PRESIDENT’S MEMO: Resilience

Posted on April 1, 2020 in ATSC News

COVID-19 is affecting us all, and I hope that everyone and their families, and our extended ATSC family, are all staying healthy and coping with the pandemic’s impact on our personal and professional lives.  While the coronavirus spread continues to grow at alarming rates in the United States and elsewhere, some other countries such as South Korea appear to be beginning to see a return to normalcy. This crisis will eventually pass, and even when that happens, it will take time to adjust to the new normal in our lives and businesses.

ATSC is adjusting as the situation evolves. Our March face-to-face meetings were conducted remotely, the 2020 ATSC Next Gen Broadcast Conference been rescheduled for August 27-28. A members-only remote annual meeting will take place in May on the original conference date. With the loss of this month’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, we are working closely with NAB and other key organizations to produce a new e-guide: ATSC 3.0 Progress Report: Spring 2020. The e-guide will serve as a platform for our members to inform the industry of the great progress they’ve been making as we swing into the spring season.

I am continually impressed with this industry’s resilience and resourcefulness, and ATSC is working hard to follow that lead. While many adjustments have been necessary, we are committed to finding ways to continue our work as much as possible.

We greatly appreciate our members who participated in the March ATSC meetings, which saw a number of work items move forward in the Technology Groups and Planning Teams, as well as the formation of a new group: Planning Team 8 – Core Network Technologies for Broadcast.

We are also proud to announce the launch of our newly redesigned ATSC.org website. Design began on the new site long before the coronavirus first surfaced in China last year, and we are thankful that work was able to move forward over the fall and winter months. With a sleek new design,it retains the best features of the previous site such as quick access to technical documents, and it also adds a much-improved search function, new News and Events pages, and the brand-new Spotlight ATSC 3.0 section. These new pages offer information about ATSC 3.0, deployment updates and a clearing house of third-party resources for implementers, including links to webinars, white papers, deployment guides, references, physical layer configuration calculators and a wealth of other tools.

During these unprecedented times, news from around the industry varies. Companies are closely monitoring expenditures with a focus on the most important and urgent goals, especially supporting the health and well-being of their workforces. While some work is slowed or postponed, other work is taking higher priority than ever. Broadcasters are keeping their communities informed while striving to protect their reporters and field personnel. Networks are coping with the loss of many sporting events, some that are postponed and will eventually air and some that have been canceled altogether. Virtual and cloud-based platforms are gaining traction faster than ever. Consumer electronics manufacturers are hoping for strong fall and holiday seasons as they manage through the effects of the pandemic on winter and spring sales. Meanwhile, we are very excited by the announcement that Portland, OR stations will go live with ATSC 3.0.

Only time will tell what the long-term impact this pandemic will have on the broadcasting industry, but there is no group of people I would rather be working with than the amazing, resourceful, resilient men and women in our extended professional family.

Be well,

Madeleine Noland, ATSC President

Posted in ATSC News