Industry News

The NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance (NVISA), a worldwide coalition of developers and manufacturers working to accelerate the industry’s evolution toward next-generation broadcast and OTT television systems, is expanding through the addition of four new members and the formation of three new specialized working groups.

With the addition of DigiCAP as the alliance’s newest regular member, the alliance now represents the full spectrum of ATSC 3.0 middleware solution providers that have joined forces toward making the vision of NextGen TV into reality. Expanding its membership of public broadcasters across the U.S., NVISA is pleased to welcome New Mexico PBS, Kentucky Educational Television, and UNC-TV Public Media North Carolina as the alliance’s newest associate members, joining ranks with Capitol Broadcasting Company, News-Press & Gazette Company, OneMedia, and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

NVISA has a global membership of organizations that are driving the definition and realization of ATSC 3.0 technology. This global network of companies includes ATEME, BitRouter, DigIt Signage Technologies/ChyTV, Digital Alert Systems, ENENSYS Technologies, Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark and CDS, Triveni Digital, Verance, and other leaders in advanced technology and content.

“NVISA is extremely pleased to welcome these organizations as the alliance expands toward a truly global scope, supporting advanced next-generation TV services,” said Edward Czarnecki, NVISA chairman and executive director. “The addition of these three public broadcasters also shows the key role that public TV will play in NextGen TV. ATSC 3.0 is starting to coalesce rapidly, with a growing number of station deployments. NVISA members are dedicated to realizing the enormous potential that ATSC 3.0 offers to transform broadcast television worldwide.”

“By joining NVISA, DigiCAP is committed to contributing its effort to cultivating the next-gen ecosystem and growing the market,” said Sang Jin Yoon, SVP of business development at DigiCAP. “NVISA’s mission of driving innovation while minimizing fragmentation of solutions for information services is essential for the success of ATSC 3.0 deployment globally.” DigiCAP brings additional international experience to NVISA through their involvement in building the world’s first ATSC 3.0 alerting service in South Korea, which launched last year.

“Kentucky Educational Television is pleased to join with NVISA members to work toward NextGen TV advanced information solutions for public safety, civic engagement, and educational service,” said Tim Bischoff, KET chief technology officer.

“New Mexico PBS has been an active participant in the ATSC standards process, and we look forward to contributing to the effort to promote forward-looking technologies with the potential to move our industry forward,” said Mike Snyder, New Mexico PBS’ studio technology manager.

“UNC-TV has been a leader in NextGen TV Public Safety communication research, and we see our partnership with NVISA as a vital part of the equation that will help the industry develop new products for consumers, first responders, and other sectors and, ultimately, help us fulfill our mission of delivering trusted, educational, and informative content to all North Carolinians,” noted Fred Engel, UNC-TV’s chief technology officer.

NVISA members collaborate, implement standards, and create best practices to help broadcasters accelerate their transformation toward next-generation ATSC 3.0 systems. Among the organization’s initial objectives is ensuring the successful deployment of enhanced emergency information solutions across the ATSC 3.0 ecosystem, including next-generation Advanced Emergency Information applications, enhanced media display for the Emergency Alert System, and accessible emergency information audio. To this end, NVISA has formed three working groups.

NVISA’s Video Integrated Display Symbology (VIDS) working group focuses on harmonizing a recommended practice for emergency information display in visual media, including a shared symbology and look and feel that can be used by video services across the Emergency Alert System, ATSC 3.0, and other visual media. Bill Robertson of Digital Alert Systems serves as the group’s chair.

NVISA’s Advanced Emergency Information working group will develop recommended practices and use cases for the advanced emergency information capabilities of ATSC 3.0 and NextGen TV. Ed Czarnecki, NVISA chairman and executive director, is the group’s chair.

NVISA’s Bitcasting and Broadcast Internet working group will examine advanced data broadcast technologies and applications (including public safety applications). Mark Corl of Triveni Digital serves as the Bitcasting and Broadcast Internet working group chair.

