Innovation

The winners of the 2023 PILOT Innovation Challenge were announced in March and exhibited at NAB Show. The challenge sought startups and growth stage companies providing solutions to some of the key challenges and opportunities facing broadcasters over the next two to three years. This year's winners were:

• Iconik: a cloud-native solution providing a central point at which teams can gather, find media assets and collaborate using any device.
• Hour One: an AI-driven, entirely virtual broadcast video platform, complete with lifelike virtual news anchors and customizable 3D news studios.
• TSV Analytics: an analytical social media management platform designed to make social media content more effective.

Virtual NEXTGEN TV Interoperability Program

The virtual NEXTGEN TV Interoperability Program (InterOp) continued in 2023 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 Company's Santa Barbara NEXTGEN TV station are available to participants in the InterOp for testing by equipment vendors, receiver manufacturers and broadcasters.

NEXTGEN TV Conformance Testing

NAB and the Consumer Technology Association continued in 2023 to jointly fund and develop the conformance test suite that ATSC 3.0 consumer receiving devices must pass in order to display the NEXTGEN TV logo on their products.

• PILOT successfully completed the second term of the NEXTGEN TV Fellowship program with Howard University and Amazon Web Services (AWS), 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 Bipul Gyawali, Kritish Pokharel, Brent Piper and Naisha Flechier gained practical, firsthand experience with NEXTGEN TV technology. Scripps-owned KTVN broadcasted the fellows' application in Las Vegas during the 2023 NAB Show.
• The 2023-24 school year fellowship was launched on Nov. 3 and expanded to include students from the University of Missouri in addition to Howard University.

• Learn more

NAB developed the first-generation Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) prototype in collaboration with Triveni Digital and Avateq Corp. This system can estimate time and position at a receiver using only the 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.

NAB's efforts to help digital FM broadcasters improve coverage and reach more listeners took a major step forward with the FCC's release of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in February.

• The FCC tentatively concluded that an NAB/Xperi proposal to relax rules which establish maximum digital power "...advance the commission's ongoing commitment to developing terrestrial digital broadcasting with minimal to no adverse effects, including any harmful interference, on existing service."

A significant update to the NAB Digital Dash Best Practices Report was released at the 2023 NAB Show New York.

The 2023 NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference (BEITC) was held at NAB Show in April.

• Explore NAB Show Highlights

In June, NAB hosted a three-day Broadcast Technology Training program, sponsored by GatesAir, for a group of eight broadcasters from Ethiopia. Topics covered tech trends, media convergence, next generation broadcasting and leadership.

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to proliferate and impact media businesses in new and exciting ways, NAB has been exploring the opportunities it presents to broadcasters, providing members with updates, connections and educational opportunities related to all aspects of AI.

• NAB's technology team has been working with researchers studying generative AI, such as Glaze, and AI consumer preferences, such as SmithGeiger.
• NAB is collaborating with Project Origin, which is working to combat the threat AI poses to content integrity, and also Glean and Eon media, which are building AI tools for media.