By James Careless

The satellite offices of the major news conglomerates are on the front line for regional, live news coverage that gets global exposure. Today, however, advanced equipment and services requirements from broadcasters who rely on satellite-enabled technology to get the news out are changing.

Now more than ever, TV network affiliates depend on satellites to deliver live, on-the-spot news coverage for their local and regional viewers. How these affiliates use satellites varies. Some stations run their satellite news gathering (SNG) operations as independent in-house units while others work through their parent ownership groups to share bandwidth and ground station equipment.

Either way, TV affiliates have embraced SNG as a key weapon in the war for viewers, ratings points and advertising revenues. This is why so many stations are operating in digital transmission mode, with some uplinking multiple video feeds to their home stations. However, even the most advanced of TV affiliates are now requiring more from their satellite service providers as high-definition and IPTV loom on the horizon.

SNG Pulls Belo’s WWL-TV Through Katrina, But Belo Wants More

When Hurricane Katrina hammered New Orleans, Belo Corp’s CBS affiliate, WWL-TV, was the only TV station that stayed on air. (Belo owns 19 TV stations affiliated with various national networks.) Proper planning was the reason WWL-TV was able to continue broadcasting. Long before Katrina hit, the station had built an analog/digital TV transmission site in Gretna, La., 18 feet above sea level. Add a transmitter structure built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, an on-site emergency studio, plus a backup generator with large fuel storage tanks, and WWL-TV had what it needed to weather Katrina’s wrath. The WWL-TV transmitter emergency studio is pretty small. Mindful of this, WWL-TV struck a deal with Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication in Baton Rouge to use LSU’s facilities during a disaster. When Katrina shut down WWL-TV’s French Quarter studios, the news staff moved to LSU. Some days later, they moved to PBS affiliate WPBL-TV in Baton Rouge and started working from its even-larger, broadcast-standard studios. At press time, WWL-TV’s news staff was still there.

To get WWL-TV’s signal from Baton Rouge to the station’s Gretna transmission site, Belo called in SNG trucks from its Dallas ABC affiliate, WFAA, and its CBS affiliate, KHOU, in Houston. Since then, "the SNG truck, which can uplink three digital satellite channels simultaneously, has been serving as the STL [studio-transmitter link] between Baton Rouge and WWL-TV’s transmitter," says Johnny Stigler, WFAA’s Electronic News Gathering (ENG) supervisor. "During the hurricane itself, we actually uplinked the Ku-band signal up to CBS New York, which then turned it around on C-band to Gretna. This made sure that the signal cut through the rain. Once it cleared, we were able to do a direct link using Ku-band." Rick Barber, WWL-TV’s director of engineering, coordinated getting all the equipment in place to allow the station to continue broadcasting, Stigler says.

Together with SNG trucks from other Belo-owned affiliates in Texas, WFAA’s SNG truck not only provides an STL lifeline for WWL-TV, but voice, data and supplementary video feed channels for this station and other Belo staff. Yet despite all this capacity, Belo wants more; specifically more digital signal compression at the uplink end, so that more channels can be squeezed into the same satellite bandwidth.

"Today in digital SNG, we typically need 5.5 megahertz to get out a single MPEG-2 channel," says WFAA RF Engineer Kelly Moore. "With a 54-megahertz satellite transponder we can send out 10 digital channels. But if MPEG-4 compression technology becomes affordable at some point in time, we could double the number of digital channels we uplink on the same bandwidth. This is critically important, because there are times during the news day when everyone wants to get on the satellite at the same time, and we just don’t have enough channels available to carry them all. This is why we need more compression, and we need it now."

Belo is not the only TV broadcast group worried about insufficient satellite bandwidth. The same concern is shared by Martin Faubell, vice president of engineering for Hearst Argyle Television. The company owns 28 TV stations with affiliations with all of the major U.S. commercial TV networks and has 24 SNG trucks using 36 MHz of spectrum leased from Intelsat on the just-launched IA-8 satellite. "Broadcasters are relinquishing terrestrial microwave bandwidth to the U.S. government, which is currently used for intercity microwave news links," Faubell says. "When this bandwidth is gone, satellite demand will likely increase. This adds to the need for improved digital compression [and] additional channels."

