LPTV NPRM, CP Deadline Suspension Encouraging But Raise Questions, LPTV Officials Say
Though the FCC’s announcement Friday of two actions to ease the effects of the incentive auction on LPTV is encouraging, the commission didn’t go far enough and may have raised more questions than it answered, said LPTV attorneys and advocacy groups in interviews Tuesday. As the LPTV industry requested 1409050029, the FCC suspended construction permit deadlines for new digital LPTV stations, and issued an NPRM seeking comment on what the incentive auction will do to LPTV. However, LPTV advocates said FCC proposals in the NPRM on LPTV channel sharing aren’t viable, criticized the deadline suspension for punting the issue down the road, and said the NPRM avoids the critical issue of LPTV participation in the auction. “They could have sought comment on protecting LPTV in the repacking process,” said LPTV attorney Aaron Shainis of Shainis & Peltzman.
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Suspending the LPTV digital construction permit deadline will “conserve Commission resources by avoiding the need to address hundreds of individual extension requests” said the FCC in the order (http://bit.ly/1yAbYmM). The suspension was expected and requested by LPTV groups, but LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition President Michael Gravino said the suspension “punted” down the road the decision on when permits would come due, leaving it still an open question for LPTV operators. The date should be tied to the repacking, to minimize the strain on the antenna and transmitter industries, Gravino told us. Though the NPRM seeks comment on setting a new deadline in advance of the incentive auction to enhance LPTV certainty, waiting until after the deadline to set a date would allow it to be based on the repacking schedule for full power stations and Class A's, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/ZYl5zx).
A proposal in the NPRM to allow LPTV stations on Channel 6 to operate analog FM radio-type services on “an ancillary or supplementary basis” could be “the tip of the spear” to allow LPTV flexible use of spectrum, Gravino said. Proposals for LPTV to have flexible use have in turn been seen as a step toward allowing full power broadcasters to do so, one broadcast executive has told us. The proposal could lead to Channel 6 LPTV stations being subject to some of the regulations FM radio stations are, said Tannenwald. “That would impose a significant new layer of content regulation that LPTV stations have not previously faced,” he said.
An FCC proposal to allow LPTV stations and translators to channel share after the auction, to make it easier for them to continue broadcasting after the repacking is “not feasible from a tech standpoint” said Louis Libin, executive director of the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance. The FCC proposal would have sharing stations continue to be licensed separately. “Each station would have its own call sign, and each licensee would separately be subject to all of the Commission’s obligations,” said the NPRM. Libin compared this to allowing two people to have the same Social Security number, and Gravino said it is very unlikely that full power or Class A stations protected in the repacking would be willing to share their channels with LPTV stations under such rules. That sort of situation would also raise many questions, Tannenwald said. “Will Class A/LPTV stations sharing with a full power station be permitted to operate at a full power station’s power level, and will an LPTV station sharing with a Class A or full-power station thereby gain the primary spectrum status enjoyed by its sharing partner?”
Though the NPRM doesn’t hit every issue LPTV officials had hoped, Libin said a final clause in the document seeking comment on "Additional Measures to Preserve LPTV and TV Translator Services" provides opportunity to raise those issues. “If we hadn’t been pursuing these issues so hard, you wouldn’t see this open-ended request," Libin said. He said LPTV interests are likely to use that clause to submit comments asking the FCC to study the issue of including LPTV in the auction, as they have in other proceedings 1410070005. Gravino said it's unlikely that LPTV interests will file any legal challenges to the incentive auction order before an LPTV rulemaking is completed.