Perry Sook: On the CBS — the CBS white feed, if you will, yes, you probably can see that game on that feed. I think if this dispute goes to the end of football season, I guess we’ll all find out, but I think they do have the right to include that in their feet at this point in time.
Barton Crockett: Okay. So your leverage is really just your local content, your local news. All right. And then…
Perry Sook: Yes, don’t value. Because that’s a lot. But yes, that is what people want us for is the local content.
Barton Crockett: Okay. And then switching to ATSC. It was interesting Sinclair was talking a little bit about their feeling about the importance of getting the FCC to move so that you can shut down the legacy stations, the ATSC 1.0 to get really enough kind of capacity to generate meaningful revenues off of this. What’s your feeling about that? I mean can you generate revenues that are meaningful without that? Or is that kind of a necessity to free up that bandwidth capacity?
Perry Sook: The current simulcast requirement does constrain our capacity as to what we can do. And I’ve recently been at the FCC meeting with the Commissioners as well as the Chairwoman. And I think that you’re going to see the FCC engage with the NAV and develop probably some sort of a task force in a public private kind of an arrangement to explore the further development of ATSC 3.0. I think that is absolutely necessary to advancement here. I think, again, if we had a sunset for 1.0, even if it was several years, hence, that would cause the set manufacturers to begin to build to that standard, lessen the backward compatibility problem with those that don’t have sets of compatible sets on the dongles or receivers and all of that has to be dealt with and the consumer issues have to come first and foremost.
And we need that, too. We’re not in the business of disenfranchising customers, viewers and advertisers. So — but I think if the public and private sector can sit down and talk about this holistically and kick around ideas, and I think that’s coming. So I think if that happens, I think you’ll — it will be a positive day for the industry and a positive day for the growth and development of NextGen TV. And we’re working independently with Sinclair and with other companies to develop business applications that can be used today, given the capacity constraints and enhanced GPS and distributed power and some other use cases that are not very bandwidth-intensive. And I think you’ll see, again, in 2023, some test cases and use cases that will be developed that again is — we’ll be seeing this forward progress in the development of ancillary revenues from NextGen TV spectrum.
So we’re very bullish on it. Obviously, the simulcast requirement needs to sunset at some point and there needs to be a sunset of 1.0 and an endorsement of 3.0 as the new transmission standard. And I think when those things begin to line up, I think you’ll see development accelerate. But we’re very bullish on the prospects and think these things are in the queue and on the way.
Barton Crockett: Okay. I mean do you think you start revenues from that in 2024, Sinclair was saying that. Are you guys saying that at this point?
Perry Sook: Well, I mean, we have revenues from our spectrum right now it’s primarily in the form of multicast revenue and leasing spectrum to people for their multicast distribution. So it’s not an inconsequential number. But — so there is revenue flowing from ancillary uses of our spectrum today. But in terms of the things, I’m talking about there could be a very modest amount. It would be more in the form of a test of the technology and people testing certain use cases. But I don’t expect that anyone would sign on to a big contract until they had the chance to administer their tests.
