B+C and Next TV have announced the winners of Best of Show Awards for the 2024 NAB Show. The awards were judged by a panel of industry experts at the convention (April 14-17 in Las Vegas) on the bases of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and overall performance. 

The winners will be included in B+C Multichannel News magazine as well as on the Next TV website. Nominees also are included in a Best of Show Program ebook.

The Best of Show Awards, from B+C, Next TV, TV Tech and other brands at Future US, were chosen from companies that exhibited at the 2024 NAB Show and submitted nominations.

Congratulations to this year's winners:

Broadcasting+Cable

• Dina, part of Fonn Group — Dina
• ROXi — ROXi FastStream
• Sony Electronics — HXC-FZ90 Studio Camera System
• AMD — AMD Alveo MA35D Advanced Media Accelerator
• MEDIAGENIX — MEDIAGENIX FAST Scheduling Artist
• TAG Video Systems — TAG Language Detection
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Workflow monitor for AWS Media Services and CloudFront

Next TV

• Ross Video — Media IO UX 
• Vimond — VIA App Builder
• Cleeng — Cleeng’s Subscriber Retention Management™ (SRM™) 
• ThinkAnalytics — ThinkFAST
• MEDIAGENIX — MEDIAGENIX Ratings Artist 
• Evergent — Evergent Captivate Product Suite 
• Zixi — Live Event Manager: ZEN Master 
• TMT Insights — Polaris Operational Management Platform 

The NAB session “Building the Next Gen Talk Show” went down April 14 at the Encore in Las Vegas. The panel started with a look at the future of shows hosted by big-name talent. Byron Allen, chairman, CEO and president, Allen Media Group and Entertainment Studios, noted how uncommon standout talent is, citing Oprah Winfrey, and a star from the sports world. 

“The Bulls still haven’t replaced Michael Jordan,” he said. 

Allen is not a big believer in the single-host format. “I’m not saying it’s not possible,” he said, but it needs that megawatt talent to fly. 

Keeping costs from getting sky high is key to such a show working, the panelists said. “The secret is making it affordable for the stations,” said Ira Bernstein, co-president, Debmar Mercury, “and making it so they can make money.”

Portia Bruner, host of talk show Portia, which launched on WAGA Atlanta and airs on Fox Soul, said a lean staff sets the right tone for her program. “We hear guests say, it felt like I was hanging out with family,” she shared. 

One theme of the panel was making a show pop on the various platforms available. Jenny Depper, senior VP, E! News, spoke of the digital efforts for The Kelly Clarkson Show launching at the same time as the show. “We capture audiences where they are,” she said. “We custom-create content for every single platform that the show exists on.”

The panel discussed a clip for Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle that ran on TikTok. It saw Harry say some shocking things, which worked well on that particular platform. 

Lauren Blincoe, senior VP, current programming, Telepictures, Warner Bros. Television, said digital clips are more than just promotion for the show, but can’t give too much away. “We have to be sensitive to our station partners,” said Blincoe, who works on The Jennifer Hudson Show. “You’re gonna get a little bit, but you still have to watch the show to get all of it.”

Bruner said the key to Portia finding its legs outside Atlanta was focusing on issues that are universal. “Building a community, building a connection and making sure people feel heard,” Bruner said of her gameplan. 

That segued into what a successful host brings to a show. Allen mentioned the importance of “being very naturally curious.” He spoke of interacting with Johnny Carson as a kid when his mother worked at NBC. Carson stressed letting the guest have their moments. “Pull back and make him shine,” Allen said Carson told him. 

Depper cited the importance of relatability, noting how that’s been key to Travis and Jason Kelce finding success with their podcast. 

Michael Depp, chief content officer and editor, NewsCheckMedia, TVNewsCheck, moderated. He asked about how a daytime show’s tone may differ from another airing after dark. Depper said the 24/7 platforms that content pops up on can take the daypart out of the equation. “A clip that does well on Jimmy Fallon’s show, the next morning is all everyone’s talking about at the water cooler,” she said. “Tonally, it’s edgier at night, but it’s still relevant at 9 a.m. the next morning.” 

The session detailed the risks involved with a station group backing a daytime show. Panelists said groups should still take some swings. Said Bernstein, “The groups that have taken chances and invested in programming, over time, have done better.”

NBCUniversal said it is using NextGen TV technology to launch personalized experiences for broadcast viewers on six of its owned stations in four markets, starting Monday.

The technology is designed to create added engagement with viewers, advanced advertising opportunities and enhanced measurement of viewing.

In the four markets, NBC and Telemundo station viewers with NextGen sets and antennas will be able to go back to the beginning of shows, pause what they’re watching and select from a variety of content, including hyper-local weather forecasts.

The initial six stations are WNBC (NBC) and WNJU (Telemundo) New York, KNBC Los Angeles, WCAU in Philadelphia and WTVJ (NBC) and WSCV (Telemundo) Miami.

Viewers will be able to access the features while watching national shows–such as the Today show–or local programming. Today viewers can follow an onscreen prompt and drill down into local weather using their remote controls.

They can also pick from a variety of news stories in categories including sports, local and weather.

Also Read: NextGen Broadcasting Takes on TikTok With Interactive Fast Stream Technology 

NBCU said the new NextGen application will be available in other markets soon. The technology is being demonstrated by NBCU at NAB Show in Las Vegas Monday.

Broadcasters like NBCU are trying to attract younger viewers who have cut the cable cord or have never subscribed to pay TV. Many have also never used an antenna.

Proponents of NextGen TV and the new ATSC 3.0 digital broadcast technology believe that providing viewers with the kind of control they’re used to with digital video will help slow or reverse the trend of eyeballs and ad dollars moving to streaming.

Also Read: Broadcasters Invest in Run3TV To Bolster Over–the-Air Audience Measurement

“The launch of this innovative experience is a considerable milestone for broadcast television and demonstrates the immense potential and possibilities NextGen TV has for viewers, programmers, stations and advertisers,” said Shawn Makhijani, senior VP of business development and strategy & NBC Spot On for NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships. “We are proud to further our leadership position in ATSC 3.0 by developing this innovative product with our partners and look forward to the continued evolution of its capabilities and benefits.”

NBCU’s application was created with Fincons, Evertz’s Ease Live and Pearl TV. 

The interactive programming integrates and delivers public safety alerts from FEMA and The Weather Channel.

LAS VEGAS — Byron Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, spoke about his bid to acquire Paramount Global at NAB Show April 14. Allen called Paramount Global “a phenomenal company” and a healthy one at that. 

“Paramount Global is an excellent business — it just needs time to right-size the ship,” he said, noting the substantial costs tied to Paramount Plus. 

Allen said the key to winning the bid is being well-suited for approval. “Can you provide 1,000% certainty of close?” he said, stressing that his group has that advantage. 

Allen was interviewed on a panel titled “Thriving in a New Television Syndication Paradigm” by Kathy Haley, publisher of TV NewsCheck. Allen said he would pursue a streaming merger with the likes of NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery if he were to acquire Paramount. “I think there will be a shakeout; I think there will be some merging,” he said of the various streamers. 

An earlier panel touched on what the network-affiliate relationship looks like long term, and what happens when broadcasters’ deals with the NFL expire. Allen suggested the NFL needs broadcast as much as broadcast needs the league. He spoke of the merits of four networks distributing, and promoting, the NFL — a perk, he said, only the U.S. president gets. 

“The networks need the affiliates,” he said. “Don’t forget about how much money we send them.”

Allen Media Group stations include WKOW Madison, WJRT Flint and WAAY Huntsville. 

Allen said the networks are demanding too much reverse comp. He envisions the government stepping in, so the local broadcasters can use their cash for local news. 

“You need local news. Local news matters. No one is thinking about sports when people are dying from a virus,” he said. 

Speaking of the pandemic, Allen spoke about acquiring KITV Honolulu in 2020 when he was at his home in Maui and a lesson he learned shortly thereafter. No one was around, and he said boredom prompted him to call the station owner to discuss a deal. He bought the ABC station for $30 million, then pushed his family to watch his new acquisition. 

Allen mentioned his teen daughter giving up watching at the first commercial break, saying she’d watch on streaming the next day, with no commercials. 

Allen laid out his plan for broadcast to sustain itself. It involves capping local broadcasters’ reverse compensation payment at 50%, keeping broadcast content off streaming longer, as opposed to sharing it the next day, and keeping sports off of streaming altogether. 

“You cannot have sports on streaming platforms,” Allen said. “Never, ever, ever, ever.”

Detroit-based Waymark, a startup blending generative AI with video advertising, said Wednesday that it has now entered more than 90% of U.S. Designated Market Areas (DMAs).

Heading into NAB Show 2024 to try to secure even more business, Waymark is also touting new Spanish-language voiceover capabilities into its TV-commercial-making tools, as well as a new plugin that gives its growing list of media company clients the ability to integrate Waymark's advertising solutions into their own platforms.

Waymark makes software tools that allow small businesses to quickly, easily and cost-effectively produce their own TV and radio commercials using their existing creative — anything from photographs of their shop to logos and graphics they've already created for their website.

A demonstration given to Next TV showed how a TV ad for a small independent coffee shop can be produced in just a few minutes, complete with logos, voiceovers, synthesized stock footage and graphical effects.

“We make creativity accessible to every single small local advertiser, and we see that as a huge industry change,” said Waymark CEO Alex Persky-Stern in a call with Next TV. “Right now, in the TV industry, only about a third of advertising is local … So we just see enormous opportunity for broadcasters to activate more local businesses. So we’re just trying to open up those doors for all of our partners in the space.”

Waymark has secured partnerships with some of the  largest media companies in the U.S., including the E.W. Scripps Company, Fox owned-and-operated TV Stations, Spectrum Reach, Gray Television, Beasley Media Group and Morgan Murphy Media.

Waymark has also expanded internationally through partnerships with Australia’s leading broadcaster, Nine, as well as UK-based multimedia publishing company National World PLC.

Waymark’s new Spanish capabilities enable users to create full video ads with on-screen Spanish copy and fluent Spanish voice-overs, including a wide array of regional, synthesized AI accents. Waymark told us more language options will be coming. 

The plugin, meanwhile, is a turnkey solution allowing publishers to integrate Waymark's AI video creator into their own platforms. The plugin is the basis of a recent strategic partnership with Sweden-based DanAds, which provides global publishers and media owners with a fully automated, white-labeled self-serve advertising infrastructure.

Entering NAB, Waymark hopes the new product features only add to its momentum. However, the simple presentation of the coffee shop ad continues to be a powerful sales driver for the company

“From the seller perspective, they walk into that conversation, and can immediately show them this video,” Hayden Gilmer, VP of revenue for Waymark, said. “That changes the sales process completely, because we can have you up and running tomorrow.”

Future brands have launched the Best of Show Awards for the 2024 NAB Show, now in the 11th year of existence. These annual awards recognize outstanding products and solutions in the media and entertainment (M&E) tech sector shown at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The awards, from industry-leading brands of Future plc, provide a great opportunity for companies to stand out at one of the most attended shows in the industry. There are a range of benefits, from fully licensed winner’s badges to physical trophies for display, a suite of winner’s marketing assets to editorial coverage from our brands, including Broadcasting+Cable and Next TV as well as TV Tech, Radio World, Sound & Video Contractor, Mix and TVBEurope.

“Now entering its second decade, the Best of Show awards have given TV Tech and our sister brands the opportunity to honor those NAB Show exhibitors who have demonstrated the innovation and technical excellence so deserving of this award,” said TV Tech editor in chief Tom Butts. “We can’t wait to see what's new on the show floor this year.“

The Best of Show awards are chosen from companies that exhibit at the NAB Show in April and that submit nominations (nominees pay a fee to enter). All nominees and winners will be featured in a post-convention Program Guide distributed to readers. (Here’s a look at last year’s guide)

Click here to begin your entry ahead of the April 1, 2024, 11:59 (PT) deadline, or continue to browse through the site to find out more about the awards including how to enter, what Future plc brands are involved in the awards, benefits for entering and a range of FAQs. 

Back in January, the National Association of Broadcasters said that without some action by the FCC, including sunsetting the requirement to broadcast in both the current and next-generation transmission formats, that next-generation format — the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard — is “in peril,” and with it broadcasters’ future.

The Federal Communications Commission appears to have listened.

At NAB Show in Las Vegas, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced a partnership, the Future of Television initiative, led by NAB and with the goal of a smooth transition to the new standard, also called NextGen TV. ATSC 3.0 will allow for 4K pictures, video on demand, advanced emergency alerts, targeted advertising and more, but broadcasters can also combine retransmission-consent negotiations for new ATSC 3.0 and existing 1.0 signals, which cable operators had opposed.

But since the standard is not backward-compatible with new sets, it will require viewers to either buy those sets for downconverters to the current ATSC 1.0 standard viewable on their current hardware. That’s one of the challenges that needs addressing.

Also Read: NAB Says ATSC Will Reinvent Industry

“Today, we are announcing a public-private initiative, led by the National Association of Broadcasters, to help us work through outstanding challenges faced by industry and consumers,” Rosenworcel said in a speech to the assembled broadcasters.

NAB will set up three stakeholder working groups to deal with “existing hardware, the technical aspects of executing the transition, and other regulatory issues implicated by the evolution in broadcasting standards,“ respectively. 

“We commend the chairwoman, her staff and the Media Bureau for the hard work they have put into making this collaborative effort a reality,” NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt. “NAB and broadcasters will continue to work tirelessly to pave the way for this exciting new technology, which will revolutionize the way viewers consume broadcast content and enable local stations to better serve their communities.”

In meetings with top FCC staffers back in January, Nexstar Media Group chairman and CEO Perry Sook and other top broadcast group executives told Rosenworcel that a “stalled transition” — it has been seven years since broadcasters petitioned the FCC to allow the move — represented an existential threat to free, over-the-air broadcasting.

Now, the two groups will be working together to ensure that the promise, rather than the threat, of a transition will be in the forefront.

Tagboard said it has added integrations with Adobe Photoshop and real-time production analytics from Amazon Web Services to its cloud production studio.

The new version of the product also features automated production workflows with APIs enabling producers to create dynamic content from any data source.

Tagboard will unveil its latest software and production tool at NAB Show, which starts April 15.

“In an industry that works in milliseconds, there’s absolutely zero excuse for the inefficiencies of traditional workflows and outdated processes,” Tagboard CEO Nathan Peterson said. “Not only are we turning today’s broadcast and in-venue screens into two-way communication devices that keep audiences engaged with partners across channels, but with these new releases, we’re drastically reducing the operating overhead for production teams to do so. The phrase ‘that’ll take too much time’ should never be spoken again.”

