HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Earlier this month, Sinclair signed a memorandum of understanding with the Institute of Technology Bombay covering their collaboration on broadcast-to-everything (B2X). B2X is an ATSC 3.0-based effort that would relieve wireless-carrier network congestion and advance multiple applications, including India’s direct-to-mobile initiative, data and entertainment delivery to vehicles and even the distribution of more accurate positioning data.
While the focus is on technology and standards development, the business implications of B2X are numerous—not just in India but for NextGen TV broadcasters around the world.
TV Tech reached out to Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley to find out what the IIT Bombay arrangement might mean for broadcasters from a business perspective. What developed was a wide-ranging ATSC 3.0-themed conversation touching on everything from what new leadership at the Federal Communications Commission might mean for a ATSC 1.0 sunset to the streaming glitches Netflix experienced during the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight and the solution 3.0 offers. Here’s an edited transcript of that exchange.
TVTech: Let’s start off with the recent memorandum of understanding between Sinclair and IIT Bombay, under which both organizations will collaborate on the technology and standards needed to support Broadcast-to-Everything (B2X). I think often U.S. broadcasters see these sorts of announcements involving ATSC 3.0 outside the country and wonder whether they will see the fruits of these efforts having a domestic impact. Will this work affect U.S. broadcasters and, if so, how?
Chris Ripley: Yes. In terms of B2X, there really are three use cases right now that are under development. One is automotive, for things like firmware updates and infotainment directly to autos. Another is enhanced GPS, more specifically. BPS [or broadcast positioning system] would be a third. Enhanced GPS is sending an enhancement layer to any device that needs precise location, such as for a utility that needs the precise location of underground pipes. The enhancement layer will improve the accuracy of a GPS signal from 3 meters to 3 centimeters. We think automotive and drones will be the biggest market for enhanced GPS.
Then, BPS as a backup to time and positioning data that the government is looking into as the GPS system satellite signal is weak, easily jammed and very vulnerable to space-based attacks. Those are the three most developed use cases right now for broadcast-to-everything applications, and I think you are going to see those start popping up in 2025 and begin to grow into bigger applications.
The real gas gets thrown onto this when we are able to sunset 1.0 and convert the rest of the industry and all of our spectrum to 3.0. Today, we are limited by only having one stick in most markets.
There is excess capacity for these types of applications even today when one stick in most markets carries four 3.0 network affiliates. But it’s not a lot of capacity for these applications. That’s why initially we are focused on enhanced GPS and BPS that do not require a lot of capacity.
Automotive does require more but could be done in off-hours if you are talking about software updates. But the real promise will be unlocked when we get more spectrum availability, which will be tied to sunsetting 1.0.
TVT: With the election of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC chair, do you expect to see a workable 1.0 sunset plan to emerge?
CR: Well, look, anytime there is a change in Washington, it represents an opportunity for a fresh start. We’re very encouraged that commissioner Carr has been appointed as chairman. He’s been a strong proponent of broadcast innovation during his entire time at the FCC.
As you’ll probably remember, there was a very significant industry effort, the Future of Local TV initiative that was launched under Jessica Rosenworcel, and it made a lot of progress in terms of recommendations on what to do. One of the key recommendations was to eliminate the simulcast requirement and sunset 1.0 to make way for 3.0.
We think it's really a bipartisan issue, regardless of what party you are, because the benefits are so large—firstly for the viewers with higher quality video and audio, more content and additional services like enhanced GPS, that they’ll benefit from. You’ve got the benefits to the broadcasters, which you know, are new sets of business opportunities for them that will allow them to continue to invest in premium content and local news. And then you’ve got the benefits to the public interest, which you know, things like BPS backing up our vulnerable GPS system and enhanced alerting for storms and other emergencies.
The benefit set is so strong, we believe it will have bipartisan support and we’re quite optimistic with Carr coming in that things will start moving with some pace.
TVT: How do you see the 1.0 sunset playing out? Do you envision a coupon program like the one that subsidized the purchase of analog-to-digital converters for the transition to DTV?
CR: There are already millions of TVs that are 3.0-capable in the marketplace. We’ve had years of sets being sold, and the upgrade marketplace is there. It’s not at high volume right now, but at higher volumes of demand we think the cheapest dongle to upgrade a TV is going to be $30 or $40.
So, it’s very affordable for the consumer to upgrade an old TV if that’s what they want to do—whether there’s any sort of subsidization of that or not. That’s to be determined. But at that price point, it’s really not a burden for the consumer, especially given the benefits to the consumer in the long run.
TVT: At NAB Show, you discussed 3.0-based datacasting as becoming a reality and that Sinclair and other broadcasters would soon begin cashing in on it. Has Sinclair begun to earn revenue from 3.0-based datacasting?