Sinclair Wanted Data Over Ka-band

As the owner of 60 TV stations with various affiliations to ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, UPN, and WB, the Sinclair Broadcast Group is a significant user of satellite technology. This is why the company has round-the-clock digital satellite spectrum contracted with SES Americom. "Part of this spectrum is used for our day-to-day SNG operations, which are coordinated through Sinclair’s Newscentral headquarters in Baltimore," says Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s director of advanced technology. "The rest is apportioned across our stations as needed on a daily basis."

With SNG trucks scattered across the country, it’s up to Newscentral to coordinate the use of spectrum. As a result, bandwidth is precious; especially for data, which tends to take a back seat to video in the TV business. "This is why we were disappointed when News Corporation decided to use Spaceway F1 as a high-definition Ka-band broadcast satellite for DirecTV, rather than a backbone for high-speed satellite Internet," Aitken says. "We were looking forward to backing up our terrestrial WAN via Spaceway’s Ka-band service. As well, there were some very unique SNG applications that never came to fruition due to the Spaceway shift. For instance, Ka-band satellite Internet would have allowed broadcaster to move news video as data; making possible highly portable, highly compact SNG packages that wouldn’t have required expensive trucks. It would have been an affordable way to use satellite more for data and news; but now it’s not happening."

Satellite Service Providers Need To Provide More Airtime Flexibility

If there is one thing that stands out as a TV affiliate issue with satellite service providers, it is airtime. They just cannot schedule it as quickly and flexibly as they need it.

"In fact, getting satellite airtime is really the only major challenge that we face with SNG," says Crag Harper, Belo’s executive director of technology. Because of the difficulty and cost of getting what they need from satellite service providers, "we typically don’t go outside to buy extra time," he says. "Instead, each affiliate typically buys what they need from their respective networks or from CNN."

For both Belo and Sinclair, buying airtime in bulk and then doling it out to affiliates as required has proven to be an effective workaround to this problem. Still, if the satellite services industry wants to make its TV affiliate clients happier, it needs to provide highly flexible airtime booking; both in terms of time period and time lengths.

Internet Connectivity in the Field Grows In Demand

The restructuring of Spaceway as a satellite Internet service did not just hurt TV affiliates’ plans for data backups and innovative SNG applications; it also removed an option many wanted for providing Internet access to their trucks.

"I’d like to see something like a really small aperture second dish on each of the trucks, which would handle data only," says WFAA’s Kelly Moore. "This would ensure that our crews always have email and data access wherever they are, no matter how busy the main satellite uplink is with video feeds.

And Then There Is HDTV…

All these concerns re doubled by the advent of spectrum-eating HDTV signals. "Some day we’re going to have to do live news shots using HDTV," Moore says. "Without MPEG-4 compression, we’re going to have a real problem fitting in all of our feeds."

What This All Means For The Satellite Industry

The wants and needs expressed by the TV affiliate executives underline some issues that the satellite industry needs to address, and be able to provide long-term solutions.

One way or another, TV affiliates need to be able to push more feeds through their satellite spectrum. Given that bandwidth is a commodity, MPEG-4 and even more efficient, more advanced forms of digital compression need to be pursued and implemented vigorously. The necessity of doing more with less is only heightened by the TV industry’s government- mandated switch to HD. Unless the satellite industry steps up to the plate, TV affiliates will find themselves unable to even match their current SNG output, due to the extra amount of data generated for each HDTV channel. Should this happen, savvy affiliates will start looking else where for signal carriage, such as WiFi or even fiber optic land lines where available.

In addition, to get more out of satellites, TV affiliates needs satellite services companies to offer more flexible airtime packages. It is commendable that the major broadcast groups have taken the initiative to buy airtime in bulk, then apportion it to their respective stations. This said, this is something that the satellite services industry should be doing itself. After all, the phone company manages to provide individual service as required; why not satellite?

Finally, with or without Ka-band, TV affiliates need affordable two-way data links to their SNG crews, anywhere in the world. Satellite is the best way to do this; somehow, this need must be accommodated.

As far as the satellite industry is concerned, it is wonderful that TV affiliates use satellites as much as they do for moving news around. But such business relationships will grow stronger when satellite service providers enhance bandwidth, HD services and bundle applications in an effort to keep them from looking for transmission alternatives.

James Careless is senior contributing writer to Via Satellite magazine