Tagboard works with numerous media companies including Fox Sports and Sinclair Broadcast Group. Fox Sports used Tagboard for its digital coverage of the Qatar World Cup.

“We first partnered with Tagboard in 2018 and quickly found a teammate eager to help us increase interactivity & innovation within our productions,” Fox Sports senior VP of digital Mike Bucklin said. “Tagboard already has the most versatility of any product we’ve utilized, but the features announced today will allow us to be far more efficient, bringing ideas to life much faster without sacrificing quality.”

Tagboard was also recently selected for NBA Launchpad, the league’s initiative supporting emerging technologies.

The company’s new integration with Adobe allows producers to eliminate duplicative work involved in bringing a graphic design to a screen, Tagboard said. Tagboard’s graphics studio automatically imports files from Photoshop, creating a seamless handoff process from designers to production teams.

“In most production environments, the process of building new graphics can involve multiple people handing off design files to one another and rebuilding them in separate platforms — essentially building the same thing multiple times,“ Peterson said. “But today’s content demands can’t afford to be held back by yesterday’s processes. Our clients take great care in hiring the most creative teams in the industry, and with our new Adobe integration, their incredibly talented producers get to focus on bringing the world’s best stories to life instead of doing duplicative work that good technology should handle.”

Tagboard worked with Amazon Web Services to launch its new production suite. 

Working with AWS Tagboard is able to process real-time data and provide a fast, safe, and reliable graphic interface,

Tagboard media and sports telecasters also can see real-time engagement data across their key media properties. By better understanding viewer behavior and exactly when, where and how fans are interacting with content, producers can improve editorial decision-making and monetization.

“Our clients are able to scale their storytelling with new channels, new content, and alternative streams to create more personalized, more highly-engaged stories,“ Peterson said. “Not only does this create more content production than we’ve ever seen before, but it also drives a flywheel of audience engagement that activates the sponsorships more deeply as well.” 

NAB’s annual conference starts later this week. And sure as the giant broadcaster confab returns to the cavernous confines of the Las Vegas Convention Center every spring, so too will the latest news, announcements, events and releases touting the further, yet still glacial spread of ATSC 3.0, the digital broadcasting standard that promises so much we’re still waiting to receive. 

Branded these days as the all-caps NEXTGEN TV, ATSC 3.0 is a train that’s been just about to arrive for so long I feel like a stranded commuter falling asleep on a bench at the station. It’s like a tech TV version of Waiting for Godot, where an unspecified something is imminently arriving to make everything better, yet never quite materializes before we fade to black.  

It’s a shame, too. There’s so much to like about ATSC 3.0: 4K resolution! Scalable, cost-efficient distribution! Internet protocol! No need for expensive cable or satellite subscriptions! Multiplexed datacasting! New business models! Personalized audio! Sports betting! Geo-targeted, interactive advertising! Better emergency broadcasts! Data services for cars! Pretty heady stuff for a medium that’s been around for nearly a century.

The headlines touting all that have been arriving by the bushel over the years, especially around NAB, with near-endless promises of God(ot)-like powers: 

• NAB 2016: A Lot of Firsts for ATSC 3.0 (2016) 
• ATSC 3.0 Will Foster Innovation, Diversity (2017)
• NAB To Shine Spotlight on ATSC 3.0 Tech (2017)
• NAB to FCC: ATSC 3.0 Future is Now (2017)
• Make Way for ATSC 3.0 (2018)
• ATSC 3.0 Marches On (2018)
• CTA Unveils ATSC 3.0 Branding (2019)
• Sinclair Launches ATSC 3.0 Chips at CES (2019)
• ITU Backs ATSC 3.0 as International Standard (2020)
• ATSC 3.0: Small Cities, Big Opportunities (2020) 
• Sinclair and One Media 3.0 Look at ATSC 3.0 Opportunities Beyond Broadcast (2021)
•  ATSC 3.0 Signals Now Blanketing Richmond (2022)

And so on. You get the idea. That sampling is just stories we've written at Next TV and its sibling publications, and not even all of those since 2014, when work on the new standard began in earnest. 

Godot is coming, though, I promise you. Just not today.

The final(-ish) ATSC 3.0 standard officially launched just over half a decade ago, as part of an FCC-blessed voluntary launch prefaced by a test 4K HD broadcast of the Winter Olympics on WRAL Raleigh, North Carolina.

Admittedly, the rollout since then has been tricky. The Federal Communications Commisson let stations decide when to shift to 3.0, but required them to keep simultaneously broadcasting in the older ATSC 1.0 standard for those whose equipment hadn’t quite caught up. 

Evoca tried one innovative approach, leveraging ATSC 3.0 to provide a legitimate alternative to the cable bundle in western cities such as Denver and Boise, Idaho, including access to regional sports networks that were kept off or dropped by local cable operators, and more. 

But it ceased operations at the end of last year because of funding problems. And the list of others exploiting ATSC 3.0’s potential feels woefully brief.

More recently, cable operators such as Charter Communications have been griping about the thousands of potential configurations that make it difficult for them to deliver an ATSC 3.0 signal over their wired networks. That seems like a surmountable technical issue, but isn’t helping extend the addressable audience for local digital broadcasters. 

More problematically, Charter also argued that broadcasters seemingly can’t decide what to do with ATSC 3.0’s many possibilities. Worse, many of the things made possible in ATSC 3.0 — movie downloads, video on phones, data delivery to cars and Lord knows lots of sports betting information — are already being done with other devices. 

That matters, Charter said in meetings with lawmakers and regulators, because both station indecision and service duplication will reduce consumer demand for ATSC 3.0-capable equipment, slowing the rollout even more. 

And that Is, indeed, a problem that has been bedeviling this platform for years. I remember presiding over a podcast years ago, with a colleague at a former employer, talking with Rich Greenfield, the pot-stirring analyst now with LightShed Partners. 

Greenfield’s take back then, echoed by my colleague: ATSC 3.0 was a solution looking for an audience. It was going to take too long to arrive in a fast-changing market for TV-like experiences. A business case that could have been made in, say, 2005 was unlikely to matter in 2020. And in truth, the concerns Greenfield voiced then have only worsened in the pandemic-era streaming boom of the ‘20s. 

The real issue wasn’t what ATSC 3.0 could do, whenever it might be deployed in sufficient numbers to drive significant consumer uptake. It was whether anyone, or enough anyones, would care by the time the rollout was largely in place. 

Yes, there are reports of penny-pinching millennials and zoomers becoming astonished that they could watch broadcast TV for free, plus the modest price of a cheap digital antenna. If you have a house with a clear beam from the broadcast tower, you’re golden. 

But that doesn’t fix another, even bigger problem in the streaming era: what to watch on broadcast. Since the pandemic hit, media companies have been strip-mining their broadcast networks of most meaningful programming, shifting shows partly or wholly to their streaming services. What remains is, with some exceptions, seriously weak (and cheap) tea. 

That’ll only get worse if, as has already been floated, NBC ends national programming in the 10 p.m. prime-time slot (which likely would send the other networks over the same cliff). And imagine what happens if sports rights, specifically for the NFL, continue to bleed off broadcast and cable and into streaming, hybrid broadcasts, and the tech giants’ outlets. 

“Legacy media is bleeding out and downsizing,” as Greenfield’s latest LightShed report suggested, in a look at recent earnings calls/brags by the biggest station group, Nexstar. “The audience for local weather and news is … not valuable to anyone in a demographic that advertisers, or distributors, covet. ... Retrans is about one thing and only one thing: the NFL.”

And that’s the essential challenge facing the engineers driving the ATSC 3.0 train. By the time the train finally, finally, actually arrives in the station, who’s going to buy a ticket and get on board? Probably not many. At least we can always muse about what might have been had this train showed up in, say, 2013 instead. 

Software company MuxIP said it will introduce FASTHub for Broadcast, cloud-based software that transitions broadcast channels into free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels, at NAB Show in Las Vegas next month.

“The broadcast industry invented ad-supported content delivery, and it now has the opportunity to re-invent it through the unification of broadcast and FAST channel delivery,” MuxIP CEO Tom Link said. “We have worked closely with broadcasters and leading satellite operators that see FASTHub for Broadcast as a game-changer for extending broadcast distribution into FAST.”

MuxIP's clients include World Poker Tour, LOL Network, MTRSPT1, Roland Martin’s Black Star Network and Dooya Media.

Using patented processes, FAStHub for Broadcast provides a single workflow for ad-supported content that converts HLS streams into SRT to provision FAST channels.

“FASTHub for Broadcast unifies your workflow across FAST and broadcast,” Link said. “In real time, we insert 608/708s, SCTE 35 markers and convert SRT/CBR bit rates and out to any broadcast platform.” ■

The Broadcasters Foundation of America, devoted to helping broadcasters in need, gives out its 2023 Leadership Awards April 19 at the Wynn Las Vegas during the NAB Show. The awards recognize career contributions to the broadcast industry and the community at large. 

Lanzano is president/CEO of the Television Bureau of Advertising. Limbaugh hosted The Rush Limbaugh Show on the radio until his death in 2021. His wife Kathryn will accept the award. OConnell is president of networks, The Walt Disney Co.

Other recipients are Jim Doyle, founder of media consultancy JDA Media; Deborah Parenti, president and publisher of Radio Ink and RBR+TVBR; and Heidi Raphael, chief communications officer of radio operator Beasley Media Group. 

The awards will be presented over breakfast at 7 a.m. at Room Bandol Two at the Wynn. The Broadcasters Foundation will also present the Lowry Mays Excellence in Broadcasting Award during the breakfast. That honoree has not been announced. 

The Broadcasters Foundation, which has distributed millions of dollars in aid to broadcasters who have lost their livelihood through a catastrophic event, debilitating disease or unforeseen tragedy, holds its Golden Mike Award event at the Plaza in New York March 6. Soledad O’Brien hosts and Jack Abernethy, CEO of Fox Television Stations, gets the award. ■

The NAB announced Thursday (Sept. 1) that Ryan Seacrest will be awarded its Distinguished Service Award (DSA), the organization's highest honor. The presentation will take place during the Marconi Radio Awards dinner on October 19 at NAB Show New York.

Aside from Seacrest's career in radio and television broadcasting, he is also founder and chairman of the Ryan Seacrest Foundation (RSF), "a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring today's youth through entertainment and education focused initiatives," a press release stated. The RSF has installed 11 broadcast media centers in pediatric hospitals nationwide and will open its newest studio at Cohen Children's Medical Center in Queens, New York in 2023, with additional studios to be announced later this year. 

Seacrest also serves as host of ABC's American Idol and Live with Kelly and Ryan. He won an Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host. He also hosts Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest can also be heard on iHeartMedia's 102.7 KIIS-FM’s On Air with Ryan Seacrest and American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest.

“Ryan has made an indelible mark on broadcasting while demonstrating a strong commitment to public service,” said NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt. “For decades, Ryan has produced and hosted hit radio and television programs that have entertained millions worldwide, while dedicating his time to bring joy to children in need. NAB looks forward to celebrating his contributions to our industry and our community at NAB Show New York this October.”

Former recipients of the NAB DSA include former NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith, Jim Henson, Alan Alda, Robin Roberts, Bob Schieffer, Michael J. Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, President Ronald Reagan, Edward R. Murrow, Bob Hope, Walter Cronkite and Oprah Winfrey. ■

Transportation, education and maybe a few public-sector projects — but relatively scant video ventures — are emerging as the first marketplace realities for Next Generation TV. Although the barrage of supply-side promises from the usual gang of ATSC 3.0 supporters persisted during April’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, actual demand-side implementations are still largely dreams of the future.

Nonetheless, the convention’s parade of announcements and progress reports indicated the array of NextGen TV promises is starting to materialize. In particular:

• Sinclair Broadcast Group plans to field-test video and data features at electric vehicle charging stations in Florida (in collaboration with USSI Global);

• BitPath is introducing its NavPath venture for “precision positioning” and plans to roll out services in Portland, Oregon, and Las Vegas;  

• Gaian Solutions is adding 3.0 interactive education features on Curious Crew, a kids  show on PBS station WKAR East Lansing, Michigan.

Moreover, NextGen TV cheerleaders in Las Vegas were ecstatic about a new deal with MediaTek, the semiconductor maker known for its systems-on-a-chip (SoC) technology, which will work with the Pearl TV consortium on a “FastTrack to NextGen TV” project. The goal is to accelerate TV set makers’ production of NextGen TV receivers and related devices, including mobile receivers. 

Throughout NAB Show, Pearl and other NextGen TV promoters made note of the growing sales of ATSC 3.0-equipped TV sets, which are expected to account for 2% of total U.S. TV sales (4.5 million units) this year, according to the Consumer Technology Association’s latest forecast. CTA predicts sales of such sets to rise to 10% next year and reach an “inflection point” (19% or 15.7 million units) in 2024. 

The MediaTek commitment “raises the prospects for NextGen TV adoption in more mainstream TVs since so many TV makers use SoC chipsets from MediaTek,” researcher Paul Gagnon, VP at NPD Group and an industry adviser on consumer technology, said. And there were “next generation” follow-on promises in Las Vegas, such as a watermarking pact between LG Electronics and Verance, to enable personalized interactive features in NextGen TV receivers. Separately, Evoca TV, the independent ATSC 3.0 broadcast pioneer, revealed successful tests of a cross-polarization technology that could double the capacity of internet protocol data delivery from a TV channel. 

Overall, the NextGen TV presence at NAB Show — which included a
larger-than-ever exhibit area — demonstrated a modicum of progress during the pandemic years. Sales reports from ATSC 3.0 set-makers (still only Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung, with Hisense planning to start production soon) total barely 4 million units to date. Purchasers of high-end TV sets (the ones with NextGen receivers) probably don’t know that 3.0 is built into the devices since there is almost no way to see any programs, Gagnon told B+C Multichannel News. 

Revving Up Datacasting

Sinclair Broadcast Group president and CEO Chris Ripley revealed details of a datacasting field trial, transmitting ATSC 3.0 data and video to electric-vehicle charging stations in 28 markets in collaboration with USSI Global, a Florida company that manages network, media, broadcast and digital signage ventures. The project will begin with two charging stations in West Palm Beach, Florida. Resembling existing “gas station TV” pumps at many self-service stations, the USSI Global/Sinclair project will deliver “curated, targeted, unique” programming via the ATSC 3.0 IP data feed from the local TV station. Sinclair owns CBS affiliate WPEC West Palm Beach, Florida. 

Gaian Solutions, a Silicon Valley developer of content delivery products for ATSC 3.0 and other platforms, revealed its pilot education project at WKAR, the Michigan State University-owned public TV station. The project uses Gaian’s Mobius Experience Loop for an interactive Curious Crew show, intended to develop interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) topics among K-12 students. 

