WASHINGTON—NextGen TV, the evolution of broadcast TV powered by the ATSC 3.0 standard, will have wide-ranging impacts on how TV is delivered and viewed by consumers, but according to John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance, perhaps no broadcast element has a bigger upside with NextGen TV than weather.

The AWARN Alliance discussed what things will look like with ATSC 3.0 in this week’s webinar “NextGen TV and the Future of TV Weather.”

THE BASICS OF ADVANCED EMERGENCY ALERTING

The ATSC 3.0 standard is built with a multitude of layers that offer different types of services, but as ATSC President Madeleine Noland outlined in the webinar, the most relevant to weather broadcast is its Advanced Emergency Alerting layer.

One of the key AEA features includes what Noland called the receiver “wake-up,” a bootstrap component of the layer that enables monitoring for alerts even when a receiver is in stand-by mode. If a relevant alert is sent out, the monitor will wake-up and broadcast the alert.

There is also the AEA table, which determines the key information that is needed to properly disseminate alerts. This includes data like where the alert is for, allowing for geo-targeting; the timing of the alert, severity, and more. Noland called the AEA table “the heart and soul of the system.”

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