— Sunny Branson, for Weekly Tech Roundup, a Streamline Publishing newsletter produced by the Radio + Television Business Report

The Board of Directors of Media Ratings Council, Inc., the independent watchdog devoted to insuring the accuracy of audience measurement services, has agreed to create a subcommittee focused on the organization’s efforts to assess and promote the quality of data sources.

Introducing the MRC Data Quality Subcommittee, which will formally commence its activities “in the coming months.”

The board will determine where this subcommittee will sit within the existing organizational structure of MRC later in 2021.

The news was publicly disseminated some eight days following the MRC’s annual Board of Directors meeting. At the event, the following members of the Board were appointed to serve on MRC’s Executive Committee for the 2021-22 term:

Board of Directors Chair:                         Dale Coons, Campbell Ewald

Board Chair, ex officio:                            Matt Ross, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations

Print Committee Chair:                            Rob Frydlewicz, Carat USA

International Committee Chair:                Atin Kulkarni, PepsiCo

Radio Committee Chair:                           Annette Malave, Radio Advertising Bureau

Out of Home Committee Chair:               Andy Sriubas, OUTFRONT Media

Television Committee Chair:                    Kevin Stuart, Hearst Television

Digital Committee Chair:                         Eric Warburton, Horizon Media

The departing members of the 2019-20 MRC Executive Committee include Board Chair ex officio Joanne Church, Radio Research Consortium; Digital Committee Chair Nathalie Bordes, CBS Interactive; Radio Committee Chair Dan McDonald, National Association of Broadcasters; International Committee Chair John Montgomery, GroupM; Television Committee Chair Beth Rockwood, Warner Media; and Print Committee Chair Maria Sacchetti, Initiative.

Matt Ross, who was the 2019-20 MRC Board of Directors Chair, and Dale Coons, the Out of Home Committee Chair for 2019-20, will continue to serve on the 2021-22 MRC Executive Committee in the new roles noted above.

It appears the broadcast TV company that eventually merged with Tribune Broadcasting also has a desire to monetize the consumer product recommendations company that Tribune Publishing Co. put on the map.

A definitive agreement has been reached that sees Nexstar Inc., a subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group, grab BestReviews for $160 million.

It’s a transaction that is “immediately accretive to Nexstar’s operating results,” the nation’s top owner of broadcast TV stations and the WGN America cable TV channel said.

How does the consumer review-focused website make money?

“BestReviews monetizes its content through a revenue share model with its retail partners against all sales generated by BestReviews,” Nexstar explains.

There are more than reviews, however: BestReviews also produces seasonal, lifestyle and
how-to articles with integrated links to retailers distributed across its publisher network, and these could feed broadcast TV station websites while also sparking product review news reports in its newscasts and news magazines.

The volume of content currently authored by BestReviews includes more than 8,000 product categories covering more 40,000 product reviews — on behalf of a network of more than 50 retail partners.

Nexstar President/COO and CFO Tom Carter explains, “The planned accretive acquisition of BestReviews diversifies our digital content portfolio while presenting the company with new and significant revenue channels by leveraging our media content, national reach and significant consumer digital usage across multiple platforms.”

He adds that Nexstar’s digital properties are No. 1 according to Comscore for local news and information, in terms of unique users. As such, “we are ideally positioned to quickly scale BestReviews through increased content syndication and brand awareness.”

Carter also considers BestReviews to be “a fast-growing digital product review company with a profitable and scalable business model at an attractive pro forma EBITDA multiple.”

Nexstar Inc. President of Digital Karen Brophy adds, “The acquisition of BestReviews further strengthens Nexstar’s core product offering by adding new content and gathering expert and user-generated insights that help build consumer confidence in products. This will allow Nexstar to strengthen its focus on distributing content consumers want most.”

The transaction is subject to Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance and customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of 2020.

Townsquare Media has priced an offering of $550.0 million in aggregate principal amount of its 6.875% senior secured notes due 2026.