CR: Not yet, but I would say we’re very close on streaming offload and enhanced GPS. I didn’t mention streaming offload before, because I kind of consider that a video product. But we’re getting a lot of traction on streaming offload and we’re having discussions with people who are ready to start cutting checks to at least use our capacity to run tests to figure out how this will work. A classic example of how this would benefit the industry and consumers just materialized the other day with Netflix and the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight.
TVT: I can remember Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology at Sinclair and president of One Media Technologies, many, many years ago at a SMPTE tech conference explaining the concept of a broadcast offload network for streaming services. My impression at the time was that the concept was met with skepticism. I wonder if the $50 million class-action lawsuit over the streaming glitches during the Tyson-Paul fight will put the efficacy of offloading one-to-many content to broadcast into sharper focus.
CR: There were a lot of glitches. I think Netflix had over 16 million concurrent streamers in the U.S. That’s a huge load. There were a lot of complaints about the fight being unwatchable for some people.
This [ATSC 3.0 broadcast] is the perfect technology to solve the issue for live events where there’s lots of concurrent usage. It takes the burden off the wired and wireless streaming infrastructure, which was never designed for video. That infrastructure was really just jerry-rigged into doing video, especially for live events. That’s a product [streaming offload onto ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast] that we’ve already demonstrated.
At the 2024 NAB Show, we had a number of commercial discussions going on with CDN [content delivery network] players who are seeing this as not only a way to do things they can’t do, such as higher-quality video with a high number of concurrent users, but also as a way to reduce the costs of running a content delivery network, which is what all of these OTT players use to distribute their content.
TVT: The other side of that coin is BEST, or Broadcast-Enabled Streaming TV. That is Sinclair’s acronym for a clever 3.0 streaming service to address the shortage of broadcast spectrum devoted to 3.0 while broadcasters maintain 1.0 service. Working with America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), Sinclair is making BEST available in its markets to public broadcasters at no charge. Nebraska Public Media’s Omaha station was the first to take Sinclair up on its offer. How is BEST being received overall in the public broadcasting community?
CR: It’s been great. A lot of the PBS stations weren’t able to participate in our transitions to 3.0 because they were full in terms of spectrum. They had no excess spectrum. They had a lot of channels, and we didn't want to leave them unprovisioned.
Now that ultimately gets solved in this next step of the transition where we can start to sunset 1.0. But we’ve rolled out in Omaha, like you mentioned, for the PBS station there. We've also had a recent launch in Nashville, and we’ll have some other additional launches this month and beyond. It started to pick up, as we’ve figured out the model. But there’s been very good reaction so far—very positive—and there’s been a lot of interest from public stations.
TVT: Sinclair clearly is all in on ATSC 3.0, but recently there has been interest in some quarters in 5G Broadcast. What are your thoughts on 5G Broadcast?
CR: 5G Broadcast has been deployed by some wireless players, and they have abandoned it. It’s important to know that it’s been tried, and it’s basically failed and been shut off. So, it’s sort of an old technology that is looking for a reason to exist.
When you compare it head-to-head … ATSC 3.0 just vastly outperforms it on a technical basis. The wireless players don’t have a use for 5G Broadcast. Wherever it’s been deployed, it’s been abandoned. Why would broadcasters accept inferior technology when we already have adopted a superior technology?
You don't have to take my word for it. You know, Brazil just did a head-to-head comparison and said: “OK, let’s stack these up. Which one should we adopt?” They did extensive laboratory and field testing, and 3.0 came out on top. That was a very recent litmus test as to which is better.
And I think what is probably overlooked is the reception quality of 3.0 versus 5G Broadcast. The whole reason why as an industry we adopted 3.0 was we wanted to have mobility, and when you start moving over 3 km per hour, the quality of 5G Broadcast begins to drop significantly. Over 10 km it drops like a rock. That’s not very fast.
ATSC 3.0 has exceptionally good Doppler performance. It’s been tested on high-speed trains and it still comes in crystal clear. When you start to think about things like automotive for your applications, which I think is going to be a huge area for 3.0, ATSC 3.0 is the only way to go.
Automotive is the ultimate mobile device, especially as vehicles start becoming more autonomous and self-driving.
TVT: Hasn’t Sinclair participated in mobile ATSC 3.0 reception testing in South Korea?
CR: That’s the one country we’ve left out of this discussion. Korea was the first to adopt 3.0, but they did not adopt it for mobile. However, there is a lot of activity going on in Korea and a push by Korean broadcasters to activate mobility. It’s not currently in the regulations that they can do so.
We are supporting activities on Jeju Island where there is a 3.0 test bed, where they are taking our Broadspan datacasting platform, which we’re using here in the U.S., and they’re testing it for data distribution.
So, some of these other markets are smaller, nimbler and have fewer legacy issues. Potentially, they will move faster. Korea could move really fast if they decide to turn on mobile, and India could move really fast if they move forward what we call DTM, direct to mobile, and leave the U.S. in the dust. But we look forward to that day because it will benefit the U.S. market as devices get produced for these other markets.
