President’s Memo: The Momentum Continues

Posted on February 3, 2022 in ATSC News

Welcome to the first issue of The STANDARD in the new year and hold onto your hats, as 2022 is shaping up to be another exciting year for ATSC 3.0 and NEXTGEN TV! We have been to CES 2022 and are in the planning stages for NAB in April as well as ATSC’s very own NextGen Broadcast Conference in June.

The ATSC Board of Directors unanimously elected Richard Friedel as our new Chair for 2022, Richard is the former Executive Vice President of Engineering, Operations and Technology at Fox Television Stations, where he drove their ATSC 3.0 efforts. His previous role as Executive VP Technology & Broadcast Strategy for 21st Century Fox saw him shepherd long-term technology strategy and day-to-day operations for the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles and the Fox Houston Technical Operations Center, home of Fox Sports’ regional networks, and provide technical support for fourteen regional production centers. Before joining Fox, Richard served in various positions at Capital Cities/ABC, NBC News, and local television stations.

We also welcomed back to the board Brett Jenkins, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Nexstar Media and, serving his first term, Fred Engel, Chief Technology Officer at PBS North Carolina. If you missed meeting Fred last month, he is also “someone you should know” and was featured in that column of THE STANDARD last month.

As the saying goes, the show must go on, and CES 2022 sure did! ATSC was out front in the Grand Lobby as all attendees walked through the entrance to the show. Our mission was to provide a “Retail Storefront” highlighting the four consumer tech companies who are endorsing NEXTGEN TV: LG, Samsung, Sony, and a new entrant, Hisense. We also showcased the deployments across the U.S. and internationally and provided attendees with a comprehensive leave-behind piece for more information, which you can view here.

For those that were unable to join us in-person, we went live on the first day of the show with ATSC’s first YouTube video – CES 2022: A Look Ahead from ATSC! If you missed the live debut, please visit our YouTube channel for VOD viewing. We would like to thank our Platinum Sponsors – Gaian Solutions, Pearl TV, and Sinclair Broadcast Group – for ensuring our booth was a success. See you at CES 2023!

Now, we are turning our attention to the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 24-27, 2022. ATSC will be anchoring the “Future of Delivery” area of the West Hall – a spectacular new exhibition area at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We will exhibit in a larger space than at CES, so we are excited to be able to expand and enhance our Retail Storefront concept. We are currently finalizing our booth design and will be sharing opportunities for sponsorships and events within the ATSC booth shortly.

Even a bit further out on the horizon, but coming up fast, is the ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference. Recently, we announced that we will be hosting the event in Detroit, Michigan from June 7-9, 2022. The conference will take place at the Westin Book Cadillac with a strolling dinner and private event at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.

There are many exciting international developments including Jamaica’s recent announcement that they will be deploying ATSC 3.0 nationwide in 2023. You can read more about Jamaica in our December 2021 article here. We continue to keep Jamaica at the forefront of our international outreach as we will be putting together a Road Show and Bootcamp for Jamaican broadcasters in mid-2022. There are exciting relationships being developed and the leaders making this happen are thrilled to welcome an ATSC contingent to their island. Another development on the international front is the announcement that the Fórum Sistema Brasileiro TV Digital Terrestre (SBTVD Forum) has recommended to the Brazilian government the selection of several technologies proposed by ATSC for Brazil’s next-generation terrestrial digital television standard. You can read the entire news story here. ATSC would like to give a big congratulations to the ATSC Brazil Implementation Team and their Chair and Vice Chair, Skip Pizzi and Dr. Paul Hearty, for their diligence, efforts, and leadership on this project. We are hopeful that more good news will be forthcoming out of Brazil.

In addition to the conferences I have already mentioned, ATSC continues to be invited to present at various domestic and international conferences. I spoke at CES, TVOT Live, and have an upcoming presentation to the National Religious Broadcasters conference in Nashville in March. There are many more opportunities on the horizon and we look forward to sharing them all with you in the future.

2022 promises to be another banner year for ATSC 3.0 and NEXTGEN TV deployments across the U.S. and internationally. Recently, Green Bay, Wisconsin went live with 3.0 services. We anticipate reaching nearly 75% of all American households by mid-2022!

And lastly, we here at ATSC could not do our work without the support of all our members and sponsors. Please accept our gratitude for your membership, your interest and contributions to our Technology and Specialist Groups, Implementation Teams and Planning Teams, and for the sponsorships that help us spread the word about ATSC 3.0. We look forward to having you join us for what promises to be an exciting 2022!

Madeleine Noland, ATSC President

Posted in ATSC News