The Legal Advisor to Commissioner Olivia Trusty has been pitched by the Managing Director of Pearl TV, the group focused on commercializing and marketing NEXTGEN TV, on getting a NAB-proposed mandate to sunset ATSC 1.0 approved by the FCC.
Jessica Kinsey on July 8 held court with Anne Schelle, who has been at the forefront of pitching ATSC 3.0 and its NEXTGEN TV services for the last several years.
The bulk of the conversation focused on the need to end the current broadcast standard for U.S. television stations, stressing that while the broadcast industry has driven the transition to cover 76% of U.S. households and has worked closely with TV receiver manufacturers to enable the sale of 15 million ATSC 3.0 televisions, “all parts of the ecosystem … need the certainty of a set transition date and volume of devices to
focus attention on the last stage of the transition to ATSC 3.0.”
For Schelle, this stretches from CE manufacturers to developers of converter boxes, and to retailers and small-market broadcasters.
Schelle also used the opportunity to share what consumers will enjoy from ATSC 3.0, including high dynamic range (HDR) color, enhanced audio, and features such as “program re-start.”
Enhanced emergency information via applications, such as shelter information and maps, is another ATSC 3.0 feature shared with Kinsey.
Interestingly, Schelle shared with Trusty’s Legal Advisor a discussion about the efforts that Pearl and the broadcast industry have undertaken “so that an affordable converter box would be available to consumers at a price similar to what was set by NTIA during the transition to digital television (DTV) in 2008.”
As RBR+TVBR has reported, the set-top box opportunity came only after the COVID-19 pandemic derailed consumer spending assumptions made in 2019 by Pearl TV, at which time Schelle stated that U.S. television set owners organically replace their sets every six years. As such, the non-backwards compatible ATSC 3.0 standard would eventually be available in a majority of U.S. households by 2029 or 2030. That tune has significantly changed, with the STB element now in the mix.
Lastly, a sunset date for ATSC 1.0 by mandate is necessary, Schelle believes, in order to trigger the manufacture and sale” of low-cost STBs.
Sharing details of the meeting in an ex parte filing with the FCC is Covington and Burling’s Gerard Waldron.
Pearl TV sees the involvement of broadcast TV station owners Cox Media Group, Graham Media Group, Gray Media, Hearst Television, Nexstar Media Group, The E.W. Scripps Co., Sinclair Inc., and TEGNA.