Ashwini Kotaru, Gaian’s business operations manager, said part of the project involves use of a real-time artificial intelligence system. “The show’s creative and planning team use the analytics data to plan future show topics, formats and further improve engagements,” Kotaru told B+C Multichannel News.

BitPath president and CEO John Hane said “precision positioning” is an important opportunity for ATSC 3.0 data services, among the “large number of projects we’re analyzing that may turn into viable businesses.” BitPath is the operating name of Spectrum Co, LLC, which is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group.

At NAB Show, BitPath unveiled its BitPoint and NavPath applications, which it calls “game-changing” position, navigation and timing (PNT) services. They will provide applications to support traffic management, accident control, package delivery and ride-sharing. BitPath plans to launch NavPath in several markets this year with expansion next year to its entire footprint.

Hane cited forecasts that the compound annual growth rate of the PNT sector will surpass 22% for the coming decade, compared to 9% for streaming services. He said BitPath has already begun working with system integrators to develop and enhance features in the “robust marketplace” for navigation, positioning and other services that can use the broadcast spectrum with a “significantly enhanced value.”    

BitPath’s first NavPath rollouts will be in Portland and Las Vegas,  while it continues to launch ATSC 3.0 in more locations during the rest of this year. 

Evoca TV, the Idaho-based hybrid OTA/Internet TV service,  revealed that it has just successfully demonstrated the first-ever cross-polarization functionality of the ATSC 3.0 standard. Evoca CEO Todd Achilles said the MIMO (Multiple Input and Multiple Output) feature could double the amount of data that 3.0 signal can convey. The Evoca system, using both horizontally-polarized and vertically-polarized transmission and reception, was successfully tested on its flagship channel in Boise just before
NAB Show. 

For its part, Pearl TV said it had launched Run3TV, a web platform based on the A/344 Interactive Content broadcast standard that enables stations to offer hybrid TV services, including interactive and on-demand features, to over-the-air viewers. Pearl TV did not reveal specific markets that will deploy Run3TV technology.

Promises and Perspective

Another indicator of the growing interest in 3.0 is the number of hopeful vendors who are hopping aboard the hype machine. For example Verance, known for its content measurement and enhancement technologies including digital watermarking, announced a deal with LG Electronics to put its ATSC 3.0 “Aspect” watermark firmware into LG NextGen TV receivers. 

The watermark technology will enable the 3.0 receiver to offer interactive capabilities, including customized and personalized features such as sports interactivity (hometown announcers and watch parties). Verance CEO Nil Shah said the technology enables the information required for two-way services in a connected smart TV set to pass through any distribution environment, including over HDMI links and through existing distribution equipment and set-top boxes. He said “LG’s embrace of the Verance Aspect watermark will serve as a driving market force.”

Consultant Myra Moore, president of Digital Tech Consulting Inc. in Dallas, said optimism for the NextGen TV transition is widespread, but “getting there is a long process.”

“Broadcasters are setting up the infrastructure,” she said, pointing out that stations recently went through the spectrum repack, which often required building a new antenna. She also points out that as a result of the repack, broadcasters — which compete for business — now recognize they are sharing spectrum, which may generate more appetite by the broadcast licensees to collaborate on new ventures.

She cited Evoca’s subscription NextGen TV projects as an illustration that “someone with good imagination” can demonstrate “there is more than one way to use this standard.”    

“There are so many moving parts that haven’t happened before,” Moore said, calling 3.0 “a tool that can do a lot more” than broadcasters have previously been able to offer. She cited data service and other non-traditional offeringss that are forcing the industry to find resources so that they can build and offer new services. 

The Broadband View

Coincidentally, the monthly virtual meeting of the Media Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, was held on the Tuesday of the NAB Show week (historically, the group — with its core of broadcasting executives and lobbyists  ­— would have avoided such a scheduling conflict). Perhaps, less coincidentally, the speaker was Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA–The Internet & Television Association. In response to a question from B+C Multichannel News about the cable industry’s view of NextGen TV, Powell warned the broadcasters’ “ambitious” data objectives “come with risks” that may “pose burdens on other industries and consumers.” ▪️

B+C and Next TV have announced their Best of Show and Best in Market Awards for spring 2022. The awards are judged by a panel of industry experts on the criteria of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and performance in serving the industry.

“This year's awards prove that—despite the constraints imposed by the past several years—the media and entertainment tech industry continues to be driven by innovation and creativity,” said Tom Butts, content director for Future sister publication TV Tech. “We are proud to recognize these companies for their excellence.”

The winners will be featured in the June issue of Broadcasting+Cable with Multichannel News and all nominees will appear in a Best of Show Program ebook.

The Best of Show awards, from B+C, Next TV and TV Tech and other brands at parent company Future, were chosen from companies that exhibited at the 2022 NAB Show and submitted nominations. The Best in Market category was open to any company.

Best of Show (B+C and Next TV)

Amazon Web Services, AWS Elemental MediaTailor Channel Assembly, B+C.

BLUESHAPE, GO7 Green Power Generator, B+C. 

Broadpeak, peakVU.TV, B+C.

Cobalt Digital, 9992-ENC & 9992-DEC SET, Next TV.

Genius Sports, ScoreLink+, B+C.

Imagine Communications, SureFire™, Next TV.

Evertz, the evertz.io platform, Next TV.

Firstlight Media, Firstlight Media Video CMS, Next TV.

LTN Global, LTN Lift, Next TV.

Marketron, Marketron Integration Suite, B+C.

Best in Market (B+C and Next TV)

Blu Digital Group, BluSpot, Next TV.

Evoca, Pilot Set Top Box, Next TV.

INVIDI Technologies, Conexus, B+C.

Pixellot, DoublePlay, Next TV. 

Zixi, Zixi ContentXchange, B+C.

Zixi, ZixiSoftware-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) for 5G Networks, Next TV.

LAS VEGAS — “Welcome to the 2022 NAB Show!” began Curtis LeGeyt, National Association of Broadcasters president and CEO, in his State of the Industry address Monday morning (April 25). “Six words that I’ve waited three years to say!”

The 2022 NAB Show is LeGeyt’s first in his new role. He was chief operating officer of NAB before moving up to president and CEO at the start of the year, with Gordon Smith retiring. 

“There is truly no greater honor than representing your interests in the halls of government every day,” he said, “and I cannot imagine a more exciting or more important time to take the reins of this great association.”

LeGeyt spoke of the role local broadcasters have played amidst the pandemic, civil unrest and attacks on democracy. “Through everything, you were — and are — a leading voice in helping communities sort through a multitude of information and emotions,” LeGeyt said, “while also striving to find common ground and common good.”

He mentioned broadcasters’ ability to bind the communities they work in, while other media often divides them. He noted “next generation” technologies that make broadcast television even more powerful, including ATSC 3.0, 5G, streaming and mobile video, and new developments that are leading an evolution in radio.

“The data capabilities of HD Radio and the connected car give broadcasters powerful new ways to build and extend their listener relationships,” he said. 

LeGeyt described the four areas he’s working on with policymakers. “First, Congress must take action to rein in the gatekeeping ability of the Big Tech giants who are stifling the economics of local news,” he said, noting how local broadcasters lose some $2 billion annually when their content is accessed through Google and Facebook. 

Next, LeGeyt said, lawmakers “must modernize media-ownership laws to reflect the realities of the marketplace.” Google and Facebook control around 77% of locally focused digital advertising, he added. 

Third, NAB urges the FCC “to reorient how it thinks about broadcast policy more broadly,” LeGeyt said. He added that broadcast’s ability to function in the public interest is premised on “its economic viability.” 

His final point for policymakers is urging congressional support for the Local Radio Freedom Act, which opposes a new performance fee on local radio stations.

“Broadcasting is more than a technology. It is a public service — interwoven in the fabric of our communities,” said LeGeyt, sharing a story about Doug Kammerer, meteorologist at NBC’s WRC Washington, who was live on the air when he saw a tornado on the radar, and called his children to warn them while still broadcasting. 

“Doug is one of thousands of local broadcasters providing these kinds of lifelines in their communities every day,” LeGeyt said. 

He concluded, “My hope as your president and CEO is for us to continue our work together to always be there for our communities and give Americans the trusted local journalism only broadcasters can provide.”

Rob Hubbard of Hubbard Broadcasting said LeGeyt delivered a strong presentation. “Curtis has been doing a great job and will continue to do great,” he said. 

Asked what about the address stood out for him, Hubbard said, “the focus on what we do to help our communities.”

Walter Podrazik, a lecturer at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he is eager to pass along parts of LeGeyt’s State of the Industry speech to his students. “I want to share this with the new generation of news consumers,” he said. 

Following LeGeyt’s remarks, Caroline Beasley, CEO of Beasley Media Group, was given the National Radio Award, which honors outstanding leadership in radio. “My service to the radio industry has always come from a true love for the business,” Beasley said. “I grew up in it.”

Beasley said radio broadcasters have a more robust opportunity to deliver compelling content than ever before. “I don’t know about you, but I’m very excited about what the future holds,” she said. 

LeVar Burton, whose on-screen credits include Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Reading Rainbow, received the inaugural Insight Award from the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation. “The stories that we tell set the foundation” of who we are and what is important to us, he said. His family is full of teachers, Burton said, and he took “my branch of the family business into the broadcast medium.”

Burton singled out Alex Haley, Gene Roddenberry and Fred Rogers for bringing “a unique and powerful voice” to America and beyond.

Finally, Gordon Smith, former NAB president and CEO, received the NAB Distinguished Service Award. Following recorded statements from President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton, among others, an emotional Smith said he is accepting the award not for the recognition of what he has accomplished,  but “as a reminder that there is still much yet to do.” He referred to himself as a “foot soldier” in the broadcast battle. 

A former U.S. senator from Oregon, Smith took over as NAB chief in late 2009, and retired at the close of 2021. 

Smith thanked the room for giving him advice, offering him counsel, and at times giving him criticism. “You’ve given me support and you’ve given me friendship,” Smith concluded. ■

LAS VEGAS — In her first NAB Show appearance since her designation as Federal Communications Commission chair, Jessica Rosenworcel conceded that the introduction of a fifth commissioner would solve the agency’s current 2-to-2 political gridlock, but she’s not losing any sleep over it. 

“We’ve got to figure out how to work together, or we don’t get anything done,” she told NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt during a Monday morning (April 25) keynote discussion. 

Whereas previous FCC administrations added to the cacophony of divisive political noise emanating from the Beltway, Rosenworcel said that five months into her administration as the FCC’s first permanent female chair in its 87-year history, the group has simply been given too much to do by Congress to fight amongst itself. 

“We’ve turned down the volume and ramped up the activity,” Rosenworcel said, citing initiatives ranging from the CARES Act to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

“But yes,” she conceded, “I’m looking forward to the day when we have five commissioners."

It was a cordial discussion between a new FCC chair and an also-new NAB chief, who assumed his role in January. The pair grew up just 20 minutes down the road from one another in Connecticut. LeGeyt, a former prep basketball player, noted that his high school was 4-0 against Rosenworcel’s alma mater.

Sharing her connection to and affinity for local media Rosenworcel recalled her teenage fondness for the local radio station WTIC-FM and its “Prize Patrol” promotion, which called for aspiring winners to place a bumper sticker on their cars — an act her parents wouldn’t concede to. 

“I was so resentful, which is probably why I’m up here telling you about it today,” said Rosenworcel 

“We all have so many choices for content,” she said. “But when I get in my car, I want to hear someone from the town I live in.”

Steering the discussion to policy specifics, LeGeyt mentioned the deployment of ATSC 3.0. Rosenworcel works to position the FCC as a facilitator and partner to station operators, she said. The agency wants to enable stations to use ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 simultaneously, so they can experiment with the latter. 

“The framework the FCC has for ATSC 3.0 is the right framework,” she said. “It gives broadcasters a chance to experience, develop use cases and find out what works at scale.

“We want stations to come to us and tell us what they’re seeing,” Rosenworcel added. “If there’s a hurdle in our rules, maybe we can fix that.”

Asked by LeGeyt in the broad-reaching discussion about the topic of diversity, Rosenworcel conceded that her own pioneering position makes the issue a priority with her. 

She said the FCC is aggressively gathering data on the broadcast industry and noted it will be helpful for the NAB in achieving its diversity goals. 

“What we see on our airwaves says so much about who we are,” Rosenworcel said.  ▪️

© 2022 NAB

LAS VEGAS — The NAB Show panel “Engaging Emerging Creators to Tell Authentic Stories” looked at how inviting aspiring filmmakers to share their projects can result in truly impactful films. Abe Mohammadione, VP of experience at Ideas United, spoke about the company partnering with Apple, among others, to help college students produce films. Before the age of YouTube, Mohammadione said the ability for a college student to bring their project to film was “very limited.” 

Ideas United’s Campus Movie Fest, which goes back some 20 years, shared editing software and know-how with students, resulting in more than 27,000 short films. Suddenly there was “no boundary or barrier” for what was in their minds, said Mohammadione. 

Filmmaker Ellie Gravitte spoke of entering a contest to pitch a promo to ABC Entertainment for one of three ABC series. Making the final round of the ABC Women’s Production Program, she flew to Burbank and pitched her idea for a spot for A Million Little Things. She won and got to direct the commercial. 

“It was an absolutely incredible experience,” Gravitte said. “They had handed complete creative control over to me.”

Kevin Sullivan, head of growth at Ideas United, hosted the panel. Based in Atlanta, Ideas United is a creative studio working with what it calls a “global community.”

Gravitte said she looks for transparency and good communication with production partners, who ideally offer “completely open communication about what the scope of a project is going to look like” and their vision for it. 

She added that she felt thoroughly supported when working with Ideas United. “I have felt really, really safe asking stupid questions of you guys,” she said, “which is crucial.”

Mohammadione gave another example of Ideas United seeking out voices who may have otherwise never been heard. DC Comics had a streaming platform, DC Universe, and fans were asked about the kind of shows they want to watch on the platform. The initiative elicited 2,000 ideas. The top 10 entrants got a trip to Burbank, met the DC Comics team and shared their concepts. Three ideas were greenlit to go to pilot, and two got a limited-run order. 

Alas, the DC streaming platform “dissolved,” Mohammadione said, and the shows have not been produced.

Pairing up aspiring filmmakers with more seasoned ones results in better films, the panelists said. Feedback from a partner from a different background can also prove helpful. “Being open to the answers you’re going to get is so crucial,” said Gravitte, who added that she “felt so safe and supported in pitching my ideas.”

