Five Little Rock TV stations began broadcasting in ATSC 3.0 on Wednesday. Stations are KATV (ABC), KTHV (CBS), KARK-TV (NBC), KLRT-TV (Fox), and KARZ-TV (MyNet). NextGenTV service is on the air in more than 25 U.S. cities. Antenna viewers can get instructions here on rescans.

Maryland TV stations broadcasting with NextGenTV are WMAR-TV (ABC), WBAL-TV (NBC), WBFF (Fox) and WNUV (CW), all Baltimore, and WMPT Annapolis and WMPB Baltimore (Maryland Public Television/MPT), they said Thursday. Antenna viewers can get instructions at fcc.gov/rescan on rescans.

The FCC seeks comment on Microsoft’s petition for reconsideration of an order on ATSC 3.0 distributed transmission systems, said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau public notice Wednesday. Filed in May, the petition urges the FCC to adopt an expedited waiver process instead of relaxing interference rules (see 2105240067). Oppositions are due in docket 20-74 at the FCC 15 days after the PN is published in the Federal Register, replies 10 days after that.

Howard University's WHUT (PBS) will be ATSC 3.0 host for local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates when NextGenTV signals go live in Washington starting late summer, said Pearl TV, which is managing the “broadcast collaborative” announced Wednesday. Washington is the ninth largest U.S. TV market “and posed a unique opportunity for commercial and public broadcasting to band together,” said Pearl. NextGenTV set suppliers LG, Samsung and Sony are among nearly two dozen “supporting organizations.”

ATSC 3.0's single frequency network capability can help stations “greatly enhance robust reception” of broadcast TV signals, reported the Pearl TV-led Phoenix Model Market project Tuesday. “Technical coordination” between two transmitters situated miles apart in metropolitan Phoenix was shown in tests “to dramatically enhance what a consumer would be expected to receive,” said Pearl Chief Technical Officer Dave Folsom. Transmission antenna patterns from the two locations were designed intentionally to “overlap each other,” he said. “The improvement in signal level and service margin translates into a marked improvement in the additive signal's signal-to-noise component. That means we can either improve reception or increase carriage bandwidth for more data.”

ATSC will return its Next Gen Broadcast Conference and annual member meeting to an in-person event Aug. 25-26 at the Reagan Building in Washington, blogged President Madeleine Noland Tuesday. “We’ll be moving to a different room in the vast complex and will also plan to livestream the event.” Doing the conference as a physical event with a virtual component cleared a big hurdle when Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser's (D) May 17 order lifted COVID-19 capacity restrictions on large business gatherings (see 2105240054).

ATSC 3.0 consortium BitPath and Sinclair-affiliated One Media and Cast.Era demoed possible use of 3.0 to enhance GPS accuracy, BitPath said. Called “enhanced GPS,” this allows positional accuracy within centimeters, BitPath said. “Using the high-power data transmission capacity of terrestrial broadcast stations, the reliability of eGPS positioning can be broadcast to an unlimited number of vehicles inside of the range of a licensed broadcast television station.” The technology allows “near real-time broadcasting of live images” that could provide additional information to first responders and enhance newsgathering, it said.

Emergency alerting officials and broadcasters see information-rich messaging and increased geotargeting as their biggest needs, and are looking to ATSC 3.0 as a possible solution, said speakers at the Advance Warning and Response Network’s virtual summit Tuesday. More authorities are including links and additional information in their alerts, and that’s information that can’t be “effectively delivered” using the current emergency alert system, said Wade Witmer, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Association's Integrated Public Alert Warning System. Last year, there was an almost 200% increase in use of wireless emergency alerts compared with 2019, and a 135% increase in EAS use, Witmer said. Nearly every panelist said richer information and more-targeted alerts could help reduce “milling,” a response to emergency alerts identified by social scientists wherein the public tends to search for additional information and confirm details before acting. “Milling is inevitable,” said Denis Gusty, branch chief with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Alerting officials said more-informative alerts from trusted sources could reduce the time gap between the public receiving emergency info and acting on it. “When you put that information in the first message, it speeds up the whole process,” said Rebecca Baudendistel, New York City Emergency Management Department director-public warning. Better-targeted alerts can cut down on alert fatigue, and make it less likely the public will opt out of receiving needed alerts, said National Weather Service Physical Scientist Michael Gerber. Technology that allows officials to limit alerting to only the most serious storms and emergency events similarly helps reduce alerting fatigue, Gerber said. ATSC 3.0 can carry more complete information, said WJLA-TV Washington meteorologist Veronica Johnson. WJLA owner Sinclair has been a big 3.0 backer. Johnson suggested 3.0 could allow viewers who want additional information about an emergency to watch it on one stream while allowing those unaffected by the emergency to continue watching their expected content. It could let emergency information be sent to gaming devices or connected cars, she said.

ATSC paused its initiative with Indian authorities to help boost deployment there of ATSC 3.0 broadcast services to mobile devices (see 2103290016) at the outbreak of that country’s COVID-19 crisis, President Madeleine Noland told us. “When it’s safe to do so, we’ll pick up where we left off,” she said. The situation on the ground in India is “heartbreaking,” said Noland Monday. “All we can do is patiently stand aside, recognizing that other things are much, much, much more important in that country right now than this project. We’re looking forward to the day when things are better and different.” The project’s “apparatus” is firmly “in place, ready to be fired up again when it becomes feasible and appropriate” to do so, she said. ATSC’s NAB Show 2021 “main” messaging in October (see report, May 25 issue) will be that NextGenTV “has reached critical mass in terms of commercial deployment,” said Noland. “This thing is for real.” She sees 3.0 “as a platform,” and “it’s going to evolve as the marketplace evolves.” Standards organizations like ATSC need to “stay ahead of the curve, and that’s what we’re doing,” she said.

The FCC order relaxing interference rules for distributed transmission systems was a “misstep” and “includes significant factual errors, and contradictions,” said Microsoft in a petition for reconsideration of the ATSC 3.0-friendly change posted in docket 20-74 Monday. Adopt an expedited waiver process for broadcaster use of DTS that creates signal spillover exceeding "a minimal amount," Microsoft asked. The expedited waiver proposal was endorsed by then-Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and fellow Democrat Geoffrey Starks when the DTS order was approved 3-2 in January 2021 (see 2101190078), in one of the final acts under Ajit Pai. That FCC “impermissibly overlooked the substantial impacts to TVWS [TV white spaces] from the significantly increased range of DTS signals even without interference protection,” said Microsoft: Allowing “significantly more spillover by DTS transmitters outside of a broadcaster’s service area would greatly increase interference to TVWS operations."