The FCC Consumer Advisory Committee plans to discuss the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, incentive auction, consumer device security and spoofing and robocalling at its Friday meeting, said an agenda released Wednesday. Chairman Ajit Pai and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Deputy Chief Mark Stone will speak, it said. The meeting is 9 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room.

The ATSC 3.0 suite of standards will have “future extensibility” to support an upgrade to 8K resolution, ATSC President Mark Richer emailed us Tuesday through a spokesman. ATSC 3.0's H.265 video codec “can be extended to support delivery of 8K video,” Richer said. ATSC 3.0 also “incorporates a number of other mechanisms for future extensibility, including the “flexible boot strap signal” in the standard’s physical layer and the internet protocol layer, he said. “These and other features of 3.0 could be used to signal the presence and parameters of the 8K transmission to new receivers.” ATSC 3.0's framers for years have positioned 8K as “within the realm” of where the standard ultimately would “evolve to” (see 1404080061). As an issue, 8K jumped in importance at CES with the multitude of 8K TV prototypes showcased on the main show floor and analyst projections that 8K product would make it to market soon (see 1701090053).

The American TV Alliance, AT&T and Dish Network have “either misunderstood or ignored the very clear message” in the broadcast petition asking the FCC to approve the transition to ATSC 3.0, Sinclair told Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake in a meeting Friday, said an FCC ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 16-142. The petition didn't ask the FCC to require multichannel video programming distributors to carry any ATSC 3.0 signals, said Sinclair. Pay-TV transmission equipment and set-top boxes are incapable of carrying ATSC 3.0 signals, it said. “Broadcasters have no interest in delaying implementation of Next Generation TV until MVPDs are technically capable of carrying it,” said Sinclair. “Therefore, broadcasters are prepared to deliver their program streams to MVPDs in the current standard (ATSC 1.0), so as to maintain the operational status quo.” Because FCC approval wouldn't change what MVPDs are carrying, “there should be no change to the underlying carriage arrangement, be it must carry or retransmission consent,” the company said. It isn't in broadcasters' interest to demand carriage of programming streams that MVPDs can't carry, the broadcaster said. “In light of this, we can only conclude that ATVA, AT&T and DISH persist in their ruse to delay implementation of Next Generation TV because they see it as a competitive threat to their service offerings.” The FCC should not “broaden this very narrow, technical rulemaking into a comprehensive inquiry on competitive industry business relationships,” Sinclair said. “Rather, the FCC should limit the NPRM to questions about Next Generation TV technology and its broadcast implementation plan.” ATVA and AT&T didn't comment Wednesday. AT&T and Dish "appear to be seeking to further their own interests by asking the Commission to dictate terms and conditions of future retransmission consent agreements" in the guise of airing their concerns about ATSC 3.0, NAB said in a separate letter. "AT&T is a company with a market capitalization of more than $250 billion. The notion that any local broadcaster could force AT&T to do anything is comical." The pay-TV concern over ATSC 3.0 is "nothing more than an effort to accomplish in this proceeding what they could not accomplish in the Commission’s good faith negotiation proceeding earlier this year," NAB said. "They are asking the Commission to intervene in retransmission consent negotiations for their narrow, self-interested benefit."

The American Television Alliance isn’t trying to stop ATSC 3.0, the pay-TV group said in a blog post Monday responding to recent criticisms from NAB (see 1612090031). “We have to take the Ronald Reagan approach in this case: ‘Trust but verify.’” ATVA “is working with the FCC to weigh all of the significant factors, because that’s exactly what Americans deserve,” ATVA said. The new standard could lead to fees for consumers for buying new equipment, and “ATSC 3.0 carriage could be leveraged by broadcasters to extract yet even more retrans fees that could be passed on to consumers,” the post said. “Those concerns and the others impacting access and consumer cost burdens should all give us pause,” ATVA said. “We welcome a conversation with the NAB and federal regulators to address the concerns for consumers.”

The American Television Alliance is trying to make up for failures on the retransmission consent front by attempting to slow down broadcaster efforts (see 1612050048) to get ATSC 3.0 approved, said NAB Associate General Counsel Patrick McFadden in a blog post Friday. ATSC 3.0 will allow broadcasters to offer 4K TV for free, so ATVA's pay-TV members want to keep the FCC from approving the new broadcast standard, McFadden said. “Want to take advantage of your new 4K television? If ATVA can stall approval of Next Gen TV, you won’t have a free over-the-air option for ultra-high-definition programming,” McFadden said. “ATVA’s members will be the only game in town. That ought to keep the checks rolling in!” ATVA's requests for the FCC to issue a notice of inquiry instead of an NPRM are “transparently, embarrassingly anti-consumer,” NAB said. ATVA and ATSC didn't comment.

