Technicolor teamed with Sinclair to successfully demonstrate the world's first live broadcast transmission of Ultra HD with high dynamic range using technologies that have been proposed for ATSC 3.0, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement. The series of broadcasts, integrated into Sinclair's experimental OFDM transmission system and transmitted under real-world conditions outside a lab, delivered "high-quality" HDR content broadcast at HD and 4K/UHD resolutions in a single-layer with backward-compatible standard dynamic range, they said. Both HDR and legacy devices, including fixed-position TVs and mobile devices, “were all able to receive and display the broadcast signal,” they said. "We're building a path toward new broadcast TV services that are appropriate for UHD and HDR," said Vince Pizzica, Technicolor senior executive vice president-corporate development and technology. "We're excited to reach the first milestone in our testing of real-world, challenging environments. This latest series of over-the-air tests confirms that Technicolor's HDR video solutions support broadcast at HD and 4K resolutions, as well as for standard dynamic range and mobile devices, presenting a whole new world of opportunities for broadcasters." Technicolor is a founding member of the UHD Alliance, which advocates open HDR standards, as is Dolby Labs, which has its proprietary Dolby Vision HDR system. Sinclair has advocated speedy deployment of a next-gen broadcast system, even if it’s a proprietary Sinclair system it thinks can reach market faster than ATSC 3.0 (see 1405080082).

Nexstar Broadcasting is expanding Tactive Digital's market reach by establishing offices in 18 markets, a Nexstar news release said. Tactive Digital is a digital marketing agency and division of Nexstar Broadcasting. Its initial service rollout will be in Hagerstown, Md./Washington, D.C.; Salt Lake City; Las Vegas; Jacksonville ; Memphis/Jackson; Fresno; Scranton/Wilkes-Barre; Little Rock; Green Bay; Springfield, Mo.; Rochester and Syracuse; Bloomington/Peoria and Champaign; Fayetteville, Ark.; Evansville, Ind.; and Lubbock and Wichita Falls, Tex., the release said.

Time Warner Cable deployed converged cable access platforms for both data and video in the New York City market, making it the first cable operator to do so, said a blog post from Ronald Da Silva, vice president-network engineering, architecture and technology, on TWC's website Wednesday. The company is continuing to transmit digital video over cable using older technologies as well, he said. CCAP will minimize TWC's use of power, space and facilities, Da Silva said.

TV and radio station deals are at their lowest quarterly volume since 2012, SNL Kagan said in an email Thursday. They reached $184.9 million in Q1 2015, compared with $778.1 million in Q1 2014. “The market is taking a break after the historically high volumes of the last two years,” SNL Kagan said. That volume could remain low in 2015 because of “leverage concerns at some of the larger radio companies, as well as the uncertainties surrounding the pending FCC incentive auction,” the industry researcher said. The largest single radio station deal so far in 2015 was the Educational Media Foundation’s $7 million buy of KMCQ(FM) Covington, Washington, from Queen Cities Broadcasting, the firm said. The largest TV deal of 2015 was Neuhoff Communications' $17.5 million sale of two stations to Gray Television, SNL Kagan said.

LG, GatesAir and Zenith Labs, developers of the Futurecast system, plan a media briefing Monday at the NAB Show to trumpet the news, announced this week, that Futurecast no longer is just a physical-layer proposal for ATSC 3.0 but has been expanded "to incorporate all of the major elements of an ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast system." Futurecast is now "a complete system" for ATSC 3.0 that incorporates proposals for the next-gen system's applications/presentations layer and management/protocol layer, its backers said. New Futurecast attributes to be demonstrated at the GatesAir booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center's Central Hall include its "integrated emergency alerting" capability that triggers activation of the next-gen Advanced Warning and Response Network, they said. Also to be demonstrated is Futurecast's capability to "seamlessly deliver addressable content" on two LG Smart TV systems that "render the advertisement slot differently while displaying identical programmatic content," they said. "The goal is to show how broadcasters can leverage ATSC 3.0 technologies to extend their current service by efficiently distributing addressable content such as targeted ads or personalized/localized program elements to viewers utilizing an ATSC 3.0 system."

