Pearl’s Schelle Sees ‘Many More’ ATSC 3.0 Trials, Urges Alliances With TV Makers

Pearl already is “planning on launching many more” 3.0 market trials “in the next year to two years,” said Schelle. “You’re going to see a flywheel effect of launching markets to get the whole industry going” on 3.0 deployments, she said.

TV makers could, “in theory, start to push out 3.0 television sets now with a new chipset in it because that enables an application that also pulls in 1.0,” said Schelle. “Every TV set will always have a 1.0 chipset in it, so that application pulls up the 1.0 channels. If you have some triggering or other enablement in the TV set, you can do some things with that 1.0. You can start getting data on it.” TV makers can then “simply sell those as future-proofed, modernized-application TV sets,” she said.

There are ways for broadcasters to go to market with 3.0 “where we can monetize our current platform” in 1.0, “which means a lot because it’s going to take some time for 3.0 to scale,” said Schelle. “I mean, it took eight years for the iPhone to scale, 15 years for DVDs to scale. I don’t think we’re going to be smarter than Steve Jobs,” she said.

With all of 3.0's various “capabilities,” broadcasters “need to work more closely, and should and want to, with the CE manufacturers” than they did during the transition to 1.0 “to ensure that they’re enabling the features and functions and creating a standard framework that fits the business models we want to enable in the marketplace,” said Schelle. Interoperability will be crucial “between what we transmit and what is received,” she said.

TV makers are “not just interested in selling a set for one time only,” said Schelle. “They’ve got complicated operating systems. We’re going to have versioning happening with 3.0. We’ll want them to push out upgrades, so how do we make that happen? That’s not trivial and it’s expensive. So they’re going to be looking for recurring revenue streams.”

A challenge for broadcasters will be to “figure out” what they “need” TV makers to “put inside the TV sets,” said Schelle. “We’re very sensitive to the fact that they have to sell this at big-box retailers, so there needs to be margin in it for them.” There will be “things we’re going to ask for that aren’t necessarily something that they would have wanted to do, so we have to create a relationship with them.” Many of the challenges “we’re hoping to prove out in Phoenix,” but TV makers “are an incredibly important partner” in this “new world” of 3.0, she said.

To avoid bogging 3.0 down with the chicken-and-egg impasse that impeded past launches of other new technologies, “you have to recognize that this is a partnership” between broadcasters and TV makers, said Winston Caldwell, Fox Networks Group vice president-spectrum engineering and advanced engineering. “What fuels business is the establishment of these partnerships,” he said. “We absolutely are working with the industry partners -- CE, the manufacturers, and by the way, also all the people in between,” including “technology solution providers,” he said.

TV makers are looking for return on investment and so are getting ready to “welcome” 3.0 “with open arms,” said Eric Anderson, Verance senior vice president-chief partnership officer. “They’re looking for ROI in their legacy systems that they’ve invested in,” said Anderson, a former Samsung smart-TV executive. “They’re looking for ROI on anything new, but they’re always open to things that are open-market, more scalable, more viable and future-proof.”

Anderson thinks TV makers will “get on board” with 3.0, and that “they’ll invest” in it “like nobody’s business,” he said. TV makers are “part of the team and doing some great things,” he said. “They are motivated by consumer experience.” TV manufacturers have “a lot of interest here, and they’re looking for things that are promotable and marketable and can get the retailers engaged so they can start educating the consumer,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on educating consumers.”

Though “television is the business of today,” broadcasting to a TV set “is just one of the elements” of 3.0, said Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, who advocates a mobile-first strategy for 3.0 deployment. What Aitken finds the need to “continue harping on” is that broadcasters “think of themselves as televisioners,” he said. “I’m asking you to think of yourself as broadcasters.”

The TV aspects of 3.0 “are all exceptionally important,” but broadcasters “need to be thinking about our future three, five, seven and more years down the line,” said Aitken. “We’re going to have, I believe, thousands of different types of devices,” because now, with 3.0, broadcasters are “intersecting the world of IoT,” he said. “You can well expect there are going to be the emission of bits and the reception of bits that have absolutely nothing to do with video, that have absolutely nothing to do with audio.”

If broadcasters “are not thinking about that now, and the context of how we’re going to evolve, we’re going to be lost in five years when television is one of those many things that people are doing, but they’re doing so much more,” said Aitken. “If we’re not there, we’ve missed those opportunities.”

For other NAB Show news Tuesday: on wireless mics 1804100028, and on smart speakers and radio 1804090052.