Wider Broadcaster Mobile DTV Adoption Sought, After Some Frustrated at Pace

That campaign is centered around an Audiovox device in about a dozen major markets where there’s heavy promotion of that product and the mobile DTV service, said Anne Schelle, who headed the Open Mobile Video Coalition until it became a part of NAB in December. “There’s been conversation about” the amount of time it’s taken to start mobile DTV, “but this is not that long” to begin the equivalent of a new national network and technology and to get CE retailers to participate, said Schelle, senior adviser to NAB, in an interview. “If you look at the time it’s taken to do any other similar technology, this is kind of in that realm.” Dyle last month began the promotion, said the Mobile Content Venture, a joint venture of Belo Corp. and Gannett, which are combining, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Hearst Television, Media General, which is combining with Young Broadcasting, Meredith Corp., the Washington Post Co.’s Post-Newsweek Stations and Raycom Media, as well as Fox, Ion and NBC (http://bit.ly/1idFnJF).

Members of another DTV alliance have been “through a lot of the mergers and acquisitions that have been taking place” in the broadcasting industry recently, said Vice President-Policy and Innovation Sam Matheny of Capitol Broadcasting, which is a member of that Mobile 500 coalition but not of Dyle. Mobile 500 is in “transition mode” as the “leadership” that Fisher Communications had provided is now being done by Hubbard, he said at the NAB event. Sinclair is buying Fisher. The alliance has almost 500 stations as members, and recently had new officers installed from Capitol, LIN, Sinclair and other companies, said Matheny. “Medium-sized broadcast companies that are very involved in mobile and committed to its success” are part of the group, he said. “If you're not mobile, you're standing still -- and now is no time to stand still.”

Stations’ rollout of mobile DTV isn’t done, said Schelle in an interview. “They're in the top markets right now, and I think you'll see expansion as you see success in these markets, very similar to how cellular rolled out.” She expects to “see penetration in these markets” -- which she described as big and fielding NFL teams, and where Dyle operates now -- before smaller markets take the plunge. “It does take time,” and did with such technologies as LTE and Wi-Fi, said Schelle. Mobile DTV could be a “stepping stone” to broadcasters’ moving to the forthcoming Advanced Television Systems Committee’s 3.0 standard, she said. “It would just be a question of migration. You've seen that done time over time in other technologies."

Just as mobile DTV backers said it’s up to broadcasters to implement the service, the head of ATSC said the timing of the move to 3.0 is up to that industry. The committee is working with its broadcaster, CE manufacturer and other members “to just move the technology forward” on a time frame that works for industry, said ATSC President Mark Richer in an interview. The goal is for ATSC 3.0 to be “extremely flexible, and that flexibility will enable a variety of transition paths to take,” he said. “Where broadcasters want to go, and how they get there” will determine the transition, said Richer. The goal is to release an ATSC candidate standard in 2015, with a final standard the next year, he said.

Mobile DTV encompasses broadcasting and the Internet, said advocates of the service at the NAB event held with the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (http://bit.ly/HP8hlg, http://bit.ly/18b06Ky). Besides live TV, it’s a DVR and VOD, said Matheny. He and others compared it to the pay-TV industry’s TV Everywhere product in which multichannel video programming distributor subscribers authenticate themselves to view cable programming online. In Minneapolis, with four stations in mobile DTV, Matheny said it’s increased viewing time 31 minutes weekly, with much of that in the afternoon, while in Seattle, with several stations in the standard, about 20 minutes was added and prime time is popular. In Raleigh, N.C., about 90 percent of those using mobile DTV view it at home, 50 percent at work and 30 percent in vehicles, while 20 percent take their devices with them to get the signals in other markets, he said.

"If broadcasters will take the time and do an analysis of the cost to reach that audience by putting in a mobile DTV transmitter” at the station instead of streaming content, it “pays for itself like that,” said Matheny, snapping his finger in a Q-and-A with NAB’s executive vice president Kaplan. Streaming “comes with substantial costs,” said Matheny. “The mobile digital television pays for itself.” Participants in Raleigh gave no survey responses that they “were less than someone being satisfied, which we found very encouraging, especially given the limited channels that we're running,” said Matheny. The top complaints were insufficient channels and battery life, he said. “You read into that that people want lots of content and they want to watch longer.” There “shouldn’t be all this hand-wringing about it” about whether to transmit in mobile DTV, he said. “There is more risk in not doing it than the small amount of money you're going to pay to get on the air” in that standard.

More broadcasters need to transmit in mobile DTV for the industry to move to the equivalent of a version 2.0 transmission, receive-antenna and CE device chip, said consultant John Lawson, who’s working on the service, in an interview. “If we don’t get more broadcasters firing up mobile DTV, we may never get to it,” said the Convergent Services head of v2. “Everybody is waiting for someone else to make the next move.” To Lawson, who advised on the development of mobile DTV emergency alert system warnings called M-EAS and previously ran the Association of Public Television Stations, the lag in getting stations into mobile DTV has “been a source of frustration” that more “aren’t willing to take the leap,” he said.

"The payoffs could be large, but more broadcasters have to take a chance on innovation, because if you don’t innovate, you die,” said Lawson. Mobile DTV could be a “bridge” to ATSC 3.0, he said. That signal propagation and reception haven’t improved further for mobile DTV isn’t a technology issue but is a business issue of whether there is enough “volume” to support research and development efforts to make improvements, he said. The end of the “implosion” of broadcast advertising around the great recession “has really given way to a sense of complacency” among some in the industry who say “'let’s wait until ATSC 3.0 until we do mobile,'” said Lawson. BIA/Kelsey expects mobile-ad spending to grow to 7.1 percent of U.S. local advertising spending in 2017 from 2.1 percent this year, said Managing Director Rick Ducey at the event. Mobile video usage is growing more quickly than other types of video, he said of the “crazy” growth.

"The good news” about the mobile DTV rollout “is it is entirely up to the broadcast industry” about how fast it will “light up” stations, said panelist Salil Dalvi, co-general manager of the Mobile Content Venture. The rollout will go quickly if stations light up quickly, and slowly if that’s how they proceed, he said in response to our question. “It’s as simple as that.”