Public TV Awaits Effects Of FCC Implementation of Spectrum Auctions, Payouts For Participants

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said he will keep an eye on the details of the auction as they emerge. The $1.75 billion “is important to ensure that no broadcaster is pushed off the air because it can’t afford the repacking costs,” he told us. “Public television stations are an electronic oasis for learning and civic understanding, and we must make sure they continue to thrive."

The Association of Public TV Stations said it’s pleased overall with the repacking process and options for participating in the auction. “We had concerns about whether stations would be made whole after repacking,” said Lonna Thompson, APTS chief operating officer. The FCC made best efforts to ensure that the process results in stations whose channels are changed can keep serving their existing populations, she said.

Although the legislation caps the relocation costs at $1.75 billion total for commercial and non-commercial broadcasters, some public broadcasters said they'd like to see more. “Our engineers said in their analysis that the entire move should have a cap of $3 billion for public and commercial stations,” Thompson said. APTS would like to work on getting a higher cap, she said. Larry Unger, president of Maryland Public TV, said the repacking process and the cap could be problematic: The big difficulty is that “whether you participate or not, you may be caught up in the repacking.” Three of MPT’s six stations may be caught up in the process, Unger said. “Figuring out who’s going to cover the shortfall is going to be a big problem.”

Public TV stations’ finances could be aided by participation in an incentive auction, whose rules will determine the extent to which noncommercial broadcasters can take part, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. He worries about “unintended consequences” from an auction. “I don’t want to see valuable public interest programming taken off the air, and a lot of that is noncommercial programming,” said Copps, a Democrat who left the FCC Dec. 31 after 10 years. Public TV stations should be encouraged to continue local programming, after both the repacking of TV channels the FCC wants to do before an auction and post-auction, Copps said. “How we go about these rules like repacking is very, very important -- not just for people in commercial broadcasting, but it’s important for people in public broadcasting, too."

The FCC aims to free up the upper part of the UHF band from Channel 51 downwards, depending on the amount of spectrum broadcasters volunteer to auction, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said last month at an APTS event. Channel-sharing stations will retain must-carry rights, according to the new law, he said (CD Feb 28 p15). “We think that some non-commercial stations may find channel-sharing an attractive option.” More than 73 percent of Corporation for Public Broadcasting-qualified non-commercial stations broadcast 24 hours of HD programming, he said, without quantifying a time period for that amount of content. “The others in particular might be good candidates to consider sharing with them or with each other in markets that have overlapping public stations or they could share with a commercial station,” Lake said.

Some pubcaster executives said they don’t expect a large number of public TV stations to participate in the auction. “We're not profit-driven, we're mission driven,” Unger said. Public TV stations aren’t going to make money by giving up spectrum and going cable, he said: “Universal access has been a big part of what we've done, so to not have an over-the-air signal, I don’t believe that I would be completing my mission.” The process of relocation may prove to be a big undertaking similar to the digital conversion, he said. “We get a better signal into some places and a worse signal into others than we did with analog. Is this going to change all that again?"

Major market stations aren’t expected to participate, and their terrestrial coverage is very important, said Dennis Haarsager, president of Public TV Major Market Group. “There are some markets that have much more over-the-air coverage and it tends to be something that’s disproportionately important to public stations,” he said. “The greater percentage of our audience and membership from donations comes from over-the-air viewers, so it’s not an insignificant item for us to worry about."

KLRN-TV San Antonio has no interest in giving up spectrum, said Chief Operating Officer Charles Vaughn. “Spectrum is very scarce and critically contested in those overlap markets, but that condition doesn’t really exist here.” KLRN makes use of the bandwidth it’s been allocated in an efficient and effective way, he said. “There are others delivering less payload with less bandwidth and I think they could do better."

Participation from too many public TV stations could backfire, said Matt Wood, Free Press policy director. The public interest group “isn’t thrilled about it” but it didn’t oppose the spectrum legislation, he said. “It would be unfortunate if public stations were the only ones to participate” and they choose to go off-air “for a short-term gain and not be there to provide a service for their community,” he said. Free Press’ general concern is that only less profitable stations will have an incentive to participate, he added: It would be harder for smaller stations and stations owned by women and people of color to refuse auctioning their spectrum “because they're bringing in less revenue than the big four in the market.” Free Press also is “concerned about windfall profits going to commercial licensees, rather than bringing down the deficit,” he said.

Unger is “pleased that at least … all the legislation says that any give up of spectrum or sale of spectrum would be voluntary,” he said. Vaughn said he hopes the auction doesn’t hurt HD: “For over-the-air HD to be in jeopardy is a breach of faith.” It’s possible to meet a public safety standard with shared spectrum in 6MHz allocation during emergency communications, “but I don’t think that’s all we should do in over-the-air broadcasting,” he said. The law isn’t very specific in terms of how the auction will work, Thompson said. “We won’t know how public broadcasters will be impacted until the FCC delivers its final rules.”