The ATSC 3.0 Transition: ACA Connects is Looking Out on Your Behalf

By Mike Jacobs

ACA Connects Vice President of Regulatory Affairs

On April 17, 2023, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the launch of the “Future of TV” initiative focused on completing “an orderly” transition from the current ATSC 1.0 broadcasting standard to ATSC 3.0. The FCC release on the announcement described the ATSC 3.0 standard, referred to by some as “NextGen TV,” as able to bring “Ultra-High Definition (4K)-quality images, two-way interactivity, greater accessibility options, and multi-screen applications to televisions via over-the-air broadcast signals working in tandem with broadband.”

ATSC 3.0 is now available to households in about 60% of U.S. markets. However, to some observers, the pace of the transition, begun in 2020, has been too slow. The primary obstacle has been the lack of “backwards compatibility” between ATSC 3.0 and 1.0, meaning that consumers would need to acquire new ATSC 3.0-compatible televisions or reception devices. Of course, this presents a considerable cost challenge.

The “Future of TV” initiative is being led by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), and includes industry and public interest stakeholders, as well as FCC staff. There are three working groups, and ACA Connects has been appointed to two of them:

• Working Group 2: Completing the Transition, described as working on “establishing conditions for completing the transition, including how to minimize consumer impact, under what conditions simulcasting might end, consumer education, availability and pricing of consumer equipment, tuner and labeling standards, and how to manage [ATSC 1.0 and 3.0] capacity as more stations transition.”

• Working Group 3: Post-Transition Regulation, described as “consider[ing] the rules that should govern television stations transmitting in ATSC 3.0 after the transition.”

The kickoff meeting for the initiative occurred June 12. Its stated mission is first to identify all transition-related issues, and then develop consensus recommendations, reduced to writing, targeting June 2024 to present to the FCC. The working groups will meet every four weeks. High-level, non-attributed minutes will be produced after each working group meeting, and periodic full-initiative meetings held, in order to promote information sharing and situational awareness between the three working groups.

ACA Connects – as well as some of our American Television Alliance (ATVA) partners – will be participating actively in the initiative. Fundamentally, ACA Connects will work to ensure that the interests and welfare of smaller and midsized multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), and their subscribers, are protected, and that the transition does not impose financial or other resource burdens upon ACA Connects Members.

We request your help. In order to represent your interests most effectively in the initiative, we need to know what you’re seeing in the market and on the ground.

We plan to convene two ACA Connects Member ad hoc working groups to inform our participation. Given the mission of initiative Working Group 2, figure the appropriate personnel would be those focusing on operations, customer relations, and/or technical matters. Legal and regulatory personnel would be appropriate for the ACA Connects working group tracking initiative Working Group 3, as NAB has described it as particularly focused on lawyers. The ad hoc working groups likely would convene by conference call every four weeks, with the possibility of some occasional, brief, informal written responses requested to follow-up inquiries.

If you have personnel who would like to contribute, please reach out to me ASAP at mjacobs@acaconnects.org, as the initiative’s work already has begun. Together, we can strive to ensure that the ATSC 3.0 transition is a financial and operational “non-event” for you and your customers. ■