Last week, NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt keynoted the 2024 TV Tech Summit. Here is an edited transcript of his discussion with TV Tech Content Director Tom Butts.
TV Tech: Thank you, Curtis for joining us today. What does the NAB consider the key challenges facing the broadcasting industry today and how is it addressing them?
Curtis LeGeyt: I think we are in a moment here in the lead up to the 2024 election where the work that local stations across the country are doing to inform communities with trusted information has never been more important. In terms of challenges, we've got to ensure that local stations continue to provide that value to communities every day as an antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that's accessible online through the big tech platforms.
The challenge is that we're competing with one arm tied behind our backs. The current regulations around television ownership are desperately in need of modernization in order to allow local broadcasters to achieve the scale to better compete for advertising dollars and audience. Similarly, we've been advocating for a lead piece of legislation, the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” that would enable broadcasters to be fairly compensated when our content is accessed through the online platforms—Google and Facebook—absent reforms that will enable that type of fair compensation.
This puts real challenges on the broadcast model and all of this is exacerbated by the emergence of generative AI. As communities are increasingly relying on these tools to get their information we've got to ensure that local broadcasters first are fairly compensated when our content and our models are used to train these tools. And we've got to ensure that for our trusted local personalities, that we've got some guardrails in place to ensure that their images and likenesses are protected in this new environment of deep fakes.
And I think about the burden that all of this places on our newsrooms to decipher fact from fiction before we air certain video clips or images over our airwaves. All of this is something that local broadcasters are dealing with everyday.
TVT: Thanks, Curtis, you've laid a great foundation for our conversation today. So we're gonna delve into some of these subjects in a little bit more detail: How do you see the role of traditional broadcasting evolving in the age of streaming services? And part two of my question: Should Congress regulate virtual MVPDs, such as YouTube TV and Hulu TV Plus and similar services, like traditional cable and satellite? And if so, why?
CL: Well, local broadcasters need to be accessible wherever, however our audiences want to consume us. And so there is no doubt that as audiences are migrating to streaming—whether it is virtual MVPDs or otherwise—local broadcasts need to be accessible; that's the table stakes.
I look at all of this in terms of your question around the right regulatory backstop through the lens of the last 30 years. And what we have seen is that certainly the laws that have enabled local broadcast stations to secure carriage on cable and satellite providers either through must-carry or through the retransmission consent system have enabled the proliferation of a local broadcast system. There's a reason why Americans aren't simply getting their news through national telecasts from New York or San Francisco—certainly we have that option, if we want it.
But the current regime has worked in the traditional ecosystem to ensure that every local community is served by a local broadcast station rather than a national alternative. So I think it's premature to say whether Congress should be regulating this space going forward in a very specific way. But what I can say is that the FCC needs to take a hard look at this; we've asked the FCC to reopen its record in the currently dormant virtual MVPD proceeding that it opened nearly 10 years ago, and to ask these questions and examine the impact that the proliferation of streaming is having on consumers’ access to local broadcast. And we're gonna continue to push for that.
TVT: What are some of the initiatives the NAB is undertaking to not only recruit new blood but to make sure that diversity and inclusion is supported within the broadcasting industry?
CL: Over my first year as CEO, when I spent a great deal of time touring the country and meeting with stations—especially in smaller and midsize markets—this issue of recruitment was the one that I heard most frequently. Everybody recognizes NAB and the resources that we put into advocacy, but outside of advocacy, this challenge of recruitment, and getting the next generation of talent into broadcasting is what I would characterize as the existential challenge that I heard most frequently from broadcasters across the country. So it's something that is very, very much a focus, both of NAB and our Leadership Foundation.
We recently rolled out our new “You Belong Here’' recruitment campaign. And what the campaign aims to do is to equip local stations with PSAs and digital tools that they can customize to market themselves to the next generation of broadcasters—not simply in the traditional sense, such as broadcast talent, but also in terms of engineering, sales and marketing departments. That is the place where we've got to ensure that this generation that is really looking for an industry that offers a career that is purpose-driven, understands the opportunities that exist in local broadcasting
I think certainly our value proposition on providing trusted information to local communities in this moment of massive disinformation online is a real calling. So we've got to do a better job of—no pun intended—”broadcasting” that. This campaign also builds on an incredibly robust database of job postings across the country in partnership with broadcast state associations in every state to ensure that we become a “one stop shop” for both job seekers and for the industry.
In terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, I'm tremendously proud of the work that we are doing. Our Chief Diversity Officer Michelle Duke has really run point on offering an HR DEI forum that brings together industry HR leaders to discuss the challenges in attracting a diverse workforce.
