Live over-the-top viewing hours will surpass those of traditional broadcast TV within five years, but bandwidth limitations are challenging quality of service and quality of experience, said a Thursday report by Level 3, Streaming Media and Unisphere Research. Half of survey respondents -- 500 media industry professionals -- expect year-on-year OTT revenue growth of 30-50 percent in 2017. Higher frame rates (HFR) and high dynamic range are in the spotlight for the industry this year, with almost half of respondents offering or planning to offer both options, while 20 percent are focused only on HFR delivery, such as 1080p for sports content, said the report.

OpticalTel fit the definition of an MVPD and its contract with Dish required it to get Sun Broadcasting approval before retransmitting WXCW Naples, Florida, to its customers, Dish said in an application for review of the Media Bureau's March order dismissing WXCW's OpticalTel complaint (see 1703200037). The order followed an OpticalTel petition for reconsideration of a 2016 order that said OpticalTel had retransmitted WXCW's signal without retrans consent. The Dish application, posted Thursday in docket 14-258, said OpticalTel wasn't a direct broadcast satellite reseller but a TV receive-only satellite program distributor and the erroneous determination it was a DBS reseller spawned the bureau's error in deciding Dish is the one that should have sought retransmission consent from Sun. Dish said its contract with OpticalTel was clear that Dish provided transport-only services. Dish also asked the FCC to clarify that the determination whether a satellite carrier is providing retransmission and thus acting as an MVPD "is fact-dependent and should be made on the facts of each case." OpticalTel outside counsel Art Harding of Garvey Schubert said the Dish application is deficient procedurally, since Dish never participated in the proceeding except when ordered by the FCC, and deficient substantively, since Dish never disputed the contract OpticalTel entered into evidence and the contract was clear that OpticalTel was a reseller of Dish's signal. The full commission could issue an order either affirming or reversing the Media Bureau decision, with that order then appealable to circuit court, Harding said.

The FCC should repeal its main studio rule, said Garvey Schubert’s Media, Telecom and Technology Group in a petition for rulemaking filed Wednesday. The rule requires broadcasters to maintain a main studio within their community of license. “Adoption of this proposal will not reduce or remove broadcasters’ ‘bedrock obligation’ to serve the needs and interests of their local communities,” the petition said. Rolling back the rule will let stations save money with smaller offices and less staff, the petition said. With the elimination of all physical components of the broadcast public file, there’s no longer a reason for the main studio rule, the petition said. Eliminating the rule could “greatly reduce the regulatory and economic burden that broadcasters face, especially small stations that are expending their very limited resources to comply with minimum operation and staffing requirements, without harming the relationship that these stations have with their communities,” the petition said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly (see 1703280079) and Media Bureau staff (see 1610130055) expressed support in the past for eliminating the rule.

The FCC could “re-scope” the licenses of broadcasters involved in ATSC 3.0 simulcasting instead of issuing separate licenses, NAB said in a meeting with acting Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey and Media Bureau staff April 12, according to an ex parte filing at the commission. The re-scoped license would include a broadcaster’s transmissions on a simulcast partner’s spectrum while excluding the simulcasting partner’s transmissions on the first broadcaster’s spectrum, NAB said. “An approach along these lines could provide both certainty and flexibility,” NAB said.

An FCC draft on allowing online-only job recruitment to satisfy equal employment opportunity requirements (see 1704070075) is generally endorsed by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, with a few conditions, MMTC told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in a call Tuesday, according to an FCC filing posted Thursday in docket 16-410. Internet recruitment doesn’t remove the need for networking, MMTC said. “Licensees should not be allowed to fulfill their EEO obligations by simply posting openings online and doing no other recruitment,” the filing said. “Internet recruitment should be viewed as a supplement to, but not a substitute for, the maintenance of recruitment relationships with local sources, including educational institutions as well as job training programs.” The FCC also should take up numerous EEO policy issues that have been pending since 2004, MMTC said. “April 24, 2017 will mark the 50th Anniversary of the filing of the United Church of Christ’s Petition for Rulemaking to establish what became the EEO Rule,” MMTC said. “The Commission should mark this occasion by pledging to complete the Docket 98-204 proceeding by the close of 2017, thereby improving EEO enforcement by targeting discriminators, putting an end to the punishing of non-discriminating broadcasters who recruit primarily by word of mouth but from highly diverse workforces, and embracing EEO best practices.”