Mohammadione discussed an Ideas United project with Starbucks to celebrate National Coffee Day, which depicted genuine moments of love and joy over a coffee and under the roof of a Starbucks. “Everything you see actually happened,” he said. “Being open to the evolution of a concept is really key to the entire thing.” ￭

© 2022 NAB

LAS VEGAS — Streaming is important but complicated for PBS, according to Ira Rubenstein, chief digital and marketing officer for the public broadcasting network.

“For the last eight years I’ve been at PBS, I’ve been very focused on broadening the distribution of our local stations to digital, and you have to do that at scale,” said Rubinstein, speaking at a session at NAB Show’s Capitalize Experimental Zone theater on Sunday.

“It’s just not practical for every one of our 300 stations to figure out on their own livestreaming to Roku and other devices,” he said. “We’ve been working in partnership with people like YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream and hopefully some others. We’re bringing our content to those live platforms.”

It’s not always easy to get distributors to participate, according to Rubenstein. While they want the content, the structure of PBS complicates things.

“It's challenging because we’re not commercial,” he said. “We don't have ads, and all those entities make money by selling ads. And to make it even more fun for them, there are markets in America where there's more than one PBS station,” Rubenstein said, including Washington, D.C., with three PBS outlets.

An outfit like YouTube TV might be happy to take a national feed, but PBS doesn’t have one. 

“Every station’s different, and oh, by the way, there’s going to be three individual feeds coming out of D.C. and you’re going to have to figure that out, please,” he said.

Rubenstein said its partners have so far done a good job adding PBS programming, and there might soon be some others.

Local stations are an important source of programming for PBS. Getting national content has “gotten more complicated with the streamers,” Rubenstein said.

Local stations produce PBS shows such as Frontline, Nova and Antiques Roadshow. 

“We recently announced a fund for emerging and diverse filmmakers,” he added. “We're investing and trying to bring more voices to the platform.”

But the best place for people with programming ideas to go is to a local PBS station, Rubenstein said.

“There are a lot of local stations that do a lot of local production,” he said. “Here in Vegas is one example, L.A., Boston, Minnesota, any major city.” 

He noted that even a smaller-market station like WCTE Cookeville, Tennessee, produces Bluegrass Underground from the caverns there. The Cookeville station only has eight to 12 employees, so “every station is creating content.”

Kids’ programming is another PBS strength, on both linear TV and online.

“More kids watch PBS, our stations or apps, than any other kids’ channel out there,” Rubenstein said.

He said the PBS Kids app does about 400 million streams a month. 

“No one has any idea how large it is,” he said. In addition to the PBS Kids video app, the network recently launched a PBS Kids Games app, which is now just as large as the video app.

“If any of you have children, you know how important video games are and as you would expect from PBS, our games are education-based,” Rubenstein said. “They’re often tied to the curriculum that was being exposed in the shows. So if it was a show about social-emotional learning or had some math functionality, that would be in the corresponding game.”

The games app is built on a sophisticated learning platform, so some of the more recent games can adapt to the child's performance and help the child learn more, he said. 

A lot of children are on YouTube, he noted, and PBS has put its content where the kids can find it with no ads.

Rubinstein said PBS’s education vitality was put to the test during the pandemic.

“Children went home, and it was remote learning, and especially in rural communities, children don’t have broadband, they don’t have the latest computer or the latest tablet,” he said.

Many PBS stations used their multicast capabilities to spin up specific learning channels. Rubenstein said the PBS stations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas worked directly with the school districts to sync up.

Education efforts were coordinated by PBS Learning Media, a joint venture of PBS and WGBH Boston. PBS Learning Media takes all of the network’s shows and cuts them into a curriculum that a homeschool mom or dad or a teacher can assign to kids.

The video is actually edited to support the curriculum, Rubenstein said. If the kids are learning about the Civil War, instead of having to watch all 12 hours of Ken Burns’s documentary, they can get the clip about Gettysburg if they’re studying that. 

“Ken and his team have worked with Learning Media,” Rubenstein said. “One of the things I know Ken loves about working with public media is that his material is in every classroom in America.”

Learning Media has about 1.7 million teachers who have requested material.

“We find a lot of teachers will use clips from our website,” he said. “We leave it all up, of course, and you can see which clips are still in curriculums from five years ago.” ▪️

© 2022 NAB 

When The Walt Disney Co. announced Friday it was moving Dancing with the Stars from ABC after 30 seasons to Disney Plus, it underscored how media companies are prioritizing streaming at the expense of traditional media, including the broadcast networks.

For the network‘s affiliates — allegedly partners — it was the latest slight. The networks promote how easy it is to find their shows on their own direct-to-consumer services, Disney’s Hulu and Disney Plus or NBCUniversal’s Peacock, even though the affiliates are paying substantial program fees to the networks for those shows.

The timing of Disney‘s latest move is an interesting piece of choreography. The National Association of Broadcasters will be holding the NAB Show in Las Vegas later this month and networks will be meeting with their affiliates there, setting up an interesting opportunity to tango.

“Dancing with the Stars will definitely be a topic at the meetings,” said a source at one major station group.

Some mostly smaller affiliates with traditional sensibilities are expected to be quite angry about this latest indignity. Larger station groups see it as part of a long-term trend affecting the network-affiliate relationship as TV turns to streaming. Either way, there are issues that need to be addressed.

Also: 'Watershed Moment' or Just Shuffling an 'Aging Show'? Pundits Debate the 'Dancing with the Stars' Move to Disney Plus 

Just as the media giants stepped over theaters by putting their movies on HBO Max and Disney Plus, slowly but surely broadcast content is heading in the same direction.

When NBCU introduced Peacock, it said episodes of the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers would be available to premium subscribers before they appear on broadcast. (Some affiliates bristled at the plan and that feature was delayed by the pandemic.) Some NBC sitcoms that might have otherwise been canceled — AP Bio, for example — can also be found on Peacock.

NBCU also made Peacock the home of its Olympics coverage, contributing to plunging ratings on the network and at its affiliated stations.

Paramount, formerly ViacomCBS, has moved some series that were popular with CBS viewers from the broadcast network to its streaming service, Paramount Plus. Those include SEAL Team and Evil.

Disney’s Dancing with the Stars two-step continues in those footsteps.

As this is going on, it’s important to remember that, unlike the old days when networks paid affiliates to broadcast their show -- and commercials -- affiliates these days pay programming fees to the network in return for being able to run primetime programming and sports. These fees suck up a big chunk of the revenue the station groups get from cable and satellite operators after they negotiate retransmission fees.

Are the networks going to reduce their demands for affiliate payments as good programming shifts from broadcast to streaming? “Good question,” said one station group executive.

Network shows like Dancing with the Stars benefit from the promotion local stations give them. The stations often work with the network to find contestants from their own market, and use their newscast to hype a flamenco favorite from Fresno. That music may stop.

The networks and affiliates also have to continue to work out how they share payments from streaming virtual multichannel video programming distributors like YouTube TV and Disney’s Hulu Plus Live TV. Those vMVPDs negotiate retrans rights directly with the networks, rather than needing to go market by market, station by station.

News presents yet another issue. The networks have their streaming services and increasingly station groups are creating their own streaming apps, creating new competition and tension. Many stations have signed up to have their news content streamed on national services like VUit, partly owned by Gray Television, and Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stirr.

Overall, stations are pumping up local news, their most profitable programming, because they retain and sell all of the advertising time. They are programming more and longer newscasts, which has put the squeeze on the syndication arms of the big media companies.

As this over-the-top dance plays out, station owners might get a chance to lead, thanks to the next big change in technology. At least that’s what station buyers like Standard General (backed by Apollo Global) and Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group are counting on.

Since the advent of digital broadcasting, station groups large and small have been launching their own national networks on their secondary broadcast channels. Weigel Broadcasting’s MeTV and E.W. Scripps’ Grit and Bounce TV, draw bigger audiences than cable channels like LMN, CMT, HLN, Science Channel or OWN.

In addition to Weigel and Scripps, station groups Sinclair Broadcast Group, Tegna, Nexstar Media Group and Allen Media Group own and distribute multiple diginets.

That trend is likely to expand greatly as NextGen broadcast technology gets adopted by consumers. NextGen TV, using the ATSC 3.0 format, enables stations to broadcast many more diginets on their signals, so there will be more of them.

And while those diginets now mostly carry network reruns, some, like Bounce TV, already carry the kind of original programming that used to appear only on broadcast and cable channels. As their audience — and ad revenues — grow, it’s only a matter of time before they’re producing more of their own dramas and sitcoms.

As media companies gamble on a streaming future, broadcast stations might still be worth betting on, too.  ■

Media mogul Byron Allen said he’s excited about the NAB Show’s return to Las Vegas, about broadcasting and digital media and about the 40th anniversary of Allen Media Group-owned The Weather Channel. 

Allen’s company owns 27 TV stations along with pay TV channels including The Weather Channel, which is launching a Spanish-language outlet as a free streaming channel later this year. Climate change awareness makes the service important, he said. “The Weather Channel is leading the charge and leading the conversation in ‘let’s work together and let’s combat climate change and global warming,’ ” he said in a recent interview. 

Allen, an NAB Television Board member, will be appearing at a fireside chat with outgoing NAB president and CEO Gordon H. Smith on April 27. He’s also on an April 26 panel about new technology enhancing storytelling on The Weather Channel. And he is receiving a leadership award at a breakfast event at the show. “It’s great. I mean, I love it. I’m looking forward to it.”

Also: NAB Show Preview: Live Event Rolls Back Into Las Vegas

Allen was reportedly interested in buying Tegna, which recently agreed to be sold to private equity-backed Standard General for $8.6 billion including $3.2 billion in assumed debt. Allen said he could not comment on Tegna but that he remains interested in buying TV stations, especially affiliates of Big Four networks. “We’re on the hunt, big time,” he said. 

AMG has been launching free ad-supported streaming services, including Sports.TV, TheGrio.TV and HBCUGo.TV, along with Local Now and The Weather Channel en Español, launching in the second or third quarter. Broadcasting and cable outlets including his Entertainment Studios Networks still interest AMG’s founder, chairman and CEO, though.  

Also: NAB Show 2022: Graham Media Group CEO Emily Barr Sets Convention Expectations

“And also, I have to tell you, the industry is appreciating Black-owned media,” Allen said. “I would say 95% of them want to lean in. There’s that 5% that tries to minimize, which is why I sued McDonald’s for $10 billion.” That suit, claiming McDonald’s has discriminated against Black-owned media companies (including The Weather Channel and ES Networks) in ad buying, is working its way through federal courts.

“Listen,” Allen said. “I think that this industry has a huge opportunity to be the leader, make an example and show the rest of corporate America how to do it and how to help us all be better and achieve something that really is long overdue. It’s something we need to put behind us and do the right way and make us all better and really lean in to make sure every American is successful, and I do mean every American, young, old, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, everybody.” ■

After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, broadcasters will finally be able to return to the National Association of Broadcasters’ NAB Show in person April 23-27 in Las Vegas. The organization has been working hard over the past several months to make it one to remember, splitting the event into three pillars — Create, Connect and Capitalize — along with the usual roundup of compelling keynote speakers and seminars.

The NAB Show was canceled in 2020 and went virtual in 2021 because of COVID-19. The return to an in-person event comes months after another big industry conference in Las Vegas, CES, did the same in January and hosted perhaps 45,000 attendees. While that was considerably lower than previous CES shows that boasted attendance of more than 100,000, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt is optimistic that the NAB Show can do better for two reasons: the omicron variant, still rising at the time of CES, appears to have peaked; and the new structure for the show is geared to optimize the time of virtually every attendee. (Future US Inc., parent company of B+C Multichannel News, publishes the NAB Show Daily under contract with NAB.) 

Also: NAB Show 2022: Graham Media Group CEO Emily Barr Sets Convention Expectations

LeGeyt said that as of mid-February, attendance for the show was looking strong.

“We’re on a trajectory for a very, very strong show.” LeGeyt said. “We’re very, very optimistic,” adding that he was encouraged by the CES numbers. CES was affected most by omicron, which kept home the throngs of consumers that usually populate that show. But those that did attend were hard-core business attendees, which could bode well for NAB. 

“There’s nothing that quite replicates face-to-face business interaction,” LeGeyt said. “Ours is a commerce-driven show, it’s a B2B event. For those who are looking to do commerce, which is primarily what our show is driven by, there is a real want for what the NAB Show offers.”  

Other industry executives said they’re equally excited.

Graham Media Group president and CEO Emily Barr said she is sending a full complement of people to the show, including general managers, Graham Media’s director of technology, IT directors and several attorneys. The number of attendees from Graham Media is about the same as it was pre-COVID-19, she said.

“We’ve always sent a pretty good-sized contingent of people to NAB, because we’ve always believed it was a great venue for us not only to attend and see what’s going on in the industry, in terms of equipment and other things going on, but it’s also great for us to get together there,” Barr said.

Hearst Television president Jordan Wertlieb said that his company is sending its biggest contingent ever to this year’s NAB Show.

“We’re going to be bringing all of our chief engineers from each of our stations, our corporate engineering staff and a lot of our corporate executive team,” Wertlieb said. “We’re going to be bolting group meetings onto the back side of the show, but we are going to bring all of our chief engineers to the show.”    

The biggest benefit is being able to meet again in person, Barr added. After two years of COVID-19-induced quarantines, it will be good to get to see old and new colleagues again. 

“I do think there’s a kind of energy and creativity that comes from everyone being in the same physical space,” she said. “Frankly, I think it’s going to be exciting.”

Zoned for Experiences

The new event design is built around real-world applications and workflows that, according to NAB Show senior VP of business development Eric Trabb, allows attendees to easily navigate the show floor and visit experience zones that bring products and technologies to life. 

The zones, focusing on the concepts of inspiration, innovation and implementation, are designed to give attendees a clearer sense of the larger picture, new directions and opportunities in broadcasting, as well as the tools and technologies to get ahead. 

Inspiration, Innovation and Experience zones are contained within each of the three pillars of the content life cycle — Create, Connect and Capitalize — with complementary activities and resources aligned with each pillar, to make it easier for attendees to learn more about specific areas of interest, network with like-minded people and find products. 

Also: NAB Announces Recipients of 2022 Engineering Achievement Award

For example, within the Create pillar, attendees will see that the focus no longer is on broadcast, film or radio, nor on any other narrow category like podcasting or webcasting. Instead, the Create pillar will function as a single place where attendees can find all the tools needed to do their work, whether they are broadcasters, videographers, streamers or other industry professionals. If, for example, an attendee is more focused on content distribution and delivery, those tools can be found in Connect. For a focus on content monetization, Capitalize is the place to be.

“Rather than having to run all over the place based on where particular companies are, we feel this is really going to match the needs of attendees,” LeGeyt said. “And the feedback has been nothing but positive.”

Barr said the new structure is a sign of the changing times in the broadcast business. 