The notes will bear interest semi-annually at a rate equal to 6.875% per annum and were offered at par value. They are senior secured obligations of Townsquare Media and will be guaranteed on a senior secured basis by the company’s direct and wholly owned subsidiaries.

Closing of the offering is anticipated to take place on or about January 6, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

As previously reported, Townsquare intends to use the net proceeds from the offering, together with cash on hand, to repay its existing senior secured credit facilities, to redeem all of Townsquare’s outstanding 6.500% senior notes due 2023, and to pay the premium, fees and expenses related to the offering.

Townsquare also intends to terminate its existing senior secured credit facilities, including its existing revolving credit facility.

DISH shares were off by more than 11% in the final hour of trading on Wednesday (12/16), as investors soured on the news that it plans to offer $2 billion aggregate principal amount of convertible notes.

DISH Network also expects to grant to the initial purchaser an option to purchase up to an additional $300 million aggregate principal amount of the notes to cover over-allotments, if any.

The net proceeds of the offering are intended to be used for “general corporate purposes,” including 5G network buildout costs.

Moody’s assigned a B1 rating to the offering. It notes that the rating is supported by the substantial asset value derived from DISH’s “vast spectrum holdings, although they have yet to be deployed and monetized.”

It further noted, however, that its rating “reflects our concern that competition from cable and telecommunication companies, who offer multiple products (video, voice, and data in particular), and pressure from changing television consumption habits towards SVOD (subscription video on demand) services like Netflix and other emerging OTT (over-the-top media) platforms, will result in increasing cord cutting of traditional linear pay TV.”

The notes will be unsecured obligations of DISH Network.

Upon any conversion, DISH Network will settle its conversion obligation in cash, shares of its Class A Common Stock, or a combination of cash and shares of its Class A Common Stock, at its election. The interest rate, the initial conversion rate, and other terms and conditions of the notes will be determined by negotiations between DISH Network and the initial purchaser of the notes.

The offering didn’t charm investors. On heavy volume of 15.7 million shares as of 3:15pm Eastern (normal volume is 2.7 million shares), DISH was down $4.05 to $31.63.

The dip erased one month’s worth of gains on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market,

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has officially been inked on the growing list of institutions of higher learning that no longer want to put its dollars toward the upkeep of a broadcast radio station run by its enrolled students.

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As the $2.65 billion merger between West Palm Beach-headquartered ION Media and The E.W. Scripps Co. winds its way toward completion, a series of amendments have been submitted with the FCC that have seen the inclusion — and now exclusion — of three stations that had been designed for sale to INYO Broadcast Holdings, which is getting a host of spin-off properties.

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Emerging technology could simplify facility infrastructure and reduce costs for broadcasters by eliminating reliance on hardware and utilizing the cloud instead.

A two-part session at this fall’s virtual Radio Show conference explored virtualization of traditionally hardware-based systems and the benefits of the fourth generation of HD Radio technology.

Moderator Roz Clark, senior director of radio engineering for Cox Media Group, framed the conversation as a look at the next generation of radio architecture, which will involve fewer hardware boxes in facilities as broadcasters move toward more service-based systems.

[Read RW’s free ebook “Virtualizing the Air Chain: Next-Gen Radio Architecture”]

“We know broadcast equipment is specialized, expensive and wears out. It requires maintenance and cooling. And all of these things are magnified by the number of stations you own, so evolving things forward and making it a more cost-effective and useful part of our business is a goal we all have,” Clark said during his introduction.

He noted that the NAB Radio Technology Committee is working with equipment manufactures to create common platforms to develop technology solutions.

“We are trying to simplify things, make it interoperable and adopt best practices, to develop technology to fit within the existing infrastructure — and the modern infrastructure as it evolves,” Clark said during his introduction.

The first panel included Jason Ornellas, regional director of engineering for Bonneville International Corp.; Alan Jurison, senior broadcast engineer at iHeartMedia; and Lakeya Jefferson, director of audio client engineering at Nielsen Media.

