Chernock To Head ATSC 3.0 Effort

Dr. Richard Chernock, chief science officer at Triveni Digital, has been named to lead the ATSC's Technology Group 3. That is the one working on ATSC 3.0, the next generation broadcast standard.

He is succeeding James Kutzner, chairman of the committee, who is retiring Feb. 1.

In his job with Triveni, Chernock has been working on new digital content distribution, metatadata management and monitoring, so the new post is a natural fit. He led ATSC's standards group for the emerging ATSC 2.0 interactive standard that allows for targeted ads and personalized content, and is also involved in a number of Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers committees involving mobile DTV and data broadcasting, two of the potential growth areas for the medium.

Unlike ATSC 2.0, 3.0 will be an entirely new transmission standard that is not backwards compatible with existing sets.

ATSC is the nonprofit digital television standards body made for the broadcast, cable, satellite, film, consumer electronics and semiconductor industries.

Asked how he thought broadcasting would change under the 3.0 standard, Chernock told ATSC his crystal ball was not all that clear, but that broadcasting "must" change. He said ignoring the trend toward TV anywhere, anytime, was hardly a formula for success.

"Continuing only today’s linear, scheduled broadcast to passive viewers is not the only way to go forward," he says. "I think that many broadcasters understand this change in expectations and want to deliver services that accommodate the viewer wants. A large part of the use cases and requirements for ATSC 3.0 are targeted at enabling these new types of services – providing a toolkit that broadcasters can use to build these new services.”

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.