“I think the show has morphed into a much more sophisticated, nuanced kind of show that allows a variety of people from across the spectrum to come together and get something out of it,” Barr said. “In the old days, it was really about going to see the trucks and the antennas — that’s all still there to some extent — but now we’re really looking at content development, we’re looking at a lot of digital technology and we’re understanding how different parts of the industry can work together. To your point about there is some deal-making that goes on, whether it’s looking at new entrants into the business and saying I’d like to do a deal with this company or I would like to maybe invest in this company, there’s a lot of different layers and I think that’s what makes the show really valuable.” 

Content Takes the Floor

Content is being produced for the show by NAB as well as by curated sponsors, featuring industry leaders and other individuals making their marks on the media landscape. But rather than having to look for this content in a meeting or conference room, NAB said attendees will see it come to life on the show floor, although there will be conference programs for those seeking more depth or technical content. 

LeGeyt also pointed out that the show’s intelligent content area, which is focused on data and analytics, should be a place of interest to attendees.

“This is a bit of a new experience for businesses that have historically built around advertising and carriage fees,” LeGeyt said. “There’s so much focus right now on data and analytics and how to incorporate that into our businesses. I think that’s going to be a really exciting part of the show this April. When you think about the companies involved — AWS, Microsoft, MediaKind, Veritone —  I think that’s going to be really interesting to see how our attendees respond to those offerings.”  

Actor and TV host Nick Cannon officially kicks off the conference on Sunday, April 24, with a conversation about his career, his talk show and his thoughts on how the industry has evolved over the past two tumultuous years. On Monday, LeGeyt officially welcomes attendees to the conference, later presenting former NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith with the NAB Distinguished Service Award followed by entertainment from nationally-known comedian Jim Gaffigan. 

On Tuesday, TikTok global head of B2B marketing Carly Zipp will participate in a Q&A with the NAB’s Jonathan Toomey, discussing the social media phenomenon’s history as well as sharing tips for NAB members on how to connect with their audiences on a deeper level.

On April 27 Smith will join Allen Media Group & Entertainment Studios founder, chairman and CEO Byron Allen for a conversation discussing their unique career paths, respective roles as advocates and leaders, and speaking on the value of local television.

LeGeyt said although there are many factors outside of the NAB’s control, he firmly believes that the April event is “going to be a compelling, well-attended show.”

“We feel the pent-up demand from the exhibitor side,” he continued. “The companies who are really our flagships are all back in the fold for this April show. We just feel like the right ingredients are there for a really successful show both on the attendee and exhibitor side come April.” ■ 

B+C is checking in with broadcasters about their expectations for this year’s NAB Show, scheduled for April 23-27 in Las Vegas. Senior content producer Mike Farrell spoke with Graham Media Group president and CEO Emily Barr about her outlook for the convention. An edited transcript follows. 

What are your plans for attending the show this year? Is this bigger or about the same size as you have done in the past?

EB: We have a whole complement of individuals attending, this would include our general managers, our director of technology, our IT directors and several of our attorneys.

It’s about the same size as we would have normally sent back pre-COVID. We’ve always sent a pretty good sized contingent of people to NAB, because we’ve always believed it was a great venue for us not only to attend and see what’s going  on in the industry, in terms of equipment and other things going on, but it’s also great for us to get together there. For example, our directors of tech and IT personnel have a meeting all day Sunday, the first day of NAB. They meet and they have presentations from various  vendors and things of that nature. So they have a full meeting that goes on all day, and then they fan out and go to the show itself.  

This is by some considered to be a more deal-oriented show than other conferences. Would you agree?

EB: It’s a very interesting show because it has a lot of different layers. You have the underlying layer of all the technology, but over the years there have been another couple of layers of complexity to the show. You have bankers and hedge fund managers and people like that who are interested in our industry and they tend to attend; you have people on the research side -- whether it's Nielsen, ComScore or any of the many new entrants on research; you have programmers syndicators that sort of group that attend. I think what it is, is a perfect place for everyone to come together and assess not only what is happening right now, but what looks to be coming up in the future in terms of the broadcast industry.

How do you feel about the way the show has been restructured around three pillars -- Create, Connect and Capitalize?

EB: I think the show has morphed into a much more sophisticated, nuanced kind of show that allows a variety of people from across the spectrum to come together and get something out of it. In the old days, it was really about going to see the trucks and the antennas -- that’s all still there to some extent -- but now we’re really looking at  content development, we’re looking at a lot of digital technology and we’re understanding how different parts of the industry can work together. To your point about there is some deal making that goes on, whether it’s looking at new entrants into the business and saying I’d like to do a deal with this company or I would like to maybe invest in this company, there's a lot of different layers and I think that’s what makes the show really valuable. 

Any ideas or hopes of what you want to accomplish at the show?

EB: I want my folks to feel reinvigorated and excited about the future, whether that’s ATSC or new ways of delivering content, or digital production, whatever it may be I want them to feel excited and have that sense of discovery you get when you’re with other people that understand what you do and then there’s that ‘A-ha’ moment. I’m hopeful that we’re going to experience some of that. 

I think we all need the camaraderie and the gathering together that we’ve just missed. Zoom has been extremely beneficial  for all of us to get us to this point, but now I feel that we’ve finally gotten over the hump. COVID’s not going to go away, but we have a lot of tools to manage it and to keep it at bay and I hope that we utilize them in such a way that we can start to really truly live our lives again And this is one big step in doing that on the business level. 

Any technology you’re planning on exploring at the show?

EB: We’re very much engaged with ATSC [NextGen TV], three of our stations are up and running, so I think we’re going to be curious about what some of the tech companies are going to present and show us. We’re always looking for ways to be more efficient with news gathering. For me, it’s about listening not only to the content producers, but the content distributors, so we understand how we fit in on the local side when it comes to streaming and that sort of thing.

(Note: B+C parent Future US Inc. produces the NAB Show Daily at the convention, under contract with NAB.) ■ 

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) said Xperi Corp.’s Ashruf El-Dinary and Capitol Broadcasting’s Peter Sockett are the recipients of the 2022 Engineering Achievement Awards. They will be presented at the NAB Show in Las Vegas (April 23-27).

NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt will present the awards during a panel titled “Hollywood’s ‘Binge Times' OTT Battle and NAB Engineering Awards” on Sunday, April 24 at 3 p.m. PT.

El-Dinary is senior VP of digital platforms at Xperi, where he currently leads efforts toward “new broadcast applications, upgrades to emergency alerting and deployment of digital radio solutions internationally,” NAB said in a release. 

He has 20 years of experience and previously worked at The John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He also taught courses at JHU's Whiting School of Engineering.

Sockett is the director of engineering and operations at Capitol Broadcasting Co. (CBC) television stations. He is also on the board of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and is the chair of the ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerting Implementation team. He has earned three Emmy Awards, Broadcasting+Cable's Technology Leadership Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Sockett is also coinventor of a patent for geolocation. ■

Nominations are now being accepted for the B+C and Next TV Best in Market and Best of Show Awards for spring 2022. The deadline has been extended for one week, to Friday, April 15.

“We're looking forward to the likelihood of an in-person event in April,” said Tom Butts, editor in chief of sister publication TV Tech. “People want to return to some semblance of normalcy in our industry and we're hoping the 2022 NAB Show will bring some of that back, giving attendees the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and expanding their network of industry connections.

“TV Tech is proud to bring back the Best in Show and Best in Market awards that recognize technology excellence, allowing us to honor advances from companies that exhibit at the show or choose to participate through the Best in Market option.”

The Best of Show awards are chosen from companies that exhibit at the NAB Show in April and that submit nominations. The Best in Market is open to any company.

Participating brands include B+C, Next TV, TV Tech, TVBEurope, Radio World, Mix and Sound & Video Contractor. Each publication announces its own winners’ list.

All nominees and winners will be featured in a post-convention Program Guide distributed to our readers. (Here’s a look at last year’s guide.)

The nomination page includes answers to frequently asked questions. ■

The NAB Show may have been canceled, but industry manufacturers still have an opportunity to highlight their new products this season.

The Best in Market Awards offer a platform for the many products and solutions in the marketplace that could not be seen at major trade shows this year. The program will take the place of the “Best of Show” Awards that would have run at the convention.

The program is open to all manufacturers of professional radio, TV and AV products and solutions, regardless of exhibitor status at major events.

The Best in Market awards will be judged and presented by Future brands Broadcasting + Cable, Next TV, Radio World, TV Technology, TVBEurope, Mix, and Sound & Video Contractor.

The awards are intended to honor and help companies promote outstanding products launching in 2021.

The deadline for nominations also has been extended to Oct. 7. 

The National Association of Broadcasters convention, NAB Show 2021, has been canceled with concerns about the coronavirus pandemic leading to key exhibitors pulling out of the live event.

NAB Show 2021 was slated for Oct. 9-13 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The 2020 convention went virtual amid the initial COVID-19 outbreak.

"For more than a year we have worked tirelessly to bring our industry together safely in Las Vegas at NAB Show. Unfortunately, the pandemic and surge of the Delta variant has presented unexpected and insurmountable challenges for our global community," the NAB said.

Last week Sony Electronics said it was withdrawing from in-person gatherings in October. In addition to the NAB Show, Sony withdrew from InfoComm.

Ross Video followed Sony in pulling out from the NAB Show, as did Panasonic and Canon.

COVID has had a huge impact on the trade show business despite efforts this year to go back to live gatherings. Last week the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers converted its October convention, the Cable-Tec Expo, to an online gathering because of travel and health concerns.

CES, the huge consumer electronics event scheduled for Las Vegas in January, has said it is moving forward as a live event with vaccination proof required. The Consumer Technology Association this week sent emails opening the registration process.

Future, which owns B+C, Next TV and TV Tech, is an NAB Partner and produces the NAB Show Daily.

NAB posted this statement on its website today:

To Our NAB Show Community: 

For more than a year we have worked tirelessly to bring our industry together safely in Las Vegas at NAB Show. Unfortunately, the pandemic and surge of the Delta variant has presented unexpected and insurmountable challenges for our global community. As we have always kept the best interest and safety of the industry as our priority, it has become apparent in the face of these challenges that we can no longer effectively host NAB Show or our co-located events, the Radio Show and Sales and Management Television Exchange, in person. 

NAB Show is the premiere destination for the media and entertainment industry and we will not move forward with a show that delivers anything less than the excellence our community has come to expect and deserves from us. 

While we are disappointed that we will not be together again in person next month, we look forward to converging at the 2022 NAB Show, April 23-27, 2022, to reignite our passion for our business and focus on a bright future ahead. Stay tuned for details regarding virtual options for accessing select 2021 NAB Show content through NAB Amplify.

Gordon Smith will step away from his day-to-day duties as president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters at year-end. 

Smith took over in November 2009, following the long and storied tenure of Eddie Fritts atop the association, a hard act to follow as demonstrated by the short and rather rocky tenure of ex-beer association executive David Rehr that preceded Smith’s arrival. Back in April 2021, NAB said the departing Smith would be succeeded in January by Curtis LeGeyt, currently the association’s chief operating officer. Smith will transition to an advisory and advocacy role through Dec. 31, 2024. 

Also Read: NAB Show Canceled Amid Concerns About Coronavirus

A former U.S. Senator from Oregon, Smith has guided his members through a number of  sea changes on the way to its interactive, next-gen future, always with his eye on the North Star of the industry’s public-interest calling.

We reached out to some major Washington players for their thoughts on his tenure and what emerged was a strikingly consistent portrait of a fundamentally good man and an executive who has exhibited grace under pressure and commanded respect, while garnering affection from allies and the loyal opposition alike.

Jessica Rosenworcel, Acting FCC Chairwoman

Senator Smith took the reins at NAB right after broadcast television stations transitioned to digital service. After ushering these stations into a new age, he faced another big challenge as the same stations were given the option to participate in the first ever broadcast incentive auction. That’s a lot of change to manage!  

He did it all gracefully and along the way he was also a zealous advocate for radio and a consistently smart and respectful presence in every policy discussion about the power and potential of broadcasting. I wish him the best in retirement. 

Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Electronics Association

Senator Smith is a strong and steady leader, who has ensured broadcasters made their voices heard on major policy issues. On a personal level, I have enormous respect and appreciation for Senator Smith. He is trustworthy, intelligent and has a dignity that sets him apart as a stellar individual. 

Preston Padden, Former top News Corp. and Disney Executive, Currently an Independent Consultant

Gordon Smith may be the nicest person in Washington, D.C. Coupled with a keen grasp of the issues, that niceness has reaped huge rewards for broadcasters

Chip Pickering, CEO, INCOMPAS and Former Mississippi Congressman

An industry of communicators has been blessed to have Gordon Smith serve as their voice for the past decade. He is a tremendous leader, whose wisdom and decency has helped unite many of us around common goals for the greater good.

It was a true honor to serve with Gordon in Congress, and then to be at the table with him as our industry continues to evolve toward a brighter, better future. Family is and always will be Gordon’s true north, and I am excited for them as a new journey begins.

Richard Wiley, Chairman Emeritus, Wiley Rein LLP, and Former FCC Chair

Gordon Smith has been a forceful, determined and effective advocate for the broadcast industry. But, at the same time, he is a thoroughly considerate individual admired by allies and opponents alike. And, yes, I would buy frozen foods and maybe even a used car from him. [Smith Frozen Foods is the family business].

Matthew M. Polka, President and CEO, ACA Connects

NAB president Gordon Smith has served with distinction in public service and government relations since 1992. Whether in the Oregon State Senate, the U.S. Senate or in his post leading the NAB, Senator Smith navigated the tricky waters of politics with character, dignity and an always-friendly demeanor. In his work at NAB, he led networks, television groups and radio stations — not always the most sanguine of groups — with skill and savvy during dramatic change in the market, especially in the competitive tussle for advertising support. 

Everyone I know who dealt with Senator Smith knew him to be not only a worthy adversary, but also a leader who always made a sincere attempt to appreciate the other side’s point of view. The Washington, D.C., public policy scene will miss Senator Smith and his uncommon approach to advocacy in action. I wish Senator Smith the very best, with God’s many blessings.

Robert McDowell, Co-Chair, Global Communications Practice, Cooley LLP, and Former FCC Commissioner

Gordon has led NAB with grace, wit, determination and resilience. His steady hand on the association’s tiller has navigated it through the treacherous waters of increasing and intense competition from powerful tech companies for eyeballs, ears and ad dollars; increasing and asymmetric regulation of broadcasters when compared to other media, especially during the Obama years; and enduring a pandemic that dealt a blow to NAB’s revenue, among many other challenges. 