A goal of the NAB Radio Technology Committee, Clark said, is to make it easier and more cost-effective to implement HD Radio as the industry transforms into a digital transport delivery mechanism.

One part of that effort involves the software to insert Nielsen Audio PPM codes. Another is the implementation of Emergency Alert System content into an HD sub-channel stream.

Jefferson said Nielsen has taken its enhanced Critical Band Encoding Technology, or CBET, which is used in its PPM hardware encoders, and made it available in a software-based version to be integrated into third-party devices and products that may exist in broadcast facilities.

“We are excited to offer a wide variety of options when it comes to encoding. Nielsen is planning a beta release of our audio software encoder to a select group of audio processing vendors, including Orban, Wheatstone and Telos/Omnia, and AM stations with a wider production release later this year,” Jefferson said during the online session.

Field evaluation for AM stations began in early October with plans to release FM and streaming in 2021, Jefferson said.

Ornellas, who chairs the PPM Subgroup of the technology committee, said Bonneville successfully beta tested software-based PPM encoding using Orban processing at KHTK(AM) in Sacramento, Calif., and KSL(AM) in Salt Lake City. So did Cox Media at its stations WSB(AM) in Atlanta and KKYX(AM) in San Antonio, Texas.

“It was pretty seamless, with no issues for either the terrestrial AM or HD channel,” Ornellas said of the Bonneville testing. “We were able to see that the PPM encoding was being present right on the processor as well as the Multichannel Encoding Monitor. Nielsen was happy with the quality assurance they were expecting. This is a huge first step.”

iHeartMedia’s Jurison has been working for some time on getting the EAS component of the broadcast air chain put into software and virtualized into HD Radio subchannels.

“It’s been a challenge for (iHeartMedia) to get EAS onto the HD-2, -3 and -4 subchannels. We expect the next-generation architecture to move a lot of things out of defined-purpose hardware and into the cloud,” he said.

“We think some of the low-hanging fruit is the multicast channels. A lot of those stations just play music with few elements. As we migrate audio and radio into the cloud, these seem like good choices for us to virtualize.”

iHeartMedia uses a physical audio switcher that is tied to the EAS encoder to get EAS messaging onto the FM subchannels, Jurison said. The industry’s challenge, he says, is how to get EAS onto the subchannels without requiring hardware in the local market while remaining FCC-compliant.

He said Gen4 HD Radio technology and an embedded HD Radio importer/exporter will allow broadcasters to “virtualize” this process.

“It’s a whole new way of looking at HD Radio. The HD-2, -3 and -4 are perfect for us to begin putting things up in the cloud; but the cloud doesn’t have an EAS encoder,” Jurison said.

He explained that broadcasters will have the capability, thanks to the Gen4’s embedded importer/exporter, to connect the EAS encoder via 2wcom’s HDRCC, an HD Radio capture client appliance, which will encode all audio.

According to 2wcom’s website, the HDR-CC “requires a setup that has EAS audio connected to the capture client as well as a GPI to trigger the alarm. When the alarm is triggered, the three-channel HDR-CC logs into the importer and replaces all supplemental channels (HD2–HD4) with the alarm program. After the GPI is released, the HDR-CC logs out and the importer continues with normal operation.”

Jurison says Gen4 HD Radio technology will eliminate complicated audio switching requirements for emergency alerts. iHeartMedia is field testing the new system. The session included an explanation of how audio is delivered from an iHeartMedia data center in Cincinnati through its tech center in San Antonio to WWHT(FM)’s transmitter site in Syracuse, N.Y.

“We are essentially generating audio in the Cincinnati data center that goes through our WAN to the transmitter site in Syracuse with no hardware in between to generate the HD2 channel,” Jurison said.

In conclusion, Jurison said by using the Gen4’s embedded importer/exporter and 2wcom’s HDR-CC, broadcasters have the ability to insert EAS into any multicast channel from any data center anywhere across the country and eliminate physical hardware switching.

