The FCC received Office of Management and Budget OK for three years on information collection requirements for Form 2100, what it calls a next-generation TV license application involving ATSC 3.0. The commission's changes are taking effect Tuesday, says that day's Federal Register. The Media Bureau will change the form and relevant schedules for TV stations "to implement the Next Gen TV licensing process and collect the required information," the FCC says: "The form will be revised to establish the streamlined 'one-step' licensing process for Next Gen TV applicants," with staff using the license application to determine compliance with rules and whether the public interest would be served by approval of such a license. The first 3.0 stations went on air with experimental licenses due to the lack of license application for next-gen TV, said Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle at the NAB Show (see 1804080002). In November, commissioners approved 3-2 the 3.0 rules. Another two FCC information collections also are effective Tuesday (see 1807160052).

Time isn't a luxury broadcasters have on ATSC 3.0, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in remarks to broadcasters at the Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit in Ohio. “If you are a broadcaster sitting on the fence on whether to implement ATSC 3.0, you should be worried that the fence may no longer exist if you take too long to decide,” he said Wednesday, adding that tech companies also are competing for advertisers and consumers. O’Rielly made a similar point at ATSC’s conference last month (see 1805240056). He praised 3.0 capabilities such as targeted ad insertion and mobile television, and the work of broadcasters. “Saying this will only fuel my Internet and Twitter trolls, who suggest that I epitomize regulatory capture, but you have earned the right to be thanked,” he said. O’Rielly praised T-Mobile efforts to aid some broadcasters in the post-incentive auction repacking process. “They have been doing some heavy lifting that has taken problems off the commission’s plate,” O’Rielly said. “Hopefully, others will follow their lead.” O’Rielly said lack of tower crews and other repacking resources could create big problems for the repacking starting in phase three. O’Rielly also touted the draft kidvid NPRM, the result of an effort he's leading (see 1806260067). “As an attempt to bring a balanced, thoughtful reform approach forward, the commission recently made public an effort to breathe additional flexibility into our rules,” O’Rielly said. He understands a small portion of youth lack access to options other than broadcasting, he said. Broadcasters need to weigh in, he said. “My plea to you and to every interested party is to file substantive comments.”

Media measurement company Data Plus Math signed a “preferred partner agreement” with Verance to deploy Verance’s Aspect audio watermark technology as an “analytics and attribution measurement” tool for stations adopting ATSC 3.0, they said Wednesday. This “will introduce a Next Gen TV compliant multi-touch, multi-TV approach to attribution and help local programmers better analyze and monetize their inventory,” they said.

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly met Thursday with Cox Communications about machine-to-machine applications, internet access for kids, smart cities and wireless infrastructure builds, he tweeted during a Phoenix trip. He also said he visited the Phoenix Model Market, a marketwide collaboration on promoting ATSC 3.0 implementation.

Sinclair will be “lighting up Dallas this summer” with ATSC 3.0 market trials through the Spectrum Co. consortium it shares with American Tower, Cunningham Broadcasting, Nexstar and Univision (see 1804080002), said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley on a Wednesday earnings call. “We are putting the finishing touches” on building a “construct for cooperation with other broadcasters” in Dallas, and participants in the Pearl TV-led Phoenix model market project are doing the same, he said, without mentioning Pearl by name. “That’s the main hurdle right now, is how do people cooperate within each market so that we can channel-share, and some stations can go to 3.0 and others can stay in 1.0.” Ripley reported “good progress has been made on that front.” The need to channel-share was “the primary reason that Phoenix was done, and we’re tackling that same issue within Spectrum Co.” in Dallas, he said. “I think in the back half of the year, you’re going to start seeing people execute on those transitions.” Pearl didn't comment.

Day Two of ATSC’s Next-Gen TV Conference will mark 25 years to the day of the formation of HDTV’s Grand Alliance that became the basis of the current A/53 ATSC 1.0 DTV broadcast system, said an ATSC agenda item. Details of the commemoration weren’t disclosed. The alliance, formed officially on May 24, 1993, settled on an approach that allowed both progressive and interlaced scanning, but encouraged a rapid transition to all-progressive, according to coverage by our predecessor newsletter Television Digest With Consumer Electronics and by Communications Daily. According to the Digest, the alliance included the partnership of General Instrument and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which advocated both progressive and interlaced systems; the Advanced TV Research Consortium of NBC, Philips, Sarnoff Labs, Thomson and Compression Labs (interlaced only); and the team of Zenith and AT&T (progressive only). The alliance had its critics, said the Digest. Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, blasted the alliance as a “terrible mistake” because it would isolate the U.S. from global standards-setting on DTV. Attempts to reach Negroponte for comment on whether he stands by his criticisms 25 years later were unsuccessful.