Throughout it all, Gordon was a calm and courageous voice of reason who was a delight to work with while I was a commissioner. His legacy will cast a long shadow for years to come.

Steven K. Berry, President and CEO, Competitive Carriers Association

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and working with Gordon Smith for many years, and I consider him a friend. Gordon has been a highly effective advocate for NAB, bringing stability and a healthy understanding and knowledge of Congress to the organization. 

He is a respected industry leader, an honest broker of solutions, and on a personal level, someone I’d be glad to meet out on the golf course any day of the week. Congratulations Gordon on your accomplishments; I wish you well in your future endeavors!

Michael Powell, President and CEO, NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, and Former FCC Chair

I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Gordon Smith for years, both while he was a U.S. senator and then as he led the National Association of Broadcasters for more than a decade. 

Gordon is a truly honorable public servant and friend whose calm demeanor and thoughtful leadership helped steer NAB during a period of significant change and upheaval in the traditional media marketplace. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors and his well-deserved retirement.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair, Senate Commerce Committee

I have had the pleasure of working with Senator Gordon Smith for decades, first as a colleague in the Senate and then in his role as the head of the National Association of Broadcasters.

He has always been a tireless advocate for those he represents, from the people of Oregon to radio and television broadcasters throughout the country. The country will be better for the work Gordon has done to secure a bright future for local broadcasting even as consumer video habits have changed. 

And Gordon knew better than most how important it is for broadcasters to remain committed to the cities and towns where they are located while serving the larger national interest. I wish Gordon all the best in his retirement.

The National Association of Broadcasters convention, NAB Show 2021, slated for Oct. 9-13 in Las Vegas, lost several big exhibitors this week as companies grapple with the challenge of in-person gatherings as COVID-19's spread continues.

As Future site TV Tech has reported, Sony Electronics said on Tuesday it would withdraw from in-person gatherings in October, including NAB Show and InfoComm. "While these events are an important forum to reach our customers and introduce new products, this is a choice we made to ensure we’re putting our employees’ and our partners’ health and well-being first," Theresa Alesso, president, Pro Division, Sony Electronics said in a statement. Sony said it planned to hold a press conference in conjunction with NAB on Sunday, Oct. 10, at 9 a.m. PT/noon ET.

After Sony said it was pulling out, Ross Video said it was withdrawing from the convention, citing "the challenges posed by the fluctuating public health situation in Nevada (and elsewhere around the world), travel restrictions into the USA, logistics and general uncertainty among exhibitors and potential attendees." Ross said instead it will share new product announcements during a Ross Live series of online broadcasts.

Then came word from Panasonic and Canon that they, too, would not be participating live at NAB Show. Canon also pulled back from InfoComm, slated for Oct. 23-29 in Orlando, Florida. (Update on Sept. 14: Brainstorm also will not be exhibiting, TV Tech reported.)

Before the pullbacks, NAB had been expecting to welcome more than 600 exhibitors back to Vegas for NAB Show, which went virtual in 2020. The 2021 broadcasters' convention was pushed back from the typical April timeframe to October in hopes the pandemic would have abated sufficiently by then. The delta variant, though, has caused COVID cases and hospitalizations to spike around the country, especially in states where vaccination rates are low. On Friday, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers converted its October convention, the Cable-Tec Expo, to an online gathering because of travel and health concerns. 

In response to the Sony pullout, Ann Marie Cummings, senior VP of communications at NAB, told TV Tech: “Sony is a valued partner, and we respect this difficult decision. We look forward to continuing to work with them to reach the NAB Show audience both in person and virtually. Recognizing that NAB Show is an economic engine for our industry, we are committed to delivering a productive in-person experience and have taken important steps to prioritize the safety of our community, including requiring proof of vaccination. We are pleased to host more than 600 exhibiting companies, ready to meet with buyers and get back to business in Las Vegas.”

NAB later pointed to a video presentation (which can be viewed here) in which NAB CEO Gordon Smith said about the convention: "This Show will be unlike any other in our history, as it has certainly been a unique year. Our audience size and scope will reflect those most passionate and eager to reconnect, creating a strong and productive experience for all who are able to join us. The 2021 NAB Show is a beacon… a marker for our industry…one that will invigorate and guide us into 2022 with a new level of momentum. It will be the largest and most significant event for broadcasters and the entire media and entertainment industry. This event has always been an economic engine of our industry, and we are excited to welcome over 600 exhibitors who are ready to meet with buyers and move this business forward."

Future, which owns B+C, Next TV and TV Tech, is an NAB Partner and produces the NAB Show Daily.

National Association of Broadcasters executive VP Chris Brown said Wednesday (Aug. 18) that given the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant, all attendees at the upcoming in person NAB Show in Las Vegas in October will have to be vaccinated.

That comes as the COVID-19 delta variant has driven a new spike in cases and hospitalizations.

In a letter to attendees and others involved with the NAB Show, Brown, who heads up events, said: "[W]e will require all attendees and participants to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. We think this is a positive step in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and will provide further details on implementation as well as other safety measures under consideration."

He said that came after gathering feedback from exhibitors and attendees, and Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak's announcement this week that large indoor gatherings in the city could opt out of state mask requirements if they could verify the people there had been vaccinated.

Also Read: Next Gen TV Backers Seek Answers at Conferences

NAB certainly qualifies as a large gathering given the tens of thousands that have gathered for the annual convention.

Brown said NAB has been refining safety protocols for the in-person show over the past few weeks but did not indicate whether the requirement of vaccine proof means it will not be requiring masks for indoor events or whether the requirement is for full vaccination.

An NAB spokesperson said: "We’re working out those details and will have more information to share soon." But she did point to the current advice on its web site that “at this time it is recommended that all NAB Show participants wear a mask onsite.”

Also Read: Conventions Lean Toward In-Person Events

"NAB Show is a momentous opportunity for the industry to reengage. We are ready to provide an unparalleled forum for inspiration and innovation while safeguarding those in attendance with sound health and safety protocols," Brown said in the letter.

The NAB Show is scheduled for Oct. 9-13.

Broadcast stations in 16 more markets are lighting up their ATSC 3.0 signals this summer, bringing the total to 47 metro areas. About 150 stations are involved, with many of them transmitting multiple channels in the NextGen TV standard. 

Since May, NextGen stations have popped up in Atlanta; Baltimore; Charlotte, North Carolina; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Hartford-New Haven, Connecticut; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City; St. Louis; Little Rock, Arkansas; Orlando and West Palm Beach, Florida; and Sacramento, California. 

In Phoenix, where the “model market” launch has been underway for more than a year, Single Frequency Network (SFN) transmissions started in July. 

Following a year of pandemic-induced virtual development, the NextGen TV community will plunge into a new round of personal meetings in coming months. Among the issues confronting them are operations and competitive digital services. 

Supporters hope that many of the concerns will be addressed and resolved during the Advanced Systems Committee’s 2021 NextGen Broadcast conference, a live annual event in Washington, D.C., Aug. 25-26.   

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, part of the Pearl TV broadcaster consortium that also includes Nexstar Media Group, plans to show its first mock-up of a network operations center for 3.0, with an eye toward bringing stations together to operation effectively as a distribution network, Mark Aitken, vice president of advance technology at Sinclair and president of its ONE Media subsidiary, said. 

Also on the conference calendar agenda is the Consumer Electronics Design and Installation Association’s CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis on Sept. 1-3, where NextGen TV hopes to make inroads – prior to its next pitch to the CE industry at the Consumer Technology Association's CES 2022 in Las Vegas in January. 

Looking further into the future, by the time of the NAB Show convention Las Vegas in October, Sinclair plans to show off SFN capabilities and also mobile applications on “true consumer phones.” Aitken said that Sinclair’s chip subsidiary Saankhya Labs has made a deal with one of the handset makers (which he declined to identify) that supplies devices to Verizon. 

Another landmark in the ATSC 3.0 rollout will be the launch of a special NextGen TV showcase in the nation's capital in September. It will focus on the coordination of signals from two sticks: WHUT-TV, the public-TV channel, is handling several of the signals and the new WIAV-CD (a Class A station that Sinclair acquired late last year) will transmit channels. Program details and promotional plans (including political focus) are still being developed. 

With vaccination levels approaching 70% of the adult population, several cable and broadcast conventions are planning on making the 2021 slate at least partly an in-person experience for the first time since 2019.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 66% of U.S. residents aged 18 and older have taken at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 57% are fully vaccinated. 

The National Association of Broadcasters is kicking off its NAB Show Oct. 9-13 in Las Vegas. Actor and comedian Jim Gaffigan is slated to perform live at the NAB Show Sunday Kick Off at 4:15 PST on Oct. 10.

“After a difficult year and unfortunate hiatus for the NAB Show, we look forward to celebrating the opening of the show floor with the ever talented and hilarious Jim Gaffigan,” NAB president and CEO Gordon Smith said in a press release. "His notoriously fun and entertaining performance is ideal for this momentous occasion as we reunite and re-engage in Las Vegas.”

Also as part of the event, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt anchor and award-winning journalist Lester Holt will be inducted into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame on Oct. 11.

Like some other organizations, NAB was forced to move the dates for its 2021 confab because of the pandemic. The 2021 event was originally scheduled for April 11-14, but it was decided in September 2020 to move the event to October.

NAB has said it is going ahead still with the NAB Show in 2022 on April 23-27 in Las Vegas.

The Society of Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-TEC Expo will be held Oct. 11-14 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta and will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event, according to organizers. Last year’s Cable-TEC Expo broke records with more than 3,000 people attending the Opening General Session of the all-virtual event. 

The SCTE also said it will hold a joint forum linking the Cable-TEC Expo with the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 12. 

According to SCTE, joint sessions will include live, interconnected presentations and audience questions originating from both Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta and the BEIT Conference in Las Vegas, with hosts at each location to field questions and moderate the conversations. The dual-site event will include live panels and interactive discussions that explore timely topics, such as dynamic ad insertion and NextGen TV.

Global marketing organization DPAA said it will hold its Video Everywhere Summit in-person at the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan on Oct. 12.

“Regions are opening up and it’s time for us to all reconnect in-person,” DPAA president and CEO Barry Frey said in a press release “After careful consideration and talking with members, brand and agency leadership we decided to hold this year’s Summit in-person as our community needs to reconnect in person.”

IBC, the big international content and technology convention in Amsterdam, is slated for an in-person gathering Dec. 3-6 at the RAI Amsterdam complex. The theme is Come Together Again.

The 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, which was all-digital in January 2021, is expected to be a hybrid in-person and virtual event, slated for Jan 5-8 in Las Vegas.

“We’re thrilled to return to Las Vegas – home to CES for more than 40 years – and look forward to seeing many new and returning faces,” Consumer Technology Association president Gary Shapiro said in a press release in April. “Hundreds of executives have told us how much they need CES to meet new and existing customers, find partners, reach media and discover innovation.”

As was reported earlier, The Cable Center’s induction ceremony for the 2021 class of Cable TV Pioneers will be held  on Oct. 11 in Atlanta, as part of the SCTE-Cable-TEC Expo.

The Cable Center’s 2021 Cable Hall of Fame celebration will be held virtually, on Oct. 20.

Two words recur frequently during a discussion with Curtis LeGeyt, the next president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters. They describe
his operating vision: “bipartisan” and “collaborative.”   

He also peppers conversations with media buzzwords — especially “disruptive” and “diversity” — reflecting the challenges that face an industry now buffeted by technology, pandemic economics and shifting demographics.  

LeGeyt (pronounced Le-JET), who has been on the NAB staff since 2011, mostly as a senior government relations executive, became NAB’s chief operating officer about a year ago. He will take over the top spot on Jan. 1, 2022, from Gordon Smith, who has held the post since 2009. LeGeyt believes the continuity from Smith to him will assure NAB’s ability to handle its swath of priorities, ranging from retransmission consent policies, spectrum usage and local journalism to ownership, ad tax and performance tax decisions. 

“We approach advocacy from a bipartisan perspective,” he said. 

LeGeyt sees a “nexus between journalism, ownership and tech competition,” which he cited as three major “interrelated” factors affecting the broadcasting industry.  

“We hope Congress and the Federal Communications Commission understand the disruption” that these developments are causing, LeGeyt said during a telephone interview shortly after NAB revealed the succession plan in early April. He focused on the role that “local broadcasters have as gatekeepers for local audiences” compared to global technology providers. 

LeGeyt also emphasized the need to “make sure that advertisers understand local broadcasters” can reach customers in better ways than online systems. 

He said “one of the great silver linings” of the pandemic period was the “renewed  appreciation that local broadcasters can provide information about local businesses, schools, vaccine status” and other community needs. LeGeyt affirmed plans to collaborate with the News Media Alliance (once known as the Newspaper Association of America ) to show policymakers the value of local media. 

Citing April’s Supreme Court decision on broadcast ownership rules, LeGeyt said “we’re going to pull every thread to create a policy landscape” that appreciates “how much investment it takes to create a local news product” — a service global tech companies cannot provide, he contended. 

Newspapers and broadcasters may have different business practices, LeGeyt added, but when it comes to the impact of local news, “our interests converge.”

“We both see a large part of our audience access or content on digital platforms,” he acknowledged, and the goal is not to stop the tech companies. But he wants to make sure that legislators and regulators remain aware of the importance of local sources. “The good news is that policymakers are extremely focused on this issue,” he said. 

LeGeyt sees NAB’s role as making sure that the industries work together to maintain that awareness and support. 

First Democrat in 60 Years

LeGeyt’s decade at NAB has solidified his perception of broadcasting’s role in the evolving media landscape. 

“You have a hyper-partisan cable news and digital ecosystem,” he said, acknowledging “a lot of distrust of media at large.”

“Our stations are emerging out of that,” LeGeyt explained, because audiences know that “local broadcasters are in the community.” Viewers and listeners “appreciate that,” he said. 

LeGeyt came to NAB from the staff of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). He’s the first Democrat to head the association since former Florida Sen. and Gov. LeRoy Collins held the post in the early 1960s. (Smith is a former Republican U.S. Senator from Oregon.) LeGeyt is only the sixth NAB president during six decades. 

LeGeyt was attracted to join NAB a decade ago because of his background in antitrust and copyright law, after an undergraduate education in economics. 

“The opportunity to leverage that background for an industry that is a cornerstone of American democracy was the real appeal,” LeGeyt recalled.  “There is no place where you sit at the intersection of so many issues that are so disruptive but are so critical.” 

“That’s what brought me to NAB in the first place. That’s the evolution in the time I’ve been here,” he added. 

NAB did not run a traditional search committee process to select LeGeyt as its next president. He called his selection an “affirmation” of satisfaction for his work with Smith during the past decade and the value of continuity of leadership. He cited a nonpartisan ability to leverage relationships with lawmakers. 