The FCC should consider new ways to combat "the scourge that is pirate radio" stations, Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said in a blog post Wednesday. The commission could offer broadcasters a new right to use the legal process to "go after" pirate stations and find violators, he said. This has been done outside spectrum policy, for combating email spam, he said. The NAB's Broadcast Leadership Training Program approach can be used to prepare underrepresented populations for ownership positions in broadcasting, he said. "Those truly interested in operating a legal broadcast station can seek to participate in the Commission’s July 2015 auction," where 131 FM construction permits will be made available, with many in smaller markets, he said. O'Rielly isn't advocating increased lawsuits or class action suits, or for allowing a station's listeners to file lawsuits, he said. A more targeted private right of action by broadcasters can combat pirate stations, he said. O'Rielly said he isn't discussing the commission's proposal to reorganize and close FCC field offices, which mentioned pirate radio, he said.

Sling TV will add HBO to its programming next week, Sling said in a news release Wednesday. Sling TV customers can access HBO's linear channel and on-demand content for $15, when they sign up for the $20 Best of Live TV core package, it said. With this addition, Sling TV will be the only streaming service that offers ESPN and HBO, it said.

Placing even a few TV stations in the wireless band would “dramatically affect” the amount of spectrum available in the forward auction, NAB told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a meeting Monday, according to an ex parte filing posted online in docket 12-252 Wednesday. “If the FCC places even a handful of stations in the wireless band, it may consequently be restricting the forward auction to two or three blocks of paired spectrum available in the Northeast corridor,” NAB said. The FCC also has made “broadcaster costs an after thought” in the repacking process, NAB said. The commission staff “has yet to produce any data suggesting that, by optimizing repacking moves earlier in the auction process, it will be handcuffed from its goal of repurposing spectrum for the wireless industry,” NAB said. The agency also should modify its white spaces rules to require white space devices to include “geolocation capability” to make falsifying their location more difficult and an enforcement system that “imposes responsibility on database administrators who fail to correct false information in the database,” NAB said.

Noncommercial broadcasters in both TV and radio weighed in against an FCC proposal to issue FCC Registration Numbers (FRNs) that would allow users to be uniquely identified without using their full Social Security numbers, said comments filed in docket 07-294 Monday. The only support for the proposal came from a joint filing from a coalition of public interest groups including the United Church of Christ, Common Cause and the Prometheus Radio Project. The public interest groups said the proposal would enhance the FCC’s ability to collect the ownership data required to enact policies to increase diversity in broadcast ownership. “The broadcast ownership data must be accurate and comprehensive in order to accomplish the FCC’s goals of studying and analyzing ownership trends,” the joint filing said. The Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio and several organizations representing noncommercial college broadcasters said the proposal would be an outsized burden for noncommercial stations with boards of directors instead of owners. Requiring even partial SSNs and name and address information for those serving on NCE station boards would have “a significant negative impact” on stations’ ability to recruit volunteers for their licensee boards, a coalition of public broadcast licensees said. “Not only would the proposal not improve the quality, usability, and reliability of the Commission’s broadcast ownership data, it would in fact diminish those qualities in the data,” said a joint filing from APTS, CPB and NPR, pointing to the differences between commercial broadcast ownership and the nonprofit model. “Any policies introduced by the Commission to enhance the diversity of commercial station ownership based upon this data would almost certainly be misplaced in the context of public broadcasting,” the public broadcasters said. Prospective public broadcasting board members “do not have a financial interest in the station and many would not want to reveal private personal information as a consequence of volunteering to serve a community’s public service broadcaster,” the APTS joint filing said.

TiVo joined the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment, TiVo said in a news release Tuesday. It's the first technology company to become a member of ANA's national family brand marketers, TiVo said.