Broadcasters have invested heavily in ATSC 3.0, the ‘NextGen TV’ standard touted for its 4K video, immersive audio, targeted advertising, and IP-based datacasting. The industry has framed it largely as a new revenue engine, with occasional nods to public benefits like improved emergency alerts and enhanced newsroom tools. But what’s still absent is the element most likely to win Washington’s full backing: a genuine civic bargain. If broadcasters truly want the FCC to more formally accelerate the transition (one suspects the NAB and other 3.0 enthusiasts were expecting much more from the FCC than the clarified-guidance-but-well-short-of-a-mandate Public Notice its Media Bureau published earlier this week) — they need to offer communities something more valuable than higher-def sports or sub-DMA ad targeting. One potential solution: reviving and reinventing public access television. PEGs And The Public Interest Gap Public, educational, and government (PEG) channels once flourished under 1990s-era cable TV franchise deals. “Public access TV” provided towns and neighborhoods a ready-made, hyper-local platform for showing school sports, council meetings, community news, and even ethnic/foreign language programming that no commercial outlet dared to provide. As MVPD cord-cutting erodes cable franchise fee revenue and FCC rules have allowed in-kind contributions to supplant cash payments, PEG channels are being increasingly starved of funding — forcing many to cut back or even shut down. Yet, the core need for such programming hasn’t gone away. If anything, today’s hyper-fragmented digital media landscape makes trusted, community-specific information even more important: live town hall Q&As, tribal council coverage in native languages, high school theater productions, or emergency updates with reliable captioning. Cable no longer ensures that access. NextGen TV broadcasting could. |