Smith’s contract as president ran through 2023; he will become a senior adviser to the association for three more years (through 2024), available to help with “bipartisan advocacy,” LeGeyt said. Smith plans to return to his Oregon home to help run the family food processing business and other projects but will be available for D.C. duties when needed.  

Although NAB has not revealed LeGeyt’s pay package, it is believed to match Smith’s compensation. According to CEO Update, which tracks association executive salaries, Smith’s recent annual base salary was just above $2 million, with bonuses and perks bringing his total paycheck to about $2.27 million per year.

Mixing Economics, Tech and Policy

The impact of streaming media is high on LeGeyt’s issues agenda, citing its disruptive impact.  

“We need to be where consumers are,” he said. “Since viewers increasingly consume via streaming, we need to be accessible wherever and however they want us.” 

LeGeyt said part of his immediate mission is explaining the ways the pandemic has reshaped the media landscape to policymakers.

“Ad dollars for broadcasters were tremendously stressed,” he said. “That exposed some key elements of whom we’re competing against. It added a sense of urgency, the need to confront the tech disruption. 

“The most important thing we need to do is make sure that lawmakers understand clearly what broadcasters are facing, especially in the competition for ad dollars,” he said. “We want to make sure lawmakers understand the challenge in this entire process,” emphasizing the “challenge to remain forward-looking” to anticipate evolving technical platforms.

That’s where NextGen TV, or ATSC 3.0, also high on LeGeyt’s agenda, comes in. He said it will “assure that our station groups can invest in new tech, which is key to providing service.”

Convention Plans And Personal Life

As for NAB’s near-term agenda, LeGeyt followed up on recent explanations about the October plans for the NAB Show in Las Vegas. NAB executive VP of business operations Chris Brown (who heads convention activities) recently laid out expectations for attendance at about 70% of 2019 levels and about 600 exhibitors (compared to more than 1,000 in April 2019). 

“We’re bullish about the October convention,” LeGeyt said.  “The demand is there. We’re hearing from members and exhibitors who are yearning to be back in person.” The combined convention will include NAB’s Radio Show and its Sales and Management Television Exchange simultaneously.

“We’re getting feedback that it is efficient for exhibitors and members, for programming all in one place,” LeGeyt explained. He predicts this model “will be a successful one for this year when budgets are tight.” 

As LeGeyt navigates the leadership transition, he can look out to the U.S. Capitol from his office in the new NAB Building on South Capitol Street. Although the building is near Nationals Park, he and fellow staff members have to go up to the roof to catch a glimpse of the baseball field. And although he admits becoming a fan of D.C. teams during his decades in Washington, the heart and soul of this Connecticut native is still with New England sports teams. 

“There’s nothing quite like Boston sports,” he said with a smile. 

At the same time he is preparing NAB’s agenda, LeGeyt and his family (including three kids under 8 years old), are getting ready to move from suburban Alexandria, Virginia, into Washington, D.C. He is involved with several music-related charities, including “Tracy’s Kids” (a music and arts program for childhood cancer support), Musicians on Call (which delivers music programs to patients); he and his wife also support mental health charities.  

LeGeyt’s philanthropic efforts reflect his NAB agenda, which as he put it, involves “a passion for what we do.” For his day job as broadcasting’s chief cheerleader, LeGeyt said he “wants to beat the drum” and “assure that policies are in place” to assure broadcasters a steady future. 

The National Association of Broadcasters said it has done research that shows there is growing sense that the 2021 NAB Show could be an in-person convention this October.

Not surprisingly, NAB said that the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 will be the biggest influencer (for three in five respondents) in whether to attend an in-person event.

NAB is already doing its part to make sure as many of those attendees and others can and will get the vaccine, creating an online toolkit to help journalists educate the public about the importance of getting vaccinated.

Also Read: NAB Offers COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging Toolkit

Due to the pandemic, NAB held the 2020 convention virtually and pushed back the 2021 show (originally scheduled for April 11-13) to Oct. 9-13 in hopes of being able to get together more than virtually.

According to a Freeman Event Research trade show industry research project, a majority of past NAB attendees said they expected to attend in-person events if they were scheduled in late 2021 and 88% said they are likely to return to in-person shows once the virus threat is mitigated, though about 60% of respondents said they expect virtual components will have an increased role in trade shows and live events going forward.

Also Read: NAB Joins COVID-19 Collaborative

NAB has created online platform NAB Amplify as a year-round platform to connect the NAB Show "community.

Freeman surveyed almost 1,000 past NAB Show attendees between Nov. 9 and 16, 2020. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percent.

The 2021 NAB Show has been moved to October, National Association of Broadcasters president and CEO Gordon Smith announced Wednesday.

The event, which was originally slated for April 11-14, will now take place Oct. 9-13, 2021 in Las Vegas.

"As we look ahead to 2021 and beyond, our top priority is to deliver a successful NAB Show," Smith wrote in a letter to the NAB community. "We recognize the vital role NAB Show plays as a driver of innovation and an economic engine for the global media and entertainment industry. With that in mind, it is critical we act on your behalf and in a way that will best serve the long-term interests of the industry."

Smith added: "With any difficult decision, there are trade-offs. Moving NAB Show to October means we are considering alternative 2021 dates for NAB Show New York, held annually in October. On the plus side, the 2021 Radio Show will co-locate with NAB Show in Las Vegas as will NAB’s Sales and Management Television Exchange; and there is opportunity to add additional partner events. Beyond this, we have done our best to avoid direct conflicts with other domestic and international events, and have reached out to allied organizations and partners to both share our thinking in advance and to offer to work collaboratively toward turning this into an opportunity for all."

NAB took its 2020 NAB Show online earlier this year due to the pandemic, renaming the event NAB Show Express. The organization's 2020 NAB Show New York has also gone virtual and will run Oct. 19-29, 2020.

After NAB Show New York, the organization will launch NAB Amplify, an online marketplace.

Read Smith's full letter here.

The National Association of Broadcasters is extending its online NAB Show with NAB Amplify, a year-round online platform for "networking, discovery and education" as well as giving tech companies "generate leads, elevate brands and drive business opportunities to new levels." 

NAB Amplify will launch in November with secure connections for vendors and customers.

NAB Amplify will include network forums, updated educational content and an online exhibit floor.

Former content director for Creative Planet Network Cristina Clapp will be content director for the platform.

NAB is still planning to hold an in-person NAB Show April 10-14 in Las Vegas. The 2020 convention was canceled, then moved to an online platform, NAB Show Express, due to the pandemic.

The Consumer Electronics Show has become perhaps the biggest trade event to move online in the COVID-19 era.

Event producer the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced Tuesday that the 2021 event, originally set to unfurl in Las Vegas Jan. 6-9, will be moved to an online-only format.

Also read: Coronavirus Cancellations: Everything You Need to Know About How the Outbreak Is Impacting the Global Media-Tech Events Business

"Amid the pandemic and growing global health concerns about the spread of COVID-19, it's just not possible to safely convene tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas in early January 2021 to meet and do business in person," said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CTA. "Technology helps us all work, learn and connect during the pandemic – and that innovation will also help us reimagine CES 2021 and bring together the tech community in a meaningful way. By shifting to an all-digital platform for 2021, we can deliver a unique experience that helps our exhibitors connect with existing and new audiences.

"We plan to return to Las Vegas for CES 2022, combining the best elements of a physical and digital show," Shapiro added.

CES 2020 drew 170,000 attendees and more than 4,400 exhibitors, spread out over 2.9 million square feet of floor space, CTA said. Attendance was down by 175,000 from 2019.

It's only the latest media tech convention to succumb to the pandemic, with the 2020 iterations of NAB Show, IBC and SCTE-ISBE's Cable-Tec Expo all moving online.

The National Association of Broadcasters said it is moving NAB Show New York online. It had been scheduled for Oct. 21-22 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

That follows the decision to replace the canceled NAB Show in Las Vegas with the virtual NAB Show Express.

NAB executive VP Chris Brown broke the news in a letter Tuesday (June 9), saying the decision came after consultation with state and local officials in New York, as well as with the convention center.

No date for the online version, but it will still be sometime in the fall and be produced in association with Future Media Conferences. 

"We are developing a robust platform for exhibitors to share product information, provide demonstrations and make announcements," said Brown, "Additionally, the online event will provide premium educational content and unique opportunities for the community to network virtually. We will share additional details on the digital event in the coming weeks and months."

The virtual show must go on, and while the NAB Show in Las Vegas was a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, NAB president Gordon Smith's Q&A with FCC chairman Ajit Pai was not.

The association's NAB Express Show online alternative to its physical gathering will kick off with a May 13 appearance by the chairman in a keynote conversation with Smith. 

That opening session will be streamed on nabshowexpress.com at noon, and on demand afterwards. 

The May 13 streamed event will also include Smith's annual "State of the Broadcast Industry" address, the state of which is under extreme stress due to coronavirus. 

Also on the virtual agenda will be the presentation of NAB's Distinguished Service Award to Muppet creator, the late Jim Henson.

National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith has alerted members and exhibitors that the canceled 2020 NAB Show will not be rescheduled, but will instead be reimagined as a “digital” platform dubbed NAB Show Express, which will launch in April, when the physical show would have been held in Las Vegas.

Smith told C-SPAN canceling the NAB Show due to coronavirus concerns was a “great injury” to the association, but a decision it had to make. He also called it an “agonizing” decision, the economic impact of which — 100,000 attendees, one million feet of exhibit space — he was still calculating. Smith said that if the pandemic wanes he still hopes to have NAB Show 2021 next April.

He also said that this April the association would launch a “digital experience” called NAB Show Express for exhibitors and attendees, and that the October NAB Show New York would be enhanced.

The National Association of Broadcasters has canceled its April NAB Show, a source confirmed, amid the growing crisis over COVID-19.

NAB said it is considering its options for a future date for the show. 

Also read: Coronavirus Cancellations: From MipTV to FreeWheel to MWC, How the Outbreak Is Impacting the Global Media-Tech Events Business

The source said it was unfortunate, but the right decision given the situation with the Coronavirus. NAB president Gordon Smith subsequently announced the move in a letter:

Dear NAB Show community,

As you know, we have been carefully monitoring coronavirus developments both domestically and globally over the past few weeks.

In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders and in consultation with partners throughout the media and entertainment industry, we have decided not to move forward with NAB Show in April. We are currently considering a number of potential alternatives to create the best possible experience for our community.

This was not an easy decision. Fortunately, we did not have to make this decision alone, and are grateful to our NAB Show community for engaging with us as we grappled with the rapidly-evolving situation. This Show is as much yours as it is ours, and it is important to us that we move forward together.

For nearly 100 years, NAB Show has provided superior value and the best possible experience for exhibitors and attendees. We knew that if we could not deliver on those expectations, we would not move forward. More importantly, keeping the community safe and healthy is NAB’s highest priority; therefore, we are deferring to the developing consensus from public health authorities on the challenges posed by coronavirus.

We are still weighing the best potential path forward, and we ask you for your patience as we do so. We are committed to exploring all possible alternatives so that we can provide a productive setting where the industry can engage with the latest technology, hear from industry thought leaders and make the game-changing connections that drive our industry forward.

I want to stress that despite our disappointment at how this year’s Show has been impacted by global public health concerns, we are more excited than ever about the future of NAB Show and our relationship with you.We are grateful for each and every member of our Show community. It is your passion for the industry that makes NAB Show a success year after year, and it is that same passion that will drive us into the future as we look ahead to new possibilities later this year and beyond.

Sincerely,
Gordon H. Smith
President and CEO

The World Health Organization has declared the virus a pandemic.An industry source confirmed it would be a "significant financial hit" for the association, which was anticipating close to 100,000 attendees. NAB had no comment on what its exposure versus insurance on the show.

The National Association of Broadcasters has pulled the plug on its April NAB Show.

The show will not be held in April, but NAB is considering its options for a future date.

NAB EVP Dennis Wharton said that one possibility could be to beef up the NAB Show New York in October (Oct. 21-22), though also potentially a summer show in Vegas if the virus threat has been mitigated and if NAB could get buy-in from exhibitors. He said NAB would be having those conversations with stakeholders over the coming days to determine their appetite for various options.

The Broadcasters Foundation of America said it has suspended its planned annual breakfast and charity golf tournament. Both were held in association with the show.

Dear NAB Show community,

As you know, we have been carefully monitoring coronavirus developments both domestically and globally over the past few weeks.

In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders and in consultation with partners throughout the media and entertainment industry, we have decided not to move forward with NAB Show in April. We are currently considering a number of potential alternatives to create the best possible experience for our community.

This was not an easy decision. Fortunately, we did not have to make this decision alone, and are grateful to our NAB Show community for engaging with us as we grappled with the rapidly-evolving situation. This Show is as much yours as it is ours, and it is important to us that we move forward together.

For nearly 100 years, NAB Show has provided superior value and the best possible experience for exhibitors and attendees. We knew that if we could not deliver on those expectations, we would not move forward. More importantly, keeping the community safe and healthy is NAB’s highest priority; therefore, we are deferring to the developing consensus from public health authorities on the challenges posed by coronavirus.

We are still weighing the best potential path forward, and we ask you for your patience as we do so. We are committed to exploring all possible alternatives so that we can provide a productive setting where the industry can engage with the latest technology, hear from industry thought leaders and make the game-changing connections that drive our industry forward.

I want to stress that despite our disappointment at how this year’s Show has been impacted by global public health concerns, we are more excited than ever about the future of NAB Show and our relationship with you.We are grateful for each and every member of our Show community. It is your passion for the industry that makes NAB Show a success year after year, and it is that same passion that will drive us into the future as we look ahead to new possibilities later this year and beyond.

Sincerely,
Gordon H. Smith
President and CEO

The World Health Organization has declared the virus a pandemic. 

An industry source confirmed the cancellation would be a "significant financial hit" for the association, which was anticipating close to 100,000 attendees. NAB had no comment on what its financial exposure was versus insurance on the show.

According to NAB, 96% of the exhibitors were still planning to attend the show, which brings together close to 100,000 attendees and participants from around the globe, with the majority of the 4% no-shows Chinese firms under travel restrictions.

But one of the pullouts was Burlington, Mass.-based Avid Technologies, which had announced that in response to the coronavirus outbreak, it is canceling its participation in all conferences and trade shows for the next 60 days.

Video tech company Harmonic praised the move.

"In view of the rising concerns surrounding COVID-19, Harmonic fully supports the NAB's decision to cancel the 2020 NAB Show in April," said the company in a statement. "The safety of our employees, customers and partners is of paramount importance to us. While we will miss the opportunity to connect in-person, we will take advantage of virtual communications to showcase our cloud-based video streaming platforms and vital service continuity capabilities, connecting with our customers and partners through Harmonic Live CONNECTION digital events worldwide."

