LAS VEGAS -- Global interoperability and spectrum efficiency need to be the biggest cornerstones of any next-generation broadcast system if terrestrial broadcasters want to retake valuable competitive ground lost to wireless carriers, streaming services and other content-delivery rivals, various speakers said Sunday at the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference. Though terrestrial Ultra HD and 3D TV are on the list of desired features of the next-gen system, they're nowhere as high on the priority scale as other attributes like mobility or interactivity, or so it appeared from the many speakers who gave presentations at the conference.

Requirements for video descriptions from emergency on-screen crawls haven’t changed much from what was in an FCC draft that has been circulating for a month (CD March 11 p3), said agency and industry officials. They said in interviews Thursday that the draft Media Bureau order and further NPRM hasn’t been controversial among the agency’s members, and a public-interest official said it may be approved largely intact. He said he hopes the further notice on Internet Protocol programming sent by MVPDs to connected devices in a pay-TV household gets a section added on accessibility of emergency crawls to those with both sight and hearing impairments.

The NAB is talking up the mobile DTV technology that will be on display at its annual show in Las Vegas in April. It spotlighted a half-dozen exhibitors -- Decontis, DTVInteractive, Dyle, Mobile Emergency Alert System, the Mobile500 Alliance and Rentrak -- that will be displaying mobile DTV wares at the show’s Mobile DTV Pavilion. “Mobile TV holds promise for consumers and broadcasters as video on-the-go becomes increasingly in demand and data plan consumption charges become more expensive for consumers,” NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan said.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee approved the specifications for a mobile emergency alert system to be delivered using the ATSC A/153 Mobile Digital TV standard. The M-EAS enhancements to the standard will provide capabilities for delivering multimedia alerts “to mobile DTV-equipped cellphones, tablets, laptops, netbooks and in-car navigation systems,” ATSC said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YIqeD3). Using mobile DTV for emergency alerting “requires no additional spectrum and is an additional use of existing TV transmitters and towers,” it said. M-EAS is backwards compatible and will not affect the performance of mobile TV products already in consumer hands, it said. Partners in the M-EAS effort said that completion of the standardization will lead to the implementation of the system and commercialization of the equipment (CD Feb 26 p8).

With the U.S. “barreling toward” all-Internet Protocol networks, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said he worries that infrastructure isn’t up to the IP challenge. Networks may be insufficient to accommodate huge increases in video-content streaming and other changes, he said at an American Cable Association conference. That the FCC hasn’t closed its docket to apply Title II common-carrier telecom rules to broadband means “a proposed rulemaking is hanging over your heads,” which “alone slows down progress,” Heller told executives of small- and mid-size cable operators in Washington Wednesday.

DirecTV and Dish Network said they may have to discontinue The Weather Channel application if they find they can’t comply with requirements imposed in the proceeding on emergency accessibility programming rules. It would be truly unfortunate if the adopted rules “were so onerous that they resulted in the unavailability of emergency weather alerts for everyone,” they said in a joint ex parte filing in docket 12-107 (http://bit.ly/10i0obU). The application “does not have text-to-speech or aural notification capabilities,” Dish said. The companies also said the national feed they receive from The Weather Channel “does not itself include any textual emergency alert information that would be subject to the rules being considered in this proceeding.” The American Cable Association urged the commission to give the requested relief for operators of hybrid digital/analog and all-analog systems. There are some cable systems “that have yet to transition away from an all-analog platform,” ACA said in its ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/YhdNxK). Operators of these systems either have plans to offer some digital services in the future, or no plans to transition “because they see no return on such an investment,” it said. “Absent some significant change in the market or in their regulatory burdens, most of these all-analog systems will likely shut down in the future.” The FCC should refrain from requiring or precluding any particular technology for audio transcription, NAB said in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/X4bOmK). The commission shouldn’t require on-site station voiceover announcements for a variety of reasons, including “timely dissemination of emergency information” and “configuration of stations that may be operated in ‘cluster’ or ‘hub’ operations,” it said.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued forfeiture orders to licensees of three radio stations and a notice of apparent liability to an antenna structure owner for violating commission rules. Entertainment Media Trust was fined $8,500 for its failure to operate KZQZ(AM), St. Louis within the terms of its station authorization and to conduct required annual equipment performance measurements for the station, the bureau said (http://bit.ly/13I6Xcn). The bureau also said EMT’s public inspection files for KZQZ and KQQZ(AM), DeSoto, Mo., weren’t made available. The bureau said Inter-city Christian Youth Program must pay a $1,750 fine for failing to install and maintain an operational emergency alert system equipment at its low power FM station KCYP-LP in Mission, Texas (http://bit.ly/12xz7Yf). The bureau also said Paulino Bernal, owner of antenna structure number 1066001 in Tulia, Texas, is apparently liable for a $6,000 fine for not notifying the commission about a change in ownership information for the structure (http://bit.ly/13JqPvX).

Cybersecurity measures are needed from government agencies originating emergency alert system messages in a newer Web format, and from all participants in the EAS system, after last month’s unauthorized access sparked fake warnings, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official said. Manny Centeno from FEMA’s integrated public alert and warning system office showed participants in the agency’s webinar on IPAWS and that new format, Common Alerting Protocol, the FCC’s Feb. 13 “urgent advisory” to EAS participants. That warning on CAP was issued privately by commission staffers to associations that distributed them to EAS participants -- which include all radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors (CD Feb 14 p8) . State and other officials involved in CAP recommended counterparts in other states start testing that format, and said shorter wireless emergency alerts on mobile devices won’t supplant EAS but complement it.

The government and broadcasters are working to improve the delivery and efficiency of emergency alert system messages using wireless capabilities, broadcasters and some FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said Monday during an emergency alert system meeting in Washington. The meeting was organized by NAB and the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations. Making the system more effective will involve improving cybersecurity and keeping pace with advancements in broadcast technology, they said.

The focus of the FCC in March is once again on public safety communications, with a rulemaking likely to force the agency to revisit whether to again impose backup power requirements on carriers. An NPRM for the March 20 meeting, which circulated late Wednesday, raises numerous questions following up on the commission’s January derecho report (CD Jan 11 p3).