The broadcast community has been through a rather elaborate roller coaster over the past decade. The voluntary incentive auction, the repack, deadlines that affect massive amounts of broadcasters, and a new standard that will undoubtedly reshape television as we know it for generations to come are all a part of that ride.
One problem has been that each of these various pivotal instances has caused our community to zoom in for extended periods of time without those necessary moments of zooming back out to look at the big picture. When that happens, everything seems bigger because whatever you are zoomed into fills the lens. Detail comes when your subject fills the lens, but perspective can sometimes be lost.
I love reading some of the news from one of our ATBA members this past week. ARK Multicasting had two very relevant things in the public eye that brought excitement through a crafty combination of the wide shot and the close up.
There was a press release by Hewlett Packard Enterprise that was published announcing that ARK has selected HPE as the core of their next deployment of ATSC 3.0 stations. The release provided some detail explaining ARK’s approach to move much of the broadcast chain to the cloud in their effort to move the edge all the way to the consumer using the new broadcast standard. While there was only so much detail that could be shared in a press release, it was exciting to see what an LPTV operator is doing to be a leader in the larger broadcast community and a pioneer in the ATSC 3.0 space.
Almost simultaneously, Joshua Weiss, the CEO of ARK published an “Upshot” article where he walked the reader through a very broad wide view of the business and the opportunities that are available. The article explains in simply plain English how ARK is building a network serving the public by creating a new “bridge” to the end data consumers.
Some readers will be drawn to the nuts and bolts provided in more detailed explanations. The general public, and even many within ATBA member organizations, really need the big picture in order to better appreciate the opportunities that exist. It was a reminder to me of how important it is that we, in the more technical broadcast space, make sure to zoom out sometimes so that others can see what we see.
Congratulations to ARK Multicasting for their continued success. Got a success? Let us know at info@broadcastingalliance.org
-Lee Miller, ATBA Executive Director
