LPTV Broadcasters Wary of Analog Cutoff Coming Before Spectrum Plans are Finalized
Low-power TV broadcasters told the FCC that it shouldn’t mandate their switch to digital broadcasting before it completes plans for the TV band. The commission should wait until the National Broadband Plan is implemented before setting a deadline for a digital LPTV transition, Venture Technologies Group, which owns 33 LPTV stations, said in comments filed with the FCC last week. “The question now facing LPTV operators is whether channels will be available after the Broadband Plan is implemented,” the company said. “Until LPTV licensees … can be assured they will have channels on which to operate … it is ‘irrational and arbitrary’ to establish a deadline” for a digital conversion.
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Setting an analog shut-off date too soon might force LPTV operators out of business, said Hatfield and Dawson Consulting Engineers. “Many low power stations are operated by small rural translator districts with extremely thin budgets,” it said. Faced with a 2012 analog shutoff deadline, a “fair number” of stations would either shut down or keep operating in analog illegally, neither “a desirable outcome,” it said. About 73 percent of LPTV stations haven’t started digital transmissions, said du Treil, Lundin & Rackley, another engineering consulting group. It would take at least two years to convert all those stations to digital between getting the FCC authority, raising the money, and buying and installing new equipment, it said. If the commission plans to repack the TV band to make more-efficient use of the spectrum, it shouldn’t make LPTV stations go through two transitions, it said. Setting a simultaneous LPTV digital conversion and spectrum repack would avoid forcing consumers to rescan their DTVs and converter boxes after each change, cut down on FCC paperwork and let LPTV licensees change their transmission facilities only once, it said.
The commission should fully develop the record in its TV Spectrum Innovation rulemaking before setting a “date certain” for an LPTV digital transition, CTIA said. But the FCC should make sure the 700 MHz channels are cleared before 2012, it said. LPTV stations on those channels should be required to submit digital displacement applications by June 30 to clear the band smoothly, it said. The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council also endorsed clearing LPTV stations out of the 700 MHz spectrum by the end of 2011.
Stations that have already switched to digital should get federal money if they're forced to move their facilities to another channel, said Folse Communications, owner of two class A stations in Louisiana. “Asking stations that are already facing financial difficulties in this challenging economy, and have already outlaid significant capital for the first transition, to front their own money for a second (or even third) digital transition is essentially asking these stations to go out of business,” it said. “Dark stations are neither in the public’s interest or that of the government.” The costs of transitions of this kind could easily exceed the $20,000 station grants available from NTIA, it said. And stations should be required to move sooner if they're interfering with existing or planned public safety networks, it said.