Part two of the virtual equipment evolution session featured presentations from broadcast equipment manufacturers Nautel, GatesAir and Rohde & Schwarz. The companies are working on Gen4 HD Radio virtualization technology for use in the cloud.

Moderator Roz Clark described an ongoing open collaboration to find radio architecture solutions that includes radio broadcasters, equipment manufacturers and Xperi, the parent of both HD Radio and the hybrid radio platform DTS Connected Radio.

“It’s really the three-legged stool approach between all of us. We want to simplify the architecture, we want to ease implementation to make it cheaper, better and faster. And also to leverage the technology that surrounds the broadcast business in general,” he said.

Philipp Schmid, chief technology officer for Nautel, said since a lot of the radio air chain is based on “purpose-filled boxes,” there is the need to look at the transition to a software environment and that HD Radio presents the opportunity to do so.

“However, HD Radio also adds cost and complexity,” Schmid said, “due to having to keep audio aligned between the FM and the HD-1.”

Nautel, which manufacturers transmission equipment, has partnered with Telos Alliance to develop a new Gen4 HD system using Omnia Enterprise 9s audio processing software and the Nautel HD multicast transmitter platform.

“The whole system can be applied in the cloud and can be scaled and is highly reliable,” Schmid said.

Nautel’s goal is “easy HD Radio conversion, cheaper HD Radio conversion, security and interoperability for third parties and legacy equipment,” he said.

A webinar of the Gen4 HD Radio system by Nautel is available on the company’s website.

Rohde & Schwarz manufactures the THR9 liquid cooled FM HD Radio transmitter and its HD component, the HDR900 built on the Gen 4 HD Radio architecture, according to information presented during the virtual conference.

“We suggest creating a functional block for all of the HD encoding. This block can live in the cloud or it can live virtually,” said Don Backus, account manager of radio transmitters at Rohde & Schwarz. “It gets us simplicity and it also gets us the ability to provide an abstraction from the hardware layer and that does allow for a virtual implementation or in the cloud.”

Backus said standardization on AES67, a technical standard for audio over IP and audio over Ethernet interoperability, and IQ over IP interfaces are key to the overall process.

“We want to define structures that enable less costly solutions with virtualized hardware and cloud computing,” Backus said.

To conclude the virtual Radio Show technology session, Kevin Haider, product manager, radio transmission for GatesAir, touched on the latest Intraplex IP link audio codec.

Haider said integrating IP tunneling capabilities within audio codecs provides multiple benefits for HD Radio applications, including maintaining relative delay between FM and HD signals across the network and providing reliable HD Radio E2X data streams across IP networks and limited bandwidth STL networks.

“It also allows for broadcasters to move their HD Radio exporter and importer to a studio where it is easier to maintain,” he said.

The post Engineers Explore Next-Gen Architectures appeared first on Radio World.

A partnership that enables “a new way” to measure TV marketing has been brought to market.

And, it is being billed as a “first-of-its-kind solution” that combines MarketCast‘s data science expertise and Kinetiq‘s ad detection platform to measure competitive benchmarking for tune-in TV attribution.

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SAVANNAH, GA. — Just how much did Gray Television‘s broadcast TV stations and digital platforms attracted in the form of political advertising in 2020?

It’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the twin U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia are the icing on the cake.

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Gray’s total tally for political advertising since Jan. 1, 2020, is now upward of $400 million, net of commissions and agency fees.

There’s more: Since Election Day, Gray’s local television stations and digital platforms in the Peach State have run approximately $20 million net in political campaign and political issue advertisements related to the two run-off election races for U.S. Senate seats.

With the special elections scheduled for Jan. 5, 2021, and President-Elect Biden campaigning for the Democratic candidates in Atlanta on Tuesday, Gray expects political advertisements in Georgia to continue well past New Year’s Eve and into the first days of 2021.

Gray has a presence in Augusta, Albany, Columbus and tiny Thomasville, Georgia, where WCTV-6 also serves Tallahassee, Fla. Most notably, Gray owns long-dominant CBS affiliate WTOC-11 in Savannah, Ga.