For NextGenTV to succeed, they need to give consumers something they want. Right now, all broadcaster’s offer that has any value whatsoever is local news, which can be had with ATSC 1.0. Even the value of those have come into question.

The NextGenTV consortium needs to ask themselves what they are selling that consumers want? Everything depends on consumers buying and caring about the product you are offering. Currently, nobody has asked our company to develop an ATSC 3.0 tuner for our fitness product. Not one person. So we won’t be integrating the technology in the foreseeable future. You know what we just implemented in our product due to multiple requests? PlutoTV. That reality should speak volumes.

FInd something that moves the needle. And do it yesterday. Or the NextGenTV ship is sunk.

Hint: 4k isn’t enough anymore. People have bought their cheap 4k TV’s only to have the prevailing ‘non-4k’ content upscaled so the content they consume looks like junk. Consumers have tuned-out the ‘benefits’ of 4k argument, probably for good. And for good reason.

Hint #2: It needs to be something that moves the needle. Like HDR 4k NFL football, that will demonstrate the advantages in large numbers.