While the FCC broadcast incentive auction lasting into multiple stages would appear to give supporters of ATSC 3.0 more time to finish their standard and secure regulatory approval before the repacking, boosters for the new standard told us they don't see it that way. “I don't see more time as a positive or negative for the standard's adoption,” said Sinclair Vice President-Advanced Technology Mark Aitken, an advocate for the new standard. “I don't think it helps anybody for things to go slowly,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “It was never a concern that anybody would be waiting on ATSC 3.0.” ATSC recently announced the completion of some additional layers for the new standard (see 1610050056).
Monty Tayloe
Monty Tayloe, Associate Editor, covers broadcasting and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2013, after spending 10 years covering crime and local politics for Virginia regional newspapers and a turn in television as a communications assistant for the PBS NewsHour. He’s a Virginia native who graduated Fork Union Military Academy and the College of William and Mary. You can follow Tayloe on Twitter: @MontyTayloe .
The FCC released its first-ever white paper on cognitive disabilities and possible accessibility and technology solutions, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in remarks at a Coleman Institute conference on cognitive disabilities and technology Thursday in Broomfield, Colorado. “We’re not where we need to be when it comes to making sure accessibility issues are a first thought, not an afterthought.” In the white paper, the commission said a lack of outreach to those with cognitive disabilities is a major barrier to their use of technology, along with economic barriers and a dearth of accessible tech. “The perceived complexity of many communications devices may deter their acquisition,” it said. “Consumers and their caregivers may simply assume that a technology cannot be made accessible to them, even when a device has features to address the consumers' accessibility needs.” Communications tools that can help those with cognitive disabilities are “being underutilized because people either don’t know they are available or know how to access them,” Wheeler said. The FCC Disability Advisory Committee’s Sept. 22 approval of a set of industry-supported best practices designed to ensure the needs of those with cognitive disabilities are included in development of communications technology is “groundbreaking and inspiring,” Wheeler said. The practices are consistent with Coleman Institute’s own Declaration of Principles: Rights of People with Cognitive Disabilities to Technology and Information Access, Wheeler said, saying he's now a signatory to the declaration. Under the best practices, companies are encouraged to develop “collaborative relationships” with people with cognitive disabilities and related organizations, and to “keep abreast” of their needs. The practices encourage companies to include those with cognitive disabilities in their development process, and to make it easier for their products to be customized to suit individual needs, Wheeler said. He cited recent guidance from the FCC on how TV stations can make their alerts accessible to those with cognitive disabilities (see 1609300060). Despite such efforts, there's a danger that outreach efforts to those with cognitive disabilities could get worse as technology advances, Wheeler said. “We need to make sure that new barriers are not created through complex display menus and user guides, complicated security and navigation features, and software upgrades that may be well-intentioned, but which often create obstacles for individuals with disabilities,” Wheeler said. “The Commission has rules in place assuring that advanced communications services and equipment are accessible, and we will enforce those rules.” Policymakers should encourage industry representatives to “do their part to raise awareness among their designers, developers, service personnel and customer representatives about the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and their support networks,” Wheeler said. Those with cognitive disabilities also need jobs, he said, noting an FCC program that has led to six employees with intellectual disabilities. The program “has helped everyone at the FCC,” Wheeler said. “Work is getting done -- and well. Training is ongoing. Promotions are occurring. And new relationships and sensitivities have developed.”
The proposed repacking plan released last week by the Incentive Auction Task Force is a reasonable beginning but is likely to require tweaking, broadcast attorneys and engineers told us in interviews Tuesday. “This is a starting point in a negotiation,” said Meintel Sgrignoli broadcast engineer Dennis Wallace of the public notice. The phased system, consumer education, and the rigid timelines of the plan (see 1609300071) are all likely to be the focus of broadcaster comments on the plan, industry officials told us. With the auction ongoing and the final clearing target unknown, it's extremely difficult to gauge the merits of the FCC plan, Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald told us. “There are too many variables,” Tannenwald said.
Internal voting rules mean it’s likely to be at least several weeks before the FCC approves the set-top draft order unexpectedly pulled from Thursday’s meeting (see 1609290076), said former and current FCC officials in interviews Monday. That’s several weeks that entities won’t be able to lobby the commission on the item because it remains restricted under sunshine rules after being pulled, which a coalition of civil rights leaders called “highly unusual” in a petition filed Sunday and in an accompanying news release. The petition asks Chairman Tom Wheeler to release the text of the draft order and allow the public to comment. Wheeler’s decision to “impose rules that silence our voices, while decisions impacting our community are settled behind closed doors, is unacceptable,” said National Urban League CEO Marc Morial. “The FCC must unlock the plan and allow for meaningful feedback.”
The FCC's Incentive Auction Task Force is seeking comment on a proposed repacking plan that would divide repacked broadcasters into 10 staggered phases, prioritize the reassignment of TV stations in the wireless band, and attempt to minimize the number of times consumers have to rescan channels, said Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and IATF Deputy Chairwoman Jean Kiddoo on a news media call Friday. Officials said the plan, filed in docket 16-306, takes broadcaster concerns such as a shortage of tower crews and the short repacking period into consideration. Since the phased plan will give broadcasters earlier notice, they will have more time to prepare for the repacking, Lake said.
The FCC received 22,000 reports from emergency alert system participants on the results of Wednesday’s second nationwide test of the EAS (see 1609280074), said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson during a news conference Thursday. The FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are still compiling the results, Simpson said. He declined to say this week’s test had gone better than its 2011 predecessor, but he credited the lessons learned from that test with helping this version. Asked about the success of bilingual alerts in English and Spanish that were tried during the test, Simpson confirmed that some alerts had gone out in Spanish, though some Spanish-language stations had to broadcast in English because of a quirk of the alerting rules and the way the system functions. “That is exactly the kind of thing we wanted to test,” he said.
Late removal of the FCC set-top order from commissioners' meeting agenda Thursday (see 1609290014) indicates Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel are relatively far from a compromise on what a final order should look like, industry and FCC officials told us. If the two sides were closer together, it's likely the meeting would have been delayed for hours instead of the item being delayed indefinitely, officials said. In the day or so before, a Democratic member of Congress who led a letter against the order (see 1609270048) lobbied Rosenworcel, while others lobbied her aide, filings show.
The FCC unanimously approved rules to make it easier for broadcasters and common carriers to receive capital from foreign investors, as expected (see 1609190061). The rule changes codify the process of seeking a foreign ownership declaratory ruling for broadcasters, give them more latitude once such a ruling is issued, and take steps to prevent publicly traded companies that can't identify all their investors from running afoul of the foreign ownership rules, said a Thursday FCC fact sheet. The order is "a praiseworthy example" of the FCC creating opportunity, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said.
The second-ever nationwide test of the emergency alert system Wednesday (see 1609270058) went smoothly, according to early results, as expected (see 1609130060). That indicates the system of relying on a combination of Common Alerting Protocol and daisy-chained stations to disseminate the alert is reliable, EAS officials, broadcasters and equipment makers told us Wednesday. Some stations took longer than others to broadcast the alert and some didn't do so at all, but those errors were infrequent and scattered, and didn't occur to an unexpected degree, said Ed Czarnecki, senior director-strategy and government affairs at EAS