NAB Launching Future of TV Coalition
Looks to leverage value of minority-targeted multicast channels in fight for spectrum
By John Eggerton — Broadcasting & Cable, 10/28/2011
The National Association of Broadcasters is launching the Future of TV Coalition next week, an effort to promote diversity via digital broadcasting.
NAB has been arguing for some time that one of the ways broadcasters can serve a growing minority population that is disproportionately over-the-air TV dependent is through the digital multicast channels made possible by the transition to digital channels it argues could be lost to spectrum reclamation by an FCC focused on wireless broadband.
Bounce TV, for example, an African American targeted over-the-air programming service, has been building its audience via multicast channel deals with station groups.
NAB described the coalition as “a broad array of constituencies that rely on broadcast television” and support “the evolution of broadcast television and its integration with other technologies and across many platforms.”
The Nov. 1 unveiling of the coalition will also feature a “special announcement” by Bounce TV, which has been making numerous station deal announcements over the past few weeks.
Scheduled to appear at an NAB press conference are NAB President Gordon Smith; Bounce TV co-founder and former Atlanta Mayor and UN Ambassador Andrew Young; Carmen DeRienzo, founding president of Spanish-language broadcast net Vme Media; Dave Lougee, Gannett Broadcasting president and member of the Open Mobile Video Coalition executive committee; and Richard Schneider, president of Antennas Direct, which markets antennas to cord-cutters and cord-avoiders.