Broadcast app store could bring flood of creativity to ATSC 3.0
With NextGen TV, broadcasters are moving from a one-to-many relationship with viewers, via a TV hanging on the wall, to a one-on-one relationship with them, said Mark Aitken, president of One Media. During a Fireside Chat at TV2025: Monetizing the Future, Aitken held an ATSC 3.0-enabled smartphone the company has developed and suggested the industry would one day create a broadcast app store, similar to those operated by Apple and Android. “The deployments now underway are shaping an understanding that now is the time to open up the innovators paradise, in the form of an app store, to let developers create,” he said.
Webinars this week include TVNewsCheck‘s “Data, Performance, Technology: Optimizing Spot TV;” a look at “AI & ML for Media,” from AWS; a webcast on “Building the Modern Control Room” from Black Box; a look at “NextGen Advertising” from Sinclair and One Media; and a webinar from Telos Alliance on the Omnia MPX Node. For a complete list of webinars this week and through summer and fall, including dates, times and registration links, visit TVNewsCheck’s Virtual Events Directory.
Webinars This Week: Sinclair/One Media, Vela, LAWO, Ross Video, Harmonic
Sinclair and its One Media sister company will kick off a series of virtual events about monetizing NextGen TV with ATSC 3.0 Monetization 101 on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET. Vela will focus on Advances in Compliance Monitoring Tuesday and Wednesday at varying times. Ross Live considers Esports Arena Production on Tuesday. In the LAWO Lounge, Audio Mixing in the Hands of Automated TV Production will be playing July 8 at two different times. For TVNewsCheck’s full listing of virtual events this week and into the fall and winter, visit the Virtual Events Directory.
Could sales automation boost local TV against digital giants?
Sales leaders from a half dozen major TV station groups gathered to talk about the challenges they face competing with an increasingly powerful array of digital giants. Key to their strategy is moving to impressions-based selling and creating an automated pipeline connecting media buyers and TV sales reps and cutting down on the busy work that drives up the costs of transactions. Pictured: Frank Comerford, chief revenue officer, and president, commercial operations, NBCU Owned Television Stations.
The 21 popular local sports channels were pulled from the satellite carrier and Sling TV after Dish and Disney were unable to come to terms on carriage fees. Disney is in the process of selling the RSNs to Sinclair, which is said not to have been involved in the negotiations. No word on how the impasse might impact Sinclair’s ability to finance its $9.6B acquisition of the channels.
The platform will enable 4G and 5G wireless operators to offload OTT and live content on to the “one-to-many” broadcast Digital Terrestrial Transmission (DTT) networks that broadcasting are building with ATSC 3.0.
Exclusives
The Diginet World Is Having A Moment
Broadcasters including Scripps, Tegna, CBS, Sinclair, Ion and Gray have been laying bigger bets in the multicasting business, acquiring some of the more popular diginets and partnering to develop new ones in a market showing signs of further expansion. CBS’s new diginet DABL, for instance, is bringing back the classic lifestyle programming of Martha Stewart and others in the fall.
A judicial panel has consolidated at least 18 antitrust suits against five TV station groups for allegedly colluding on spot pricing in the federal district court in Chicago. The defendants, which include Tribune, Sinclair and in some cases Gray, Hearst, Nexstar and Tegna, had pushed for the consolidation. The proliferatng suits are an outgrowth of a Justice Department review of the merger of Sinclair and Tribune, which was scuttled after the FCC found evidence of misrepresentation by Sinclair. (Free registration required.)
Jessell: Winners And Losers Abound in Sinclair’s Fiasco
The imminent collapse of Sinclair’s merger makes the combative station group one of the all-time losers in FCC regulatory history, but they’re not the only ones who’ve lost. Here are some of the other losers caught up in this week’s train wreck along with some of the winners. At the top of the latter group is FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has clearly signaled that he is no pushover.
Sinclair, Nexstar, Univision and American Tower partner on developing a next-gen TV single frequency network that will be a test of a developed model for the transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0 and the deployment of SFN sites in preparation for future national deployment of 3.0 broadcast services.
