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NAB asks for ATSC 3.0 mandate by 2030
- Thread starter Mediafrog+
- Start date
And add to that, all of this Rube Goldberg business of having one or more stations in the market sacrifice their 1.0 signal to become a "lighthouse", having to parcel out their existing subchannels to other stations whose subchannels (or at least one or more of them) they carry on the 3.0 lighthouse. (And not all stations in the market normally participate.)
Sadly, there's really no other way to do it, in this interim period when 1.0 and 3.0 are attempting to coexist.
More: ATSC 3.0 is coming: TV antenna users should prepare for chaos
cordcuttersnews.com
The FCC Approves Letting ABC, CBS, FOX, & NBC Station Owners Shut Down ATSC 1.0 OTA TV & Fully Switch to ATSC 3.0 | Cord Cutters News
The Federal Communications Commission unanimously adopted new rules Tuesday to speed the nationwide shift from legacy television signals to the advanced ATSC 3.0 standard known as NextGen TV, ending the requirement that stations simultaneously broadcast in both the older ATSC 1.0 and the new 3.0...
cordcuttersnews.com
I think broadcasters will start dropping ATSC 1.0 very soon. They know that will push most viewers to streaming platforms, preferably their own.
Any OTA viewers who migrate to ATSC 3.0 NexGen will be subject to DRM that can prevent recording. The industry finally gets to beat the old Supreme Court decision allowing people to record TV shows. Apart from being able to control what people can record and watch OTA for free, the main purpose of ATSC 3.0 will be to give broadcasters continued must-carry rights on cable for as long as it continues to exist.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Unfortunately, this haphazard approach is necessary because no one thought a decade or two out.
The original transition had a very long simulcast period, during which stations operated both their original analog signals and the ATSC 1.0 digital signals. Then, still not looking to the future, the part of the UHF band used for television was cut back -- from 56 channels to 23 -- to favor cellular telephone service (and they still aren't using all of the spectrum they were given). Now we are trying to repeat history with another transition which we quite honestly don't have enough channels to do efficiently.
In the midst of all this, the broadcasters somehow think they are not only going to save OTA television but also bring back OTA subscription television. Well, I have news for them: ON TV ceased operation in its last market on August 19, 1984; Prism's last OTA franchise gave up the following year; Spectrum in Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul ended on October 6, 1985; Super TV in the D.C. market turned off the decoder March 31, 1986, the same month Wometco Home Theatre shut down service to NYC; and SelecTV ended on March 31, 1989 (and was down to only their Los Angeles station, having lost their only other OTA affiliate -- a LPTV! -- the year previous. (Don't get me started on that disaster Tele1st that ABC tried during the overnight hours on WLS-TV for a little over six months in 1984.)
STV only worked until cable became ubiquitous. Now these jokers, already losing audience to streaming, think OTA for distribution will save them?
And, worst of all (for them), by the time they realize their mistake, there will likely be no takers left if they try to sell their stations. It may not happen right away, but it will, because the proponents didn't learn anything from history.
I mean, ATSC 1.0 has lots of problems. Fybush highlighted some of them on a prior page in this thread (Post #125).
The problem is that few consumers understand the problems with ATSC 1.0, which tend to be rather technical. Hank Hill has no opinions on modulation coding schemes!
Indeed relatively few households use an antenna for TV reception at all. Among those who do, only a fraction realize that there are already ATSC 3.0 transmissions occurring in many markets.
None of these groups are pressuring consumer electronics companies for more ATSC 3.0 tuners.
At the risk of going off-topic, are you suggesting that the cell companies aren't using the spectrum? Because I absolutely disagree with that. Whatever the wireless companies own is generally in use. There was definitely a time when this was true, but that time is mostly in the past.
- Trip
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I am going to presume that you are correct, Trip (and that whatever it is that I read about that is in error ... I have trouble relocating any articles I have read if more than a couple weeks have passed, such is the nature of the Internet) because your reputation for accuracy is unassailable in my book.
But I believe my points are valid otherwise. We do not have the number of channels available anywhere but the smallest markets to do this transition as orderly as we did the first. And that is probably driving this rush to make ATSC 3.0 mandatory, even though (as @PTBoardOp93 points out) the average actual OTA viewer could care less about the technical improvements ... and if enlightened, would probably say "not unless you stations pay for me to get a new set to watch you".
I also see encryption as a non-starter which, if allowed to be implemented unchecked and replace existing free-to-air services, will kill OTA television itself. I doubt that is the outcome the station owners want after spending money to upgrade to the new standard.
It was perfectly understandable that receiving equipment had to be replaced or augmented when we moved to digital broadcasting from analog. But this "upgrade" is more akin to the original color wars, in which the CBS "color wheel" system was incompatible with existing monochrome receivers and in the end the NTSC color system became the standard because it was compatible.