Efforts by pay-TV group American Television Alliance to get the FCC to commission a study or issue a notice of inquiry on ATSC 3.0 (see 1612050048) are attempts to delay the new standard “as long as possible,” NAB said in docket 16-142 Thursday. “While ATVA plainly has an interest in preventing viewers from receiving a competitive service, the Commission does not.” ATVA's arguments the FCC shouldn't allow broadcasters to use retransmission consent negotiations to encourage adoption of ATSC 3.0 don't raise any “legitimate” concerns, NAB said. If the FCC shares those concerns, they can be addressed through an NPRM rather than an NOI, NAB said. “Despite ATVA’s wishes, there is no reason for the Commission to delay any further.”

E.W. Scripps expects the FCC to “advance” an ATSC 3.0 NPRM in Q1, “setting the stage for early investment and development” of ATSC 3.0 products and services “starting early next year,” Brian Lawlor, senior vice president-broadcast, told a UBS investor conference Tuesday. That Scripps thinks the FCC will issue its ATSC 3.0 NPRM not by year-end but in early 2017 is consistent with a recent forecast from NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny at the NAB Show New York (see 1611100032). Scripps “remains probably one of the biggest proponents of the opportunities associated with ATSC 3.0,” Lawlor said. “We believe this new standard provides the foundation of a modern consumer experience and also sets the stage for things like targeted advertising and several other new business opportunities.” Lawlor thinks the industry is “in the third or fourth inning” in the progress it’s making on ATSC 3.0, he said in Q&A. “It will be important to watch over the next year or so, sort of, how that continues to march towards its destination of full commercial deployment.”

The FCC shouldn't impose any new burdens on multichannel video programming distributors as part of the transition to ATSC 3.0, AT&T and Dish Network said in a meeting with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and MB and Office of Engineering and Technology staff Thursday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-142. The new standard would require new equipment for MVPDs and consumers and could consume more bandwidth than the current standard, Dish and AT&T said. AT&T and DISH worry about "the significant capacity concerns associated with transitioning to the ATSC 3.0 standard," they said. The bandwidth required "to carry one ATSC 3.0 4K channel, for example, will consume substantially more bandwidth than a current HD channel, let alone the bandwidth that would be required to carry both an ATSC 3.0 4K signal and an ATSC 3.0 signal." they said. "Such increased carriage obligations would put at risk our ability to comply with the FCC’s must carry rules." The FCC should ensure broadcasters can't use the retransmission consent process to force MVPDs to carry the new standard, the pay-TV carriers said. Those same pay-TV companies also recently lobbied about such concerns as members of the American Television Alliance (see 1612050048).

The proposed transition to ATSC 3.0 isn't as voluntary as broadcasters claim, said the American Television Alliance in a meeting Wednesday with FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and his staff. The FCC's next step on ATSC 3.0 should be a notice of inquiry rather than NPRM, said ATVA, represented at the meeting by officials from AT&T, Charter Communications, Dish Network and the American Cable Association. Requiring MVPDs and customers to buy new equipment to receive ATSC 3.0 signals isn't voluntary, the ATVA said. The proposal would include negotiations over carrying ATSC 3.0 signals in retransmission consent negotiations, which MVPDs don't necessarily enter into on a voluntary basis, ATVA said. “Any station group with sufficient leverage to compel carriage of unwanted programming or to raise consumer prices by 40 percent per year possesses sufficient leverage to compel carriage of ATSC 3.0 signals as well.” An NOI would give the FCC time to study the proposal more in depth, the pay-TV group said in docket 16-142. “The Commission should want to understand whether the proposed transition would allow broadcasters to collect the benefits of the transition (e.g., new, monetizable services) while externalizing much of the associated costs to others.”

As framers strive to complete work on the suite of standards that will comprise ATSC 3.0, ATSC’s December newsletter, The Standard, ran a sidebar Thursday headlined “How Time Flies,” to mark the 20th anniversary Dec. 24 of FCC adoption in 1996 of the current ATSC 1.0 DTV system. Among the “fun facts from then and now” contained in the sidebar and assembled with the help of CTA: (1) The 2016 TV market was worth $20 billion in factory dollars and encompassed nearly 40 million in unit shipments, compared with 26 million units in 1996 worth $8.7 billion; (2) The average TV screen size of 39 inches in 2016 was 77 percent larger than the 22-inch average in 1996; (3) It took $1,999 to buy a 60-inch analog rear-projection TV in 1996, compared with $999 for a 60-inch digital flat-panel 4K TV in 2016.