INNOVATION

Direct-to-Consumer Audience Engagement Accelerator

PILOT launched and managed a six-month program with nine NAB member companies and support from Google to improve direct-to-consumer audience engagement to better serve local audiences.

• The program was created in response to new challenges in digital advertising, such as the phase-out of third-party cookies, and guides broadcasters as they build out privacy-preserving business strategies, like those centered on the use of first-party data.

PILOT Innovation Challenge

The winners of the 2022 Innovation Challenge exhibited at NAB Show. The challenge specifically sought products or prototypes that align with three new focus areas of the 2022 NAB Show associated with the content lifecycle: Create, Capitalize and Connect. This year’s winners were:

• Minutes by Michigan Radio: a web-based tool that allows newsrooms to search transcripts of local government meetings.
• Virtual Sportscasting Studio by Spalk: a system for remote production of network-quality live sports programming.
• Blueprint Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by Townsquare Media: a CRM platform specifically created for broadcasters that provides a complete customer relationship management system optimized for ease of use.

Testing of Advanced FM Digital Radio Modes

NAB assisted Xperi in the field testing of new, advanced FM digital radio modes of operation using Xperi’s HD Radio digital radio system. These new modes add additional flexibility to the HD Radio system by providing for new, higher bit-rate options that can significantly increase the capacity typically used by digital FM broadcasters today.

• Testing was conducted at Hubbard Radio station WTLP, which serves the Frederick, Md., community.

Broadcast Radio Support in Android Automotive

In partnership with Xperi, PILOT’s global initiative focused on broadcast radio support in Android Automotive completed its work on the broadcast framework, reference radio applications and gap analysis outlining discrepancies and proposed solutions to be implemented in the Android Automotive operating system. PILOT also initiated a technical review with the Android Automotive team.

• This initiative includes broadcasters from the U.S., the U.K., the EU, Germany, Australia and Japan, as well as the automotive manufacturers Ford and Volkswagen.

ATSC 3.0/NEXTGEN TV

NEXTGEN TV Fellowships with Howard University and AWS

PILOT launched the inaugural NEXTGEN TV Fellowship program with Howard University and AWS.

• The fellowship focused on exploring the capabilities of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and developing a concept for a NEXTGEN TV product or service.
• Howard University students Mikaela Mosley and Sulaiman Bastien gained practical, first-hand experience with NEXTGEN TV technology and demonstrated their projects at the 2022 NAB Show.

PILOT Develops Transmitter ID Resource for NEXTGEN TV Stations

In April, NAB launched a voluntary registry assigning all NEXTGEN TV stations Transmitter ID numbers to uniquely identify individual transmitters, important for use in testing, measurement and interference identification.

Virtual NEXTGEN TV Interoperability Program

The virtual NEXTGEN TV Interoperability Program (InterOp) continued in 2022 to exercise various features of the ATSC 3.0 standard using combinations of equipment and consumer receivers.

• ATSC 3.0 signals from News-Press & Gazette’s Santa Barbara NEXTGEN TV station are available in the InterOp to participants for testing by equipment vendors, receiver manufacturers and broadcasters.

Audience Measurement

PILOT conducted an ATSC 3.0 audience measurement trial in a live market with a participating broadcaster to collect second-by-second viewership data. The raw data and the report included analysis of the number of NEXTGEN TVs and their locations in the market.

Broadcast Positioning System

NAB developed an idea for a Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) which would estimate time and position at a receiver using only ATSC 3.0 signal.

• This could become a backup system when GPS, cellular wireless and the internet are unavailable and could play a role in national security by providing time reference to our national critical infrastructure.

NEXTGEN TV Conformance Testing

NAB and the Consumer Technology Association continued to jointly fund and develop the conformance test suite that ATSC 3.0 consumer devices must pass in order to display the NEXTGEN TV logo on their products.