Bracing for ATSC 3.0 becoming reality, Sinclair and Nexstar, two of the country’s biggest broadcast groups, have created a consortium focused on promoting opportunities associated with the next-gen broadcast standard.
In an announcement Wednesday, the groups said the consortium “will promote innovation and develop and explore products and services associated with ATSC 3.0 and monetization opportunities such as spectrum utilization, virtual MVPD platforms, multicast channels, automotive applications, single frequency networks and wireless data applications, among others.”
Participation may be open to other station groups, they said.
Sinclair and Nexstar said the effort stems in part from their expectation that ATSC 3.0 will yield better options for gathering information related to audience viewing and consumption habits, creating new opportunity for broadcasters to better service viewers.
“The value of this captured data across all next-gen enabled devices and their users can be monetized several ways. For advertisers, it will provide greater efficiency for their spend with elevated addressability, personalization and accountability. Similarly, broadcasters will realize greater efficiencies in reaching and monetizing a significantly larger advertising market,” the groups said in a statement.
“By establishing a formal collaborative effort to advance the promotion of spectrum utilization, innovation and monetization through ATSC 3.0, we can more quickly bring its ground breaking benefits to broadcasters, viewers and advertisers based on the new technology’s ability to deliver targeted advertising,” said Nexstar president and CEO Perry Sook. “With the near-term conclusion of the FCC Incentive Auction, Nexstar and Sinclair are leading the industry in ensuring that we bring our respective shareholders appropriate value from increasingly scarce and in-demand spectrum. In addition, we welcome the involvement of other broadcasters who share our enthusiasm for the new technology which will allow our industry to continue to thrive in today’s multi-platform world.”
