A recent GAO request on low-power TV could give...

Mike Gravino, head of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition, in a widely circulated Monday email. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., requested the study, aimed at getting a sense of the media landscape and how the FCC’s incentive auction would affect LPTVs and translators (CD Oct 2 p20). Gravino called the request “excellent” and recanted from his previous strong criticism of a draft Barton bill, which aimed to protect LPTV interests in the upcoming auction. “I will be the first here to make a public apology for calling out the House Subcommittee members when the bill this summer was being proposed,” Gravino said. “While the bill sucked big time, and as written could have totally given up the last defense LPTV had in the FCC process, the resulting firestorm around it has definitely changed the dynamic.” Barton “decided to postpone” any official introduction of his draft LPTV and Translator Preservation Act “for now,” his spokesman told us Monday, citing “the end of Congress looming and little to no action on telecom issues expected during the lame duck.” But Barton and Eshoo thought “the issue was important enough to warrant some sort of action,” hence the GAO request, the Barton spokesman said. Gravino said there has “been a lot of activity behind the scenes in the Senate about this issue” but thinks “the House is better set up to make the GAO request.”