Details On Sinclair-Tribune Merger Overdue
The FCC has finally gotten around to asking Sinclair how it intends to comply with the national and local ownership rules. The merger puts it in nominal violation of the caps and it will have to do something to get below them. I applaud the FCC move as the public has the right to know just how Sinclair plans to proceed.
Fox Enthralled By Stations Again. But Why?
The news this week that Fox and Blackstone are forming a joint venture to acquire Tribune Media had researchers, analysts and plain old columnists like me wondering why, and sorting through the implications not only for Fox, but also for Sinclair, Nexstar and CBS.
Sinclair Seeing Weak Core In 1Q And 2Q
The company attributes the softness to weakness in the food and retail categories and the loss of revenue from for-profit technical schools that have gone out of business. The good news was auto, which grew 3%.
21st Century Fox’s plan to form a joint venture with Blackstone to buy Tribune Media would create value from cost synergies and by putting Fox into six more NFL markets, says the securities research firm. What’s more, it blocks Sinclair from acquiring the Tribune stations — a move that would boost Sinclair’s national programming ambitions and get it more leverage in reverse comp dealings.
Sinclair, Nexstar Show How Big Can Be Better
Evidence is emerging that if station groups are allowed to scale up, they will become better broadcasters, pumping still more news and entertainment into the expanding TV ecosphere to the benefit of all — viewers and advertisers. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is expected to move to loosen the ownership caps this year. Those opposed had better bring more to the debate than just theories about the inherent badness of bigness.
Sinclair Broadcast Group is offering 12 million primary shares of Class A common stock. The company said it intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1.8 million shares of Class A common stock on the same terms and conditions. Sinclair said the money raised will “be used to fund future potential acquisitions and for general corporate purposes.” It didn’t say how much it hopes to raise.
Sinclair Begins TBD Diginet Rollout
Sinclair Broadcast Group has begun to roll out a first-of-its kind, over-the-air multicast network showing digital programming that’s designed to appeal to millennials. TBD will feature web series, short films, fashion, comedy, lifestyle, online video game competitions, music and viral content and will air on many of its stations in 81 markets.
It plans to align Tennis magazine and Tennis.com with its Tennis Channel on a unified platform. It’s paying $8 million plus an additional $6 million earn-out potential based on certain contingencies.
Sinclair Buys 6 Titan Television Stations
The $115.35 million deal, first reported in March, adds three Fox, two CW and one CBS affiliates in California, Nebraska and Iowa to Sinclair’s portfolio.
Brad Zaruba will head sales efforts at Fox affiliate KBSI and MNT affil WDKA in Paducah, Ky./Cape Girardeau, Mo.
Harris Reups Sinclair, Unveils Magellan
Sinclair is now using Harris OSi media software solution to manage business operations at 73 stations. The new Magellan Network Management System allows monitoring and controlling content creation, aggregation, playout and delivery across multiple facilities. For all that’s going on at NAB 2012, click here.
Sinclair Buys Four Points Media For $200M
The Four Points group includes seven stations in four markets, including the CBS affiliates in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas. The seller is Cerberus, a private equity firm. Sinclair will operate the stations under an LMA prior to closing.
Time Warner Cable’s North Carolina news operation, News 14 will produce newscasts at 6:30 a.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. next year for Sinclair’s WXLV Greensboro as part of the recent retransmission consent agreement.
Fox Affils Not Cool With ‘Cooling Off Feed’
The latest wrinkle in the retrans war is that Time Warner Cable systems can pick up Fox primetime and sports programming if they are denied carriage of the local Fox affiliate. It would appear to undermine the retrans efforts of affiliates, but the network maintains that it really wants to help the affiliates by getting TWC to pick up a “cooling off feed” that comprises the entire affiliate signal for a year. Affiliates are skeptical. Some see it as parternalistic meddling. Others simply aren’t sure what Fox’s intentions are and what the Fox-TWC agreement will mean to their future retrans earnings.
Time Warner Cable is telling local subscribers in Buffalo, N.Y., that it will continue to carry Fox network programs into January and beyond, even if its deal with Sinclair’s WUTV, the local Fox affiliate, expires and the station is dropped from the local cable system.
