FALL 2020 NEW! THE TOP LOCAL TV LEADERS BROADCAST TV EMBRACES ITS DIGITAL TOOLS A GLIMPSE OF TVB ALT FORWARD’S TOP TOPICS HOW COVID-19, AND TECHNOLOGY, CHANGED TV The future of broadcasting takes the fast track to adapting to consumer trends while preparing to embrace new revenue streams FALL 2020 · RBR.COM IN THIS ISSUE FALL 2020 3 HOW COVID-19 CHANGED TV The pandemic has been a time of unprecedented challenge and change for broadcasters. What do these changes mean for the future of broadcasting? 9 TEAMWORK, THROUGH TECH Local TV stations have had many of the tools needed to operate the station from outside the station. They simply needed a bit of guid- ance in understanding what was already available. 11 THE TOP LOCAL TV LEADERS RBR+TVBR readers salute the leaders overseeing stations on a market-by-market level in this first-ever ranked list. 32 OVER THE AIR, RIGHT ON TARGET TVB President/CEO Steve Lanzano offers a glimpse of just some of the topics up for discussion at TVB ALT FORWARD on October 1. 35 HOW AUDIO LIFTS A VISUAL MEDIUM’S AUDIENCE At Westwood One, illustrating the power of audio to drive television au- dience is one passion point of its Chief Insights Officer, Pierre Bouvard. 37 BROADCAST INTERNET: THE NEXT-GEN REVENUE GENERATOR Did you know that the next-generation broadcast TV standard includes a big money-making opportunity for over-the-air television stations that has little to do with “spots and dots” and everything to do with iOT? If not, this article is for you. Radio + Television Business Report STREAMLINE PUBLISHING 331 SE Mizner Blvd. Chairman: Eric Rhoads Boca Raton, FL, 33432 Publisher: Deborah Parenti Phone: 561-655-8778 Editor-in-Chief: Adam R Jacobson www.rbr.com Director of Operations: April McLynn Twitter: @rbrtvbr 2 · RBR.COM · FALL 2020 TV TODAY AND TOMORROW, SHAPED BY TECH Seven months. With the release of the Fall 2020 edition of the Radio + Television Business Report magazine, it will be nearly 20 weeks since the COVID-19 pandemic forced broadcast television companies to quickly react and adapt to the unprecedented changes and challenges associated with keeping the lights on — and programming on the air. From news production to the delivery of local and national content, the work environment has been greatly impacted. Has it changed the way broadcast TV will operate forever? And, what do the changes seen since mid-March mean for the future of an industry eagerly awaiting the full rollout of NEXTGEN TV? In short, the pre-coronavirus technology revolution was sent in many ways into overdrive by COVID-19. And, in other ways, it put a halt to some projects that had been in the works. As broadcast tech leaders and C-Suite executives at some of the nation’s key TV station ownership groups see it, the virus that awaits a vaccine has propelled the world’s original visual media industry into a new era — with new production techniques, and new delivery platforms, at the heart of that rocket-fueled momentum. FALL 2020 · RBR.COM · 3 COST PRESSURES, NEEDED TRANSITIONS ing the entire television industry. “It is impossible to talk For monitoring, visualization and delivery analytics prod- about a marketplace without talking about a pause when a uct provider Qligent, like many companies, the pre-COVID crisis happens,” he says. “Some customers wanted to press environment was squarely focused on a trajectory of mov- pause not because a move to the cloud wasn’t the right ing to the cloud. A set of disciplines and targets for the thing to do. It was about how to pay the bills, and getting development of its products was in place. Then, COVID-19 flexible on contracts on allowing the customer to help arrived. them move through the process.” “What COVID did was act as a mag- In contrast, some Qligent clients wanted nifying glass,” says Brick Eksten, the technology advancement. Now. “There is Ontario, Canada-based CEO of the a whole rack of customers that wanted to Melbourne, Fla.-headquartered company. move ahead fast, and we had to evolve “We then got calls from customers aware from the ambition they set out on,” Eksten of our trajectory and asking us to move says, noting that the eSports realm and its faster. It forced us to get really tight and willingness to consider traditional broad- succinct on how we can help our custom- cast TV distribution in the wake of COVID- ers the most.” 19 has propelled activity at Qligent. The biggest concern among Qligent’s “Our customers have realized that the media clients: cost pressures associated operating patterns we are looking at with gaining remote access to media today can be greater assisted with more and content streams. “We ended up machine learning and