LPTV Groups Want Extension For CP Deadline, Disagree Over How
Low-power TV broadcasters and interest groups all want deadlines for construction permits for new LPTV stations extended well beyond the FCC incentive auction. They disagree over the method the FCC should use to do so, according to comments filed Thursday in docket 03-185 in response to an Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance petition. The FCC should deny the ATBA petition and address CPs as part of a larger rulemaking on other LPTV issues, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition (http://bit.ly/1rdZizE). “A permittee must be able to anticipate at least the near-term fate of its station before investing in construction,” said LPTV licensee CTB Spectrum Services (http://bit.ly/1vSibK).
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It wants the petition granted, but also believes the deadline should be one part of a larger LPTV rulemaking. The only group to file comments opposing moving the deadline is the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (http://bit.ly/1vShZuA). WISPs have an interest in using vacant TV band spectrum for fixed broadband, and LPTV stations should not be permitted to “squat” on spectrum but not build out their facilities without going through a case-by-case waiver process, said WISPA FCC Committee Chairman Alex Phillips in an interview Friday. NAB had backed ATBA’s request (CD Aug 15 p10).
Though ATBA’s petition seeks the blanket extension of LPTV construction permits to Sept. 1, 2015, the organization said that’s no longer enough. The date in the petition was arrived at before the incentive auction order clarified the commission’s time table, ATBA said. “Assuming, even optimistically, that the auction will close on June 30, 2015, under the rules established in the FCC’s Report and Order, full power licensees would have until September 30, 2015 to file applications for construction permits that specify the new facilities authorized in the incentive auction.” A CP expiration date of Sept. 1, 2015, will “obviously” not provide enough time for LPTV permittees to decide whether they should build the facilities in their CPs, “even if the auction closes on June 30, 2015,” ATBA said.
Other LPTV filers agreed. All LPTV construction permits should be pushed back to “to at least one year after the end of the primary relocation funds process,” which it estimates to be about 51 months after the auction, said LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. CTB said all CP deadlines should be pushed to “at least 18 months, if not two years” after the repacking process is over. “The chances of anyone having enough concrete information to determine the fate of an LPTV station by September 1, 2015, are virtually nil,” said CTB.
The Media Bureau would be abdicating administrative duties if the blanket extension is granted, said WISPA. The FCC has rejected arguments for blanket extensions for new permits, and the bureau should abide by that decision, WISPA said. Retaining access to contiguous chunks of TV white space spectrum is critical to WISPs, and LPTV operators shouldn’t be allowed to occupy spectrum with “paper” stations, WISPA said. “In filing their applications, LPTV applicants accepted the obligations and consequences of secondary status,” including the potential to be displaced, WISPA said.
That risk level has changed, countered CTB. “The risk of being displaced and having to move prematurely to a new channel, or not being able to find a new channel at all and thus being permanently silenced,” will be “materially different” in the post-auction spectrum environment, CTB said. “Whatever warnings the Commission may have issued in 2009 and before, they did not [include] loss of 40 percent of the TV spectrum,” said CTB.
The CP deadline is “only one of many issues facing the LPTV industry; and all of these issues, including the deadline, should be addressed in the rulemaking the Commission has promised in the near future dealing with LPTV issues,” said CTB. “It is only within the total context of the auction and the subsequent channel displacement process for LPTV that the FCC can make any determination as to when LPTV construction permits should be readjusted to,” said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. It and CTB said the deadline should be addressed as part of a larger rulemaking that would comprehensively handle LPTV issues.
ATBA has backed a House bill that would require the FCC to take steps to preserve LPTV and translator stations in the incentive auction (CD July 24 p7). Without an FCC extension, not touched on in the bill, there will be fewer stations to benefit from the bill, Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald, who represents CTB, told us.