Over the past six months, ATSC watchers have seen our infographic depiction of the 23 floors of the skyscraper – representing the key building blocks of the ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard – make great progress. As we usher in summer, I am pleased to report that the ATSC 3.0 skyscraper (what I like to think of as Next Gen TV built from the ground up) is nearing completion.

More than 200 people came to Washington to learn the latest on the ATSC 3.0 standard at the mid-May “Next Gen TV Conference: Powered by ATSC 3.0.” Attendees on hand came from South Korea, England, India, Spain, France, Canada, and the U.S.

“To quote one of my engineers, we learned more in a half-day working with ATSC 3.0 than in months of reading about it.”

– Pete Sockett, WRAL

Skip Pizzi received the 2017 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, the ATSC’s highest technical honor. Pizzi, NAB’s VP of Technology Education and Outreach, chairs the Specialist Group on ATSC 3.0 System Requirements and Program Management, which is responsible for ATSC 3.0 use cases and scenarios that are the basis for the system requirements that enabled the development of Technical Standards and Recommended Practices that make up ATSC 3.0.

In the Chat Room this month, THE STANDARD sat down with ATSC Board member Anne Schelle, Executive Director of Pearl TV, the business group representing nine of the largest broadcasting companies with more than 220 network-affiliated TV stations. She moderated a panel at the 2017 Next Gen TV Conference on consumer research about features and benefits of ATSC 3.0.