Photos via NABShow.com.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has not made a decision yet on his planned appearance next month at the National Association of Broadcasters's NAB Show, according to a source.

Pai is still slated for a Q&A with NAB President Gordon Smith at the show, which was still on as of press time according to NAB's coronavirus update page.

The FCC announced this week that it had suspended staffer travel and appearances at large gatherings. Since NAB hosts close to 100,000 people and is in Las Vegas, that would appear to fit the bill if the suspension remains in place, given the very specific wording, with the FCC "suspending until further notice any FCC involvement in non-critical large gatherings that involve participants from across the country and/or around the world." That is, unless the chairman considers his appearance there "critical."

A source familiar with the chairman's plans said it is too soon to make a determination about the NAB appearance.

Closer to home and closer in time, ACA Connects has postponed its annual summit March 17-19 in Washington, citing its concerns, and those of attendees, about the virus. 

The FCC says it will be limiting access to the FCC as a preventative measure in the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and will be suspending FCC participation in any large gatherings. 

According to the commission, anyone who has been in any country in the previous 14 days that is subject to CDC level-three travel warnings will not be allowed to enter FCC facilities. Currently that would exclude recent visitors to China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea. 

That includes FCC employees and contractors as well as visitors. 

Related: Coronavirus Cancellations: From MipTV to FreeWheel to MWC, How the Outbreak Is Impacting the Global Media-Tech Events Business

The FCC has suspended all non-critical FCC domestic and international travel and for the near term is "suspending until further notice any FCC involvement in non-critical large gatherings that involve participants from across the country and/or around the world." 

An FCC spokesperson was checking at press time on whether that means the chairman won't make it for his Q&A at the NAB Show next month or whether that is considered a "critical" gathering. That is still six weeks away, so there could also be a change in the virus status by then. 

It is certainly a large gathering, drawing close to 100,000 people from home and abroad.

Broadcasting+Cable and Next TV have joined with other Future titles in the seventh annual Best of Show Awards at NAB Show in Las Vegas.

From now until April 3, exhibitors can nominate new products for awards presented by B+C, for broad reach into the television industry; and Next TV, the only digital resource dedicated to the business of video streaming; along with Future publications TV Technology, TVBEurope, Digital Video, Government Video, Video Edge, Radio World, Pro Sound News and Sound & Video Contractor.

The winners will be selected by panels of professional users and magazine and site editors, based on descriptions provided by companies via the official nomination form, as well as on-site evaluation at the show.

Exhibitors can also nominate their company for the Booth Design Award.

Upon submitting a nomination, exhibitors will receive a nominee logo to display in their booth and for social media marketing. Each nominated product will also be featured in a post-show digital Program Guide that offers an overview of new technology at the 2020 NAB Show. Read the 2019 Program Guide for an example.

For more information about the 2020 NAB Best of Show Awards, visit the FAQ page. To nominate, visit the official Best of Show website.

UPDATED TEXT: Despite the recent announcement that the NAB Show will not take place, we are fully committed to honor and help promote outstanding new and recently introduced products. Announcing a Special Edition Best of Show Awards program showcasing new products to our 95,000+ readers across Future’s market-leading media brands.

From now until April 17, companies can nominate their new products for awards presented by Future publications TV Technology, TVBEurope, Digital Video, Government Video, Video Edge, Radio World, Pro Sound News, Sound & Video Contractor, B+C and Next TV.

The winners will be selected by panels of professional users and magazine and site editors, based on descriptions provided by companies via the official nomination form, as well as on-site evaluation at the show.

Exhibitors can also nominate their company for the Booth Design Award.

Upon submitting a nomination, exhibitors will receive a nominee logo to display in their booth and for social media marketing. Each nominated product will also be featured in a post-show digital Program Guide that offers an overview of new technology at the 2020 NAB Show. Read the 2019 Program Guide for an example.

For more information about the Special Edition of the Best of Show Awards visit the official Best of Show website.

The National Association of Broadcasters said the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas is still "all systems go" for April 18-22 amid international travel concerns. 

The association put out an announcement (below) in response to questions from attendees and exhibitors in light of the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona last week due to the coronavirus. 

NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said the show is absolutely still on and, in fact, had one of its best sales weeks last week in terms of floor exhibition space. 

He said they are taking "all precautions" to ensure the safety of attendees. Wharton said attendance is tracking on par with last year. 

Below is the announcement NAB made to reassure attendees: 

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), organizer of NAB Show, affirmed the 2020 NAB Show is set to take place as planned, April 18 – 22 in Las Vegas. The association is closely monitoring COVID-19, commonly known as coronavirus, and is prepared to devote whatever resources necessary to ensure a safe and productive NAB Show experience. 

NAB Show is the premier event driving the evolution of media and entertainment. It is an engine for commerce and a critical launchpad for products and services expected to revolutionize the business. The convention’s 1,600 exhibitors and 90,000 attendees rely on the annual NAB Show to raise their profile and meet business goals. 

While the NAB stands firm in its commitment to hold the convention as planned, the health and safety of attendees and participants are NAB’s top priority. To that end, NAB is dedicated to providing rapid responses and assistance in support of the global NAB Show community’s participation plans. The event management team has launched a COVID-19 resource page on the NAB Show website, where updates will be provided. 

Currently, NAB is: 

1. Adhering to all guidance and recommended safety measures issued by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state and local health organizations. 

2. Working with the Las Vegas Convention Center, the airport authority, and area hotels and resorts to coordinate appropriate safety procedures.

3. Following CDC recommendations and protocols for heightened levels of cleanliness at event facilities.

4. Making accommodations and actively encouraging attendees to take common-sense precautions and follow CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of illness.

5. Ensuring medical care is readily accessible to address immediate health concerns.

6. Working with China-based exhibitors and registered attendees to evaluate options for those unable to attend due to travel restrictions. Of note, NAB Show attendance from China, although growing, represented less than 2 percent of total registered attendees in 2019.

NAB is taking COVID-19 very seriously and is fully invested and prepared to host a successful NAB Show in Las Vegas. The city of Las Vegas is maintaining rigorous cleanliness and safety standards throughout public spaces, resorts and meeting facilities, and hosts successful trade events daily. Meanwhile, NAB Show has experienced an uptick in exhibit sales, attendee registration and hotel bookings in recent weeks, and conference program speakers are confirmed daily.

The National Association of Broadcasters said the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas is still "all systems go" for April 18-22 amid international travel concerns.

The association put out an announcement (below) in response to questions from attendees and exhibitors in light of the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona last week due to the coronavirus.

NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said the show is absolutely still on and, in fact, had one of its best sales weeks last week in terms of floor exhibition space.

He said they are taking "all precautions" to ensure the safety of attendees. Wharton said attendance is tracking on par with last year.

Below is the announcement NAB made to reassure attendees:

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), organizer of NAB Show, affirmed the 2020 NAB Show is set to take place as planned, April 18 – 22 in Las Vegas. The association is closely monitoring COVID-19, commonly known as coronavirus, and is prepared to devote whatever resources necessary to ensure a safe and productive NAB Show experience.

NAB Show is the premier event driving the evolution of media and entertainment. It is an engine for commerce and a critical launchpad for products and services expected to revolutionize the business. The convention’s 1,600 exhibitors and 90,000 attendees rely on the annual NAB Show to raise their profile and meet business goals.

While the NAB stands firm in its commitment to hold the convention as planned, the health and safety of attendees and participants are NAB’s top priority. To that end, NAB is dedicated to providing rapid responses and assistance in support of the global NAB Show community’s participation plans. The event management team has launched a COVID-19 resource page on the NAB Show website, where updates will be provided.

Currently, NAB is:

1.Adhering to all guidance and recommended safety measures issued by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as state and local health organizations.

2.Working with the Las Vegas Convention Center, the airport authority, and area hotels and resorts to coordinate appropriate safety procedures.

3.Following CDC recommendations and protocols for heightened levels of cleanliness at event facilities.

4.Making accommodations and actively encouraging attendees to take common-sense precautions and follow CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of illness.

5.Ensuring medical care is readily accessible to address immediate health concerns.

6. Working with China-based exhibitors and registered attendees to evaluate options for those unable to attend due to travel restrictions. Of note, NAB Show attendance from China, although growing, represented less than 2 percent of total registered attendees in 2019.

NAB is taking COVID-19 very seriously and is fully invested and prepared to host a successful NAB Show in Las Vegas. The city of Las Vegas is maintaining rigorous cleanliness and safety standards throughout public spaces, resorts and meeting facilities, and hosts successful trade events daily. Meanwhile, NAB Show has experienced an uptick in exhibit sales, attendee registration and hotel bookings in recent weeks, and conference program speakers are confirmed daily.

For more information about NAB Show’s COVID-19 preparedness and updates, visit nabshow.com/coronavirus. 

Amino’s Jamie Mackinlay doesn’t believe the commonly held assumption that the proprietary pay TV set-top box will give way to popular over-the-top streaming devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

Mackinlay, senior vice president of marketing, product management and sales operations for the Cambridge, U.K.-based technology company, traded on the London Stock Exchange and rooted in IPTV, continues to reassure customers their legacy set-tops are just fine. And that those boxes can deliver next-generation OTT video experiences to customers over these older devices without so much as a truck roll.

At this week’s NAB Show, Mackinlay and Amino will pitch their “Operator Ready” Android TV solution, a cloud-based system for delivering an operator-branded video service to customers that also incorporates all the streaming apps they download in the Google Play store as well as Google Voice functionality.

This system can be remotely uploaded to legacy set-tops, with processing conducted in the cloud.

“We know you can get a cheap Android TV box, slap it up, and it’ll cost almost nothing, but that doesn’t solve the operator’s problem,” Mackinlay said. “They want a managed device in the customer’s home, one that’s integrated into their systems.

“When you rely on Roku or Apple TV, you lose control of the device and you lose control of the data,” he continued. “You have no control of what’s happening. What we’re saying is, Don’t do that.”

Amino’s concept of conducting processing in the cloud and delivering MPEG video back to legacy set-tops isn’t a new one. Charter Communications partnered with ActiveVideo to do this several years ago.

Among its 250 worldwide pay TV customers, Amino has used Linux-based approaches with clients like Cincinnati Bell, which saved $20 million in capital expenditures by not upgrading 150,000 set-tops, according to Mackinlay.

These days, Amino’s focus — like a lot of video tech vendors — is on the operator tier version of Android TV, an open platform Mackinlay said is very quickly catching on with his clients. About 10% of Amino’s customer base is now using Android TV, he said.

In December, Shalini Govil-Pai, senior director of product management for Android TV, told Multichannel News that the platform is now being used by more than 100 pay TV operators around the world. This includes AT&T, which is making Android TV operator tier the system that powers the new slimline set-top for its now premium live-streaming service.

“What Google did with operator tier was take a significant step toward in terms of branding and the levels of control that are acceptable to operators,” Mackinlay said.

At Amino’s NAB Show booth this week in Las Vegas, the company will host what it calls its “Beat the Box” challenge. Essentially, it will compare the cost of upgrading an operator’s video system using its Android TV solution to what they’d spend otherwise.

“We’ll walk people through the various strategies, and we’ll help them create a modern television experience,” Mackinlay said.

Amid the technology overload at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, programming and marketing are often the forgotten step-children of the converging/diverging media world.

Although the TV ecosystems had plenty of content and advertising participants among the 103,000 people at last week's NAB Show in Las Vegas, it was CTAM, a cable TV stalwart, that produced a first-day SuperSession on April 24, which plunged into the complicated content issues at the core of the media landscape.

As Vicki Lins, president and CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, explained, "marketing and content are at the 'Center of Media Transformation,'" which happened to be the title of the session she moderated. Lins characterized them as "fundamentally driving changes in how companies are engaging with consumers."

[The 55-minute panel discussion is available as a video stream HERE.]

Jamia Bigalow, senior VP, distribution marketing at Fox Networks, affirmed the necessity of thinking across platforms.

"For us it's more important than ever to build our network brands, especially because of multiple channels," Bigalow said. She explained that Fox is "busier than ever because we have more ways than ever to distribute," emphasizing that the distribution windows are "overlaying each other," thus requiring new tactics for viewer engagement.

"You have to be where the eyeballs are," Bigalow added, stressing that "Fox brands are highly social" and that current efforts are focused on "maintaining viewership after launch" of new programs. She recommended that programmers "find an organic path,” which often involves working with "a lot of partners in promotional relationships."

NAB 2017: Altice USA Peeks Over-the-Top

Bigalow also pointed out that people are "spending more time viewing and less time searching for shows, which improves monetization." She urged programmers to think about "discoverability" and "all the ways that content is being served." In particular, Bigalow said that meta-data enables "content discovery to run very deep."

Another panelist, Thomas Hughes, executive VP, Worldwide Digital Distribution for Lionsgate, affirmed the importance of content discovery as creating new ways to build interest in a show. He emphasized that in today's multitasking era, it's vital to understand how consumers engage in programs.

Hughes also described the transformation of his company (a studio) after its acquisition of the Starz pay TV network and divestiture of its share of Epix network.

NAB 2017: O'Rielly Says Pai Could Herald FCC Golden Age for Broadcasters

"We have 90 shows across 40 networks," he explained. "We are perfectly willing to sell, create and distribute content across lots of different platforms. That puts us in a unique position. We don't think of ourselves as a brand because we have so many brands," including ethnic and specialty labels.

Hughes focused on the value of program brands rather than studio or network brands. He cited Lionsgate-produced shows such as Orange Is the New Black (which a Lionsgate unit makes for Netflix), Mad Men (for AMC) and Nashville (which originated on ABC-TV broadcast network and is now carried on CMT and Hulu). Hughes called Nashville distribution "a hybrid solution," which he attributed to "the nature of windowing, which is what we do."

James "JB" Brown, executive VP, Content Distribution, Talent and Marketing at Revolt Media and TV, emphasized the challenge of launching a new network - especially one aimed at millennials and Generation Z audiences. He stressed that young viewers "look at shows differently because they get programs somewhere else, not necessarily on the linear network.

Brown acknowledged that Revolt's goal, which he credited to the vision of its co-founder Sean Combs (aka Diddy, Puff Daddy, etc.), is to reach young viewers who instinctively know "what music is coming next or who will perform."

"They may access us through streaming, through our network or through YouTube," Brown said. But the network always seeks to push its brand. "We always say something about Revolt and our distributors to remind them [the viewers] how to get the full network."

Image Caption: (From left) NAB Content panel: Vicki Lins, CTAM; JB Brown, Revolt Media;  and Jamia Bigalow, Fox Networks.