President Joe Biden’s executive order on promoting competitiveness in the U.S. economy (see 2107090010) directed Health and Human Services to propose rules by early November to create a category of affordable over-the-counter hearing aids for consumers with mild or moderate hearing loss. But CTA’s efforts to land approval of a certification mark identifying OTC hearing aids compliant with a 2017 industry performance standard appear to be running out of time at the Patent and Trademark Office. CTA is entitled by July 27 to request a fifth and final six-month deadline extension for filing a statement of use on the logo, but risks abandonment of the application if it produces no SOU by late January. SOUs, the last step in the registration process, describe how conditionally approved trademarks are being deployed commercially. PTO requires them to prevent applicants from hoarding trademarks, but CTA is hamstrung from filing the SOU because no categories of OTC hearing aids can exist before the Food and Drug Administration approves final rules creating them. The statutory deadline for proposing OTC rules under the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017 is nearly a year overdue. “Creating the rules for OTC hearing aids so consumers can benefit from lower-cost options is most important,” emailed Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards. CTA and its members created ANSI/CTA-2051, the Personal Sound Amplification Performance Criteria Standard, “to provide performance metrics and target values for OTC hearing aids that could work alongside and support FDA rules,” said Markwalter on Monday. “We will take up the need for a certification mark based on the CTA standard with our members as the rulemaking process unfolds.” Section 709 of the 2017 statute gave the FDA three years from date of enactment to propose OTC rules. The agency last summer blamed COVID-19 workloads for missing the Aug. 18, 2020, deadline, but said then that OTC hearing aids remained "a priority" (see 2008200024). Section 709 is silent on how long the rulemaking's notice and comment period should last, but requires the FDA to publish final rules creating the OTC category no later than 180 days after comments close.

ProSource added six Custom Integrator (CI) members and elevated five CI members to the Power membership level, bringing the number of new dealers to 11 for 2021, the buying group emailed Tuesday. New Q2 members contributed to a total new revenue of over $51 million year-to-date, it said. Elevated Power members are Architechnology Designs, Melville, New York; Brilliant AV, Costa Mesa, California; Comware AV, Southlake, Texas; Desert Valley Audio Video, Scottsdale, Arizona; and Xtend Technologies, Broadview Heights, Ohio. Two Power members joining ProSource are iconic.systems, Houston, and Paradyme, Sacramento. New CI members are Austin Home Systems, Austin; Define Audio Video, The Woodlands, Texas; Nuts About Hi-Fi, Silverdale, Washington; and The Audiohouse, Vero Beach, Florida. ProSource’s PRO, Power and CI levels give members a chance to grow within the organization, said CEO David Workman.

U.S. video distributors and Vizio announced the Go Addressable initiative Tuesday to promote integration of addressable TV functionality into advertising and marketing. Participants plan industry education and recommendations, while “remaining committed to protecting personal information,” said the group, whose members are Altice USA, Charter, Comcast, Cox Media, AT&T's DirecTV, Dish Media and Frontier. Its goal is to increase access to addressable inventory and reduce fragmentation in addressable TV ads by identifying best practices. “Addressable capabilities open up tremendous new opportunities for advertisers by marrying the reach of TV with the precision of audience targeting,” said Mike Dean, senior vice president-advanced advertising, ViacomCBS, which is delivering national addressable campaigns with distribution partners, “but the growth of addressable requires standards, scale and industry participation.” Interest in addressable TV ads “is strong” and Go Addressable can help resolve existing challenges and “pave the way forward for the industry, which is currently at an inflection point,” said Video Advertising Bureau CEO Sean Cunningham.

Vizio surpassed 11.2 million addressable TVs across the U.S. that enable “frame-accurate dynamic ad insertion,” it said Wednesday. It's a “significant milestone” for members of Project OAR, the addressable ad consortium that Vizio founded in 2018 with top TV media companies (see 1903130054), Vizio said. Vizio’s Inscape automatic content recognition technology is the keystone of the consortium’s Open Addressable Ready standard for targeted advertising via connected TVs.

After scrapping its spring Summit due to COVID-19, ProSource confirmed Tuesday it plans an in-person summer conference in San Antonio Aug. 2-6. The event will be at La Cantera Resort. Registration is due to begin by June 15.

ProSource Academy, a three-day, in-person basic training course for custom integrators, will launch in fall in Richmond, said the buying group Wednesday. Course work will include classroom learning, workbench practice and practical assessments, it said. ProSource Academy is designed to “jump-start new recruit employees with a fast-track to productivity,” said CEO David Workman. Course content includes construction basics for residential and commercial markets; safety; tools; cable types, wiring tools and terminations; design documents; rough-in, trim-out and retrofit basic procedures; and jobsite etiquette and daily procedures. ProSource Academy is differentiated from other industry programs by an additional scorecard for soft skills, demeanor and core values fit, it said. Candidates must complete prerequisite courses in ProSource University before attending the in-person academy.

Devices such as set-top boxes and gateways deployed globally using RDK open-source software tops 80 million, up from 60 million a year ago, RDK Management, the consortium that manages the software, said Wednesday. It said adopters include Comcast, Cox, Shaw, Rogers and Vodafone. It said more than 500 tech manufacturers are affiliated with RDK, up from 430 a year ago.

Azione Unlimited created an alliance to bring together custom electronics integrators with architects and designers. Announced at its spring meeting Thursday, the Azione Architects Designers Alliance is a community for design professionals and smart home integrators to connect, learn and work together, said Azione President Richard Glikes on an embargoed call Monday. Through the alliance, dealers will have access to a dynamic directory of AADA professionals, a “dream book” of smart home systems, an affinity program to bring technology into designers’ business, events and private messaging capability. Azione believes designers and architects “don’t understand technology, so part of it is to educate them,” said Glikes. “I’m sure they’re totally lost when it comes to 5G and don’t know that it doesn’t go through walls, and they’re going to need repeaters everywhere.” The group can educate designers “enough that they can hold a conversation about it,” he said. In turn, the hope is that relationships will lead to integrators participating in jobs designers get, he said. Participation will go toward designers' continuing education credits, Glikes said.

IFA 2021 is planning a “full-scale and real-life return” Sept. 3-7 to the exhibition halls and fairgrounds of Messe Berlin, after its “deliberately small-scale” physical-virtual hybrid version in 2020 (see 2009070002), said promoters Thursday. “With the world on course to emerge from the pandemic,” IFA’s organizers “are now seeing huge interest from brands, manufacturers and retailers across all industry sectors,” they said, while also lowering expectations. “The global vaccination effort is gaining huge momentum, while tough lockdowns are finally beginning to pay off -- which gives us confidence that we can invite the world to come to Berlin in September for IFA 2021,” said Executive Director Jens Heithecker. “With all our precautions to ensure everybody’s good health, we don’t expect IFA Berlin 2021 to set new records. However, the trend is clear: IFA Berlin is set for a full-scale comeback.” New for IFA 2021 is the Tech Up for Women conference, "designed by women for women," featuring "top female executives, researchers and experts," said promoters.

NAB is in "the enviable position of having cultivated top talent,” said Hearst Television President Jordan Wertlieb, chairman of NAB’s Joint Board of Directors, in a video message with the announcement that NAB President-CEO Gordon Smith was stepping at the end of 2021 and will be succeeded by Chief Operating Officer Curtis LeGeyt (see 2104070045).