The FCC should exempt noncommercial educational stations from ATSC 3.0 simulcasting rules, representatives from America’s Public Television Stations, CPB and PBS told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai Thursday, said a filing posted Friday in docket 16-142. “Without such an exemption, the simulcasting mandate will preclude many public television stations from pursuing a transition to ATSC 3.0 and delivering its many public service benefits to viewers.” Public TV (PTV) stations derive income from viewer donations, and are largely licensed to entities such as universities that have no incentive to leave viewers behind by ceasing to transmit in a standard they can’t receive, the groups said. Simulcasting is “uniquely challenging” for NCEs because the must-carry rules for such stations “are not connected to DMA boundaries,” the filing said of designated market areas. “Regulatory certainty of an exemption will ensure that PTV stations can invest confidently in their futures.”

Broadcasters’ procedural objections to the American Television Alliance’s petition for reconsideration against the FCC ATSC 3.0 order aren’t valid (see 1804130044), said MVPD groups in replies posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Though broadcasters argued the ATVA arguments are a rehashing of points already raised during the 3.0 rulemaking, NCTA disagreed. The FCC never specifically sought comment on whether it should sunset “substantially similar” provisions in five years even if no broadcasters had yet started transmitting in 3.0, NCTA said. The petition is legitimate because the 3.0 order contains “material error,” in that it doesn’t sufficiently address MVPD concerns about issues like retransmission consent, ATVA said. Broadcasters using retrans negotiations to pressure MVPDs into carriage of 3.0 is a harm that “can hardly be considered speculative,” said NTCA and WTA. “The Rural Associations agree with the Petitioners that the Commission should reconsider its decision not to order that ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals be negotiated separately."

Broadcasters and allies asked the FCC to leave as-is rules for the ATSC 3.0 switch, denying pay-TV requests to change requirements in what stations contend is a bid to alter retransmission consent and intellectual property precedent. American Television Alliance and NCTA petitions for reconsideration are seen unlikely to lead to changes to rules OK'd 3-2 allowing what stations call next-generation TV (see 1803060053). Meredith Corp. and Pearl TV were the only replies to the recon petitions in docket 16-142 Friday afternoon, with a filing later coming from NAB plus one from public broadcast groups. Also posted Friday, WTA reported telling Media Bureau officials it supports the ATVA and NCTA requests and the commission should at least "continue to monitor the market to make sure the transition is voluntary for distributors." NAB called the petitions for recons "airings of grievances," with it and Pearl saying no new concerns were raised. Broadcasters said the agency responded to opposition to a five-year sunset of simulcasting, concerns about allowing low-power TV flash cuts and to other criticism. NCTA asks the regulator to require reasonable and nondiscriminatory licensing of patents associated, NAB noted. The FCC didn't require such RAND licensing for 1.0 and the latest order noted ATSC requires such practices and the agency will "'monitor how the marketplace handles patent royalties for essential patents,'" the broadcaster association said. The 3.0 order "shows how a light regulatory touch can support innovation," said Pearl, with members including Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Graham Media, Hearst Television, Meredith, Nexstar, Raycom and Tegna. Petitioners try to "lure the Government into increased regulation," and "re-hash arguments," the consortium said. On LPTV, it said of the rules, "rather than limiting them from participating in ATSC 3.0 altogether, it instead makes them excellent candidates for early transition as so-called 'lighthouse stations.'" Meredith said the switchover including for LPTV "is one of a handful of economic terms that will be decided in an arms’ length" retrans negotiations. With petitioner replies to opposition due April 23, NCTA declined additional comment, and ATVA declined to comment.

The ATSC 3.0 receiver “guidelines work” that CTA is conducting “is an open standards project,” Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards, emailed us. “The working group, under our Video Systems Committee, develops recommended practices for ATSC 3.0 receivers (mirroring ATSC’s work on ATSC 3.0),” he said. “The recommended practices are being developed as a suite.” Documents addressing the physical layer, logical layer, video and audio are complete, and “others are in process,” he said. “We do not speculate on the schedule” for when work on the entire suite will be finished, he said. Markwalter, an ATSC board member, said in the fall the “pace of work” was accelerating on the CTA-CEB32 “family” of recommended 3.0 receiver practices that would consist of 11 parts plus an overview that will be “easily mapped” to the suite of 3.0 standards (see 1709050038). CTA “has an associated group, where they’re writing recommendations” for 3.0 receivers, said Winston Caldwell, Fox Networks Group vice president-spectrum engineering and advanced engineering, at an NAB Show workshop on maximizing 3.0's future business potential (see 1804100048). “We’ve been involved there just to make sure that those receivers support a lot of the capabilities that we’re interested in.”