The FCC Media Bureau as expected issued a public notice Tuesday seeking comment on the multi-industry petition for authorization of the physical layer of ATSC 3.0 (see 1604200051). The petition asks the FCC to approve ATSC 3.0 as an “optional standard” for broadcasting and approve rule changes to allow simulcasting during the deployment of ATSC 3.0. Broadcasters told us at the NAB Show that the commission's seeking swift comment on the petition is a positive sign but not a guarantee of further FCC action. Comments are due May 26, replies June 27, said the Tuesday notice in Docket 16-142.
More than 103,000 people attended the NAB Show, NAB said in a news release Thursday. Preliminary attendance numbers show 103,012 people were registered attendees at the convention, a number extremely close to the 103,119 that attended the 2015 NAB Show, said the release. The 2016 attendance numbers include 26,893 international visitors from 187 countries, and 1,608 news media attendees.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) released recommended cybersecurity requirements for broadcast systems, software and services. In a statement Wednesday accompanying the set of recommendations, Andreas Schneider, chairman of the EBU Strategic Programme on Media Cybersecurity, which put together the guidelines, said between "the provision of Internet-based services and the convergence of traditional broadcast and information technology, the risk of cyber attacks targeting media companies is now -- more than ever before -- a real threat." Recommendations -- EBU R143 -- take into account guidelines from different European national security agencies and contributions from a French-language broadcasters' cybersecurity group chaired by TV5, EBU said. Recommendations include application of security safeguards in planning and designing systems, declarations by potential vendors that they can meet those safeguards, and assistance to broadcasters in defining minimal vendor system acceptance levels.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said he hopes the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remands media ownership rules to the agency with a specific deadline for action, rather than the 3rd Circuit seeking mediation for litigants to arrive at a timeline. Mediation is "a pathway to more delay," Pai wrote Wednesday in a tweet. Another Pai tweet, referring to our coverage of Tuesday's oral argument in the media ownership case (see 1604190041), referred to a judge's asking the FCC's lawyer what was taking the agency so long to act on ownership rules. That tweet linked to Pai's dissent from the 2014 order making it harder for TV stations to have joint sales agreements. Danilo Yanich, a professor whose research has shown JSAs and shared services agreements negatively affect stations' content, said such an effect "is not an abstraction." Yanich, director of the University of Delaware's master's program in urban affairs and public policy, said he was reacting to what he heard about the FCC not always challenging some broadcaster claims on JSAs and SSAs. "My research showed definitively that they do and the FCC and others referred to it in their decisions," Yanich emailed Wednesday of the arrangements' impacts on content.
KURS San Diego owner Quetzal Bilingual Communications will pay a $12,000 fine and get its captioned license renewal granted for four years instead of a full eight-year term for "apparently willfully and repeatedly" violating the rules requiring retention of required documentation in the AM station's public inspection file and for failing to file some biennial ownership reports, the FCC Media Bureau said in an order Tuesday. The violations, which the FCC called "serious," were exacerbated by Quetzal's "ignoring repeated staff requests to file a corrective amendment to the Application." Quetzal didn't comment.
NextVR took the wraps off a virtual reality (VR) production truck at NAB and will roll it out to cover live sports events and concerts beginning in July, it said Monday. The custom-built truck is designed to be “plug and play” and has the computing horsepower required to produce live VR content, said Ryan Sheridan, NextVR senior vice president-imaging and production technologies. The truck was designed to fit into a large cargo airplane to reach international markets, it said.
Disney/ABC TV Group is launching an affiliate initiative, Clearinghouse, aimed at helping affiliates with distribution of new services on TV Everywhere platforms and over-the-top providers, the company said Monday during the 2016 NAB Show. It said Clearinghouse will give affiliates the ability to opt in to pre-negotiated agreements for distribution of their live, linear feeds and potential ability for placement for local VOD distribution. Disney/ABC said it will roll out Clearinghouse in coming months, starting with DirecTV via the Watch ABC TV Everywhere service and with Sony Playstation Vue, with those deals being templates for future Clearinghouse offerings. Hearst TV will pilot the DirecTV Clearinghouse affiliate opt-in with its 14 local ABC stations with the rollout of Watch ABC TV Everywhere this summer, Disney/ABC said.
The FCC is giving an early glimpse at the emergency alert system (EAS) test reporting system (ETRS) to be launched later this year. In a public notice Monday, the Public Safety Bureau released some details on the ETRS format and features. The bureau said the ETRS' aim is increased EAS reliability through accurate charting of "what happened in a particular test," plus letting state alert originators and State Emergency Communication committees plan for how an alert will propagate for purposes of identifying problems like single points of failure or coverage gaps. The bureau said a PN announcing the ETRS launch will include a URL for ETRS registration. Monday's PN included screen captures and descriptions of the various ETRS pages and how they will work, walking through the identifier fields and EAS designations of the forms there. Form Two, for day-of-test reporting, has to be done within 24 hours of a nationwide EAS test or as required by the bureau, it said.
Pilot, formerly NAB Labs, will use the NAB Show to demo the industry's first prototype ATSC 3.0 receiver and “home gateway” that showcases the “breadth” of HTML-5-based “interactive environment” functionality enabled by the ATSC 3.0 standard, NAB said in a Friday announcement. The home gateway Pilot will demonstrate in Las Vegas this week combines an over-the-air TV tuner with Internet access, Wi-Fi connectivity and a “software environment that enables new types of user engagement,” it said. For the demo, among other content, Fox Sports will provide interactive “multi-view” programming clips, and Akamai will contribute “on-demand” content that’s “pre-loaded and stored for instant gateway access,” it said. Pilot itself will fashion a dedicated channel featuring the NHL’s Washington Capitals “that showcases zoned and targeted advertising as well as advanced emergency alerting capabilities,” it said. The NAB Show demonstration represents “early and important work that begins to show the promise” of ATSC 3.0, NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny said in a statement. “We’d like to get to a place where we can share our prototype and SDK with other developers and content providers to build out additional and even more compelling use cases,” he said of Pilot’s software development kit. “I hope you’ll see something like that happen as we proceed.”
The FCC's position that joint sales agreements involved in transactions aren't considered eligible for grandfathering is “contrary” to the will of Congress and the agency's own precedent, Media General and its proposed buyer Nexstar said in a joint filing in opposition to petitions to deny filed against the deal by Cox Communications, Dish Network and public interest groups. “The petitions filed in this proceeding should be dismissed or denied,” Nexstar and Media General said. Even if the FCC won't allow the JSAs involved in the deal to be grandfathered, the FCC should grant waivers allowing them to continue because they're “demonstrably in the public interest,” Nexstar and Media General said. “The efficiencies and economies that the merger will create will make possible investments in programming initiatives that are generally not economically feasible in the small and medium markets in which the combined company will operate." The broadcasters also rejected conditions on retransmission consent deals suggested by Dish and other opponents of the transaction. The conditions would “violate congressional intent by seeking to dictate the outcome of retransmission consent negotiations,” the combining companies said. The FCC should reject "petitioners' blatant attempts to end-run the rule-making process via this adjudicatory proceeding,” Nexstar and Media General said in the filing posted Friday in docket 16-57.