We've got to be in the business of representing the diversity of the communities we serve—that's our competitive advantage. And so helping to foster that dialogue is significant to what we're trying to achieve on behalf of the industry. We run a 10-month Executive MBA-style program for senior level broadcasters, particularly women and people of color that helps to ensure that if you're an emerging leader in this industry, we’re going to ensure that you get some exposure to finance, that you get some exposure to production, that you've got the the well-rounded perspective that it's going to take to get into leadership.
TVT: Let’s talk ATSC 3.0, the future of broadcast. What’s your take on the current status of the transition?
CL: I'm tremendously proud of the work that the industry has done to get the ATSC 3.0 deployment to a place where a 3.0 signal is accessible to roughly 80% of viewers across the country. And that is a tremendous, tremendous accomplishment, especially when you layer on both the fiscal and the practical challenges that Covid presented.
But the most difficult piece of this transition is what lies in front of us. We are focused on working in partnership with the FCC on its “Future of Television” initiative. That is an extremely important step to get us from where we are today over the finish line. First, this initiative gave the FCC an opportunity to put its imprimatur on the fact that this transition will happen and provide certainty to the consumer groups, certainty to the consumer electronics industry and certainty to our pay TV partners that this is where we are going and it's just a matter of how we get there and not whether we get there.
NAB has taken the lead on this and we’re nine months into a series of meetings that are focused in three different areas. The first working group focuses on backwards compatibility, tuner availability and consumer issues, effectively ensuring that consumers will have ongoing access to broadcast television during this transition.
The second group is focused on completing that deployment, ensuring that ATSC 3.0 is not only accessible across the country, but that we migrate away from this model of simply channel sharing and can bring this deployment to a place where every station has the the bandwidth to offer a really immersive consumer experience—we’re talking about 4K, immersive audio, more interactive programming and more tailored advertising that's a win both for the consumer and for the business side.
The third working group is a bit more DC-focused which is looking at the post 3.0 transition regulatory regime and whether there are some tweaks to the existing laws that are needed to account for what broadcaste looks like after this transition.
TVT: How are NAB and broadcasters responding to the increasing use of artificial intelligence and what impact will this have on our industry?
CL: There's certainly some opportunities and then there are some challenges that go along with that. I think local broadcasting's unique competitive advantage is the people that we have on the ground and the more that we can utilize these [AI] tools—whether it is for script writing, back office tasks, gaining efficiency in the way that we do our production—that will free up our people to be present in their communities. And whether it's in the news and investigative reporting, or just frankly, community engagement, that is where these generative AI tools can really help us not just compete, but thrive relative to our video marketplace competitors who just aren't doing that local work.
But there are challenges. I alluded to these earlier, but ensuring that there's going to continue to be a viable model for local journalism, local broadcast, as these tools are not only using our content to ingest and populate their databases, but also to effectively train to serve as potential competitors for what we do—that's a potential problem.
Back to trust, we are only as good as the trust that audiences have in our local anchors—they are the most trusted because these communities know these people, they're in the grocery store, they're in the town hall, they're in the schools with them every single day.
I really worry about manipulation of our image and likeness and ensuring the right legal guardrails are in place to protect against that. And I do worry about the burden that all of this disinformation that is going to be really exacerbated by these generative AI tools, that they are misused—I really worry about the burden that puts on our newsrooms.
For example, in the immediate aftermath on October 7 of the horrible terrorist attacks in Israel, Wendy McMahon with CBS stated that, as they as they scoured social media and went through videos—all of which are alleged to be of the attacks that took place that day—literally, less than 10% of those videos were accurate and authentic. And so that is what we are up against every single day here. And we've got to ensure that our stations have the tools to decipher that.
TVT: What are you most excited about for the upcoming NAB Show?
CL: I'm extremely excited for the show. We're expecting more than 70,000 attendees out in Las Vegas this year. I'm going to be kicking things off on Monday morning with a fireside chat with Adrienne Bankert (NewsNation), which I'm extremely excited about.
We're also going to be adding onto that main stage, a keynote with Amica, an autonomously AI powered humanoid robot who is going to be walking through some some data that they've gathered on the impact on generative AI on media and media consumption. So I just think that is going to be a cutting edge way to look at all of these issues that our audience and our attendees at the show are going to really enjoy.
We're continuing to build the core pillars of the show which are content creation, distribution, monetization. We are going to be exploring all the latest technologies and will have some phenomenal keynotes.
I do think what's layered on top of all of this is the ever presence of these generative AI tools. We have literally dozens of programs across every vertical exploring the impact of generative AI on every element of broadcast production, and distribution and monetization. So I think it is just going to be a revolutionary event for those who are trying to stay on the cutting edge.
You can watch the TV Tech Summit on demand here.
