This time last year, we were foreshadowing NAB Show 2022 as a battleground where ATSC 3.0 stakeholders would go in all guns blazing – to mark a triumphant comeback from the stalled NextGen TV rollouts triggered by the pandemic. Upon arrival at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the reality was a damp squib, and arguably that wasn’t such a bad thing, with ATSC 3.0 technologists hanging cautiously back, waiting for the right moment to strike when the iron is (finally) hot. Twelve months later, gearing up for NAB 2023, the iron is barely lukewarm. Trawling back through Faultline’s old headlines, stretching back to 2014 when work began on the US next-generation broadcast standard, tells a story with an unhappy ending…