As the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards “nears completion,” the next-generation broadcast system will take center stage on the NAB Show exhibit floor, where “multiple companies will demonstrate breakthrough ATSC 3.0 hardware and software,” ATSC said in a Thursday announcement. Highlights will include a BBC R&D demonstration of the hybrid log-gamma high dynamic range format developed with NHK of Japan. On the show floor, BBC will showcase HLG’s picture quality “in the context” of its inclusion in the ATSC A/341 video document and the ITU’s BT.2100 recommendation, ATSC said. BBC also will highlight the benefits of wide color gamut and how HDR and wide color can be interoperable with standard dynamic range BT.709 color, it said. In another NAB Show highlight, Dolby Labs “will offer a hands-on demonstration of live AC-4 encoding and decoding,” as specified in the A/342 ATSC 3.0 audio document, ATSC said. “Visitors will be able to adjust encoding and decoding parameters, watch the system automatically adapt, and hear the results in real time,” it said. “Dolby experts will be on hand to answer questions regarding Dolby Atmos, legacy and new workflows, and deployment of AC-4 and ATSC 3.0.” The NAB Show exhibit floor opens April 24 at the Las Vegas Convention Center for a four-day run.

The FCC Media Bureau extended the deadline for La Plata County, Colorado, to file in opposition to the application for review filed jointly by Hearst and Nexstar of La Plata’s request for market modification for five TV stations. The county requested the extension due to receiving the application for review late. The deadline for opposition filings is extended two weeks, until May 1, said a bureau order Thursday in docket 16-366. “The Commission does not routinely grant extensions of time, but we are persuaded that a brief extension of time is appropriate in this case to ensure that the parties have adequate time to address the issues.”

Triveni Digital will offer ATSC 3.0 starter kits for low-power TV stations at the April 23 LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Repack Rally, the company said in a news release: They are "designed to bring broadcasters up to speed with the new broadcast television standard and ecosystem in a real-world environment." The kits include a quality assurance system, ROUTE/MMTP encoder and live source simulator. ”LPTV stations will play a big role in ATSC 3.0," said Triveni Vice President-Sales and Marketing Ralph Bachofen. "Whether an LPTV plans to share frequency as a light house or provide advanced local services, such as hyperlocal ads or emergency alert messaging, ATSC 3.0 will bring new life to broadcast.” Triveni Chief Science Officer Rich Chernock chairs ATSC's Technology Group 3, which is supervising the framing of ATSC 3.0.

NASA will produce a live 4K video stream from the International Space Station (ISS) during NAB April 26, it announced. The panel is co-produced by NAB Show, NASA and Amazon Web Services, the agency said Tuesday. The live feed from 250 miles above Earth will be encoded using AWS Elemental software on ISS and at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The 10:30 a.m. PDT event will be available for multiscreen viewing in live 4K and down-converted HD video, NASA said.

No one can deny TV is changing and that services like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon are driving “much of this change,” Digital UK CEO Jonathan Thompson said in prepared remarks for delivery Wednesday before a Broadcasting Press Guild media briefing in London. “But new technology alone cannot dictate the future of television,” said Thompson, whose company runs the Freeview over-the-air TV platform that reaches 19 million U.K. homes. “If it did, we’d all be watching 3D TV.” The industry needs to be “a bit more skeptical about some of the big claims we hear about OTT leading to the death of broadcast television,” he said of over-the-top services. “We should be less willing as an industry to adopt the Silicon Valley view of the world based on flimsy evidence and half-truths. We should be wary of big claims when coupled with a lack of transparency over audience figures and instead focus on real world evidence of what viewers are actually doing. Even the much talked about millennials who have fully embraced the on-demand world are still watching more live TV than anything else. All the evidence points to a blend of viewing behaviours and technologies for the foreseeable future and we should be planning content strategies and networks which will meet that need.”