PILOT To Showcase TV Tech Online

The National Association of Broadcasters PILOT tech incubator initiative is heading up an online campaign. Broadcast Innovation Stories, through April of this year (the NAB convention is in April) to showcase cutting-edge broadcast tech advances.

The campaign will comprise 10 video profiles and other stories posted here, starting with KING-TV Seattle's production of a documentary about homelessness, Under the Bridge, billed as the first virtual reality mini-documentary in local TV news.

Related: ATSC 3.0-Powered Broadcast VR Platform Rolling Out

LiveWorks, an application to deliver AR/VR and 360 video immersive content over broadcast and other mediums using the new ATSC 3.0 standard, was rolled out at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, where virtual and augmented reality was a big topic of conversation and demonstration.

LiveWorks creators VR Video and WheresMyMedia got $15,000 to develop a prototype as one of the winners of the NAB's PILOT Challenge grants for new tech ways to serve broadcast communities.

The Broadcast Innovation Stories campaign will release one new vide and five news capsules per week. Coming attractions include "; iHeartMedia’s voice-powered platforms; News Press & Gazette’s Next Gen TV initiative; Bonneville’s KSL-TV (Salt Lake City, UT) “Radio You Can See” programming; the development of the NextRadio app; the use of drones in newsgathering by CBS’s WCBS (New York); and the broadcast and digital footprint of Raycom’s national investigative unit."

PILOT partners include Google, IBM, and Akamai. 

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.