President’s Memo: Steady Progress

Posted on March 2, 2021 in ATSC News

ATSC welcomes Baltimore, Maryland and Syracuse and Buffalo, New York to the list of markets that are making final preparations to deliver NextGen TV services. February saw stations from these three U.S. markets filing FCC applications for commercial deployment of ATSC 3.0. Once these markets are launched, ATSC 3.0 will reach approximately 25% of U.S. viewers. Congratulations to the entire NextGen TV community for this steady, impressive progress!

I was honored to recently speak at a number of industry events, including America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) 2021 Public Media Summit, the Streaming Media Summit and SMPTE Chicago and Hollywood chapter meetings. As deployment continues apace, I sense that conversation shifting from learning about the NextGen TV system to how and when to deploy services and features. And I am especially excited to see the content creation community participating more and more in the NextGen TV conversation. It is the imagination of the creative community that will make this new palette of audio, video, captioning and interactivity come to life. How will their vision shape the NextGen TV experience for audiences everywhere?  Literally, we’ve given the creative community a new set of tools to explore their creativity to entertain and inform.

As the NextGen TV deployment unfolds in the U.S., we applaud the diligence with which other regions are exploring ATSC 3.0. The ATSC Brazil Implementation Team has been participating in a steady stream of meetings in support of Brazil’s TV 3.0 Call for Proposals process, describing the various components of ATSC 3.0 to stakeholders in Brazil. Simultaneously, the ATSC India Implementation Team is hosting a series of tutorials for engineers in India in support of the ATSC 3.0 Technical Demonstration being assembled in Delhi. I would like to thank all the participants in these conversations –ATSC representatives for their support and expertise, and the Brazilian and Indian engineers for their time, attention to detail and excellent questions.

We’re looking ahead to the spring, already making plans for the return of in-person events later in the year.  We expect more markets to join the growing list of NextGen TV broadcasters, and we look forward to sharing more details about international progress in the months to come.  Onward and upward!

Madeleine Noland, ATSC President

Posted in ATSC News