Earlier in November, the Federal Communications Commission updated some rules for broadcast. Among them was approval for a new Next-Gen TV standard. Phoenix will serve as the test market for the technology, called 3.0.

Washington D.C.-based Pearl TV group chose Phoenix as the country’s TV test market because of the metro area’s high TV usage. Anne Schelle is managing director of Pearl TV.

She says the 3.0 technology will upgrade standard signals to allow televisions to work better with the internet, almost like having an app on a phone, where viewers can receive and save content through every channel and access additional information through internet on demand.

"You’re watching a news program and you want to know more information about that news program, you can actually click on the screen and sign up to follow that story. You want to know where that fire is happening, so you can click on the story and it will show you exactly the map where it is occurring," Schelle said.

The new 3.0 technology also includes upgrades to video and audio standards The rollout will start among major TV stations in spring and is estimated to take several months to complete.