ATSC 3.0 is the color wheel of digital television. It renders practically all existing reception equipment obsolete. And, just as viewers were able to migrate to NTSC color decades ago, and migrate to digital broadcasting a shorter time ago, with long adoption periods, so too should ATSC 1.0 not sunset any sooner than actual penetration of 3.0 among viewers dictates.
And that is why I oppose the NAB's trying to force this to happen so quickly. Their "pushy" attitude makes it look like they want it yesterday, when the viewers -- the ones that the advertisers buy time to reach -- don't want it as immediately.
How true. With only 30 usable channels (VHF 2 through 6 are a non-starter, though they are used even in some major markets such as NYC and Philadelphia), there's not enough room to assign parallel ATSC 3.0 channels as there was when analog and 1.0 coexisted. We are left with, as I described it, the Rube Goldberg scenario of (usually) only having enough capacity to relay the main x.1 channel via 3.0 on a lighthouse stations, this being accomplished by one or more stations sacrificing their native 1.0 signal to be the lighthouse, while having to carve out reciprocal space for all of their subchannels on participating stations.
10% could be the difference between #1 or #3 or worse in a competitive market like local news in a lot of cities. Streaming can have "hiccups" too when the provider and the streaming company can't agree on rates.
Wasn't Disney off YouTube recently?
Once people figure out how much they can save with an antenna (if geographically possible) verses paying a cable or Internet app for local programming I seriously doubt they would go back. Personally I went from over $175 to under $65 several years ago. Of course I don't watch Baseball or The Weather Channel anymore so I really don't need regional sports channels or stuff that you have to have cable of a specific app you have to pay for.
The 20% figure is for homes with OTA that also use other sources like cable and streaming. The percentage of OTA only households got much lower than that in the past.
But that shrinkage has actually been reversing itself recently. OTA only homes have been increasing in percentage at about the same rate as broadband only homes. See this PDF (only 3 pages long).
In brief: from 12.9% in May 2024 to 16.3% in July 2025. Add the extra 4% of households who have OTA plus other services and you reach your current 20% figure. But the bottom line is that OTA now appears to be rebounding.
The PDF also lists markets where OTA use is abnormally high. The highest is Albuquerque-Santa Fe at 32% penetration. I wonder why this could be. Maybe the resident expert on that market (albeit in radio) knows something about the population there that could explain.
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Doing a little math, here's the flow:
From July 2024 to July 2025, 7.6% of US households dropped traditional cable/satellite and picked up:
- Virtual Cable (Sling, YouTube TV, etc): 0.8%
- Antenna: 3.0%
- None of these: 3.7%
This data comes from the Nielsen TV panel, which I believe includes the larger markets (top 50?).
As for why this change: It's the economics, stupid. Cable service is ungodly expensive. It's my second highest bill after the mortgage. My Spectrum service costs about what my property tax plus electric bill is each month.
Why do you still subscribe to cable? Do you live too far from any TV stations to get them in with an antenna?
ATSC 3.0 racing against streaming: Even With Regulatory Fast-Tracking, NextGen Is Racing Against the Clock
I'm not that resident expert, but I can tell you that New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. When money is tight, subscriptions to TV services become a luxury.
ABQ also happens to be one of the easiest markets for OTA DTV reception. All the stations (give or take a couple licensed to Santa Fe) blast right down into the metro from Sandia Crest, so it's super easy to hook up even the most minimal of antennas and get all the locals with ease.
In my case yes. I tried to get a rooftop antenna installed and was told if it didn't work just send it back. Excuse me, how? I had to ask you to install it in the first place.
Then I went back to the same place and they didn't even install any more. With all the trees and all the stations on the wrong city of the market, I'm not even sure an outdoor antenna would be dependable. I still have a link to a thread from here with advice if I decide to try it.
The indoor one sometimes gives perfect results, and sometimes it doesn't.
I was able to get a package with just the channels I would have gotten in the analog days from Charlotte, plus one Greensboro station, what used to be WGN, Spectrum's news channel, public access and a couple of others with local content. But the cost of that keeps going up.
I was forced by my phone company to upgrade to fiber so there is that (copper will no longer be maintained). If not for the inability to record and watch later, That makes viewing channels as if it were cable possible. Don't know whether it's cheaper because I just get landline and Internet.
OTA reception is minimally relevant for me, because I don't watch much programming on the OTA networks.
I'm a baseball fan, and Cable has been one of the very few ways to watch my team. FanDuel Sports networks now offer a direct-to-consumer streaming option, but I'm not sure that's really any more economical at $30/mo. I'll certainly re-evaluate before the start of next baseball season.
What’s your team?