcasters and Big Tech, such as political advertising rules that apply to broadcasters but not tech platforms. They also continued their advocacy for virtual MVPDs to be subject to retransmission consent rules the same as traditional MVPDs; they brought up similar arguments with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Brendan Carr last month (see 2203170056).