being able to con- spending a lot of time with customers trol the stream,” Eksten says. “There’s with products already installed to allow a lot of focus on technologies that were them to access technology and work originally on an 18-month road map, and in a remote environment,” says Eksten, Brick Eksten giving more value to customers today.” noting that the technology may have been there all along, but knowledge of its full use was lim- NEXTGEN TV: THE NEXT BUDGETING FOCUS ited among some broadcast TV clients. From its Maine headquarters, Dielectric has built and For those in need of new technology to bring remote delivered antennas and RF systems for television and FM work capabilities to life, Qligent’s team wrote new soft- broadcast stations since 1942. Through the pandemic, ware. And, for companies that opted for a hybrid environ- Dielectric played an outsized role in the conclusion of the ment, with a mix of pure-cloud and stationary systems, U.S. spectrum repack. Then it immediately transitioned to Qligent moved ahead. the rollout of ATSC 3.0 technology on the station level. What was Eksten’s biggest takeaway from the experi- Did the COVID-19 pandemic squelch or sideline any of ence? “There was a willingness to adapt that wasn’t really the timelines — or budgets — for any of the TV stations there before,” he says, adding that many clients had looking ahead to the riches NEXTGEN TV is poised to bring? lengthy checklists to consider before they could even apply Speaking of Dielectric’s product portfolio, VP/GM Keith remote access to the tasks under review. Then there was Pelletier says the company is likely building on the strength the clients’ focus on operational efficiency, ensuring that of its success with the repack. “Advancements that we made the right people were in place to effectively communicate for the repack have been rolled right into NEXTGEN TV,” he to all how to access what they needed while away from says. “Without missing a beat, we’ve been able to develop, their stations. using our R&D teams, quite a few products.” Of course, shifting to the cloud isn’t free, and Eksten On NEXTGEN TV, Pelletier adds, “We’ve put a lot of time into is well aware of the fiscal challenges effectively dampen- it. We’ve done it with the help of the consulting community and 4 · RBR.COM · FALL 2020 developed a theoretical deployment in year, but hopefully with the economy the San Francisco Bay Area for quite a rebounding quickly as they say, we’ll be few Single-Frequency Networks (SFNs) well-positioned in 2021 to support all of for NEXTGEN TV. In doing that, we’ve the NEXTGEN TV services that we need been able to design theoretical patterns to on the product end.” based on actual sites that are on the Market deployments of NEXTGEN TV outskirts of San Francisco, and take have been a focus of late for LTN Global, that and develop as-close-as-possible to which saw its video transport network those patterns, and develop software services used for the first commercial tools that our consultants can use to deployment of ATSC 3.0 in the U.S., in develop SFNs throughout the U.S.” Las Vegas. Chief Technology Officer and While that growth is energizing head of strategy Alan Young notes that Dielectric, it has seen nonessential groups of stations have come up with purchases outside the repack pro- spectrum-sharing arrangements where cess “getting a lot more scrutiny” one of the stations becomes, effectively, from its customer base. Pelletier “the ATSC 3.0 lighthouse.” The other sta- says, “Based on COVID-19 we will see tions send their output to this facility, some delays in the remainder of this Keith Pelletier and then it gets multiplexed together. At Dielectric, we’ve MASTERED every FM antenna design, from Top- & Side-Mount, to Ring-Style, to Wraparound Panel. But our engineers truly excel in ORCHESTRATING complete Multi-Channel FM Systems. Dielectric’s complete systems fully employ today’s multiplexing technology to help FM broadcasters make their signal heard. We offer a wide range of multi-channel antennas, plus combiners, transmission lines and our RFHAWKEYE® remote line monitoring system…all designed together to yield cost and space savings, and flawlessly transmit digital and analog signals simultaneously. Raymond & Lewiston, Maine (800) 341-9678 FALL 2020 · RBR.COM · 5 Then the ATSC 1.0 signals are sent to the from home,” Heitmann notes. other stations to ensure they remain on What’s the bottom line for broadcast- the air. ers? “If COVID is in control room and “Of course, that has to happen before studio — there was an instance of that at the rollout of receivers can happen,” CBS in New York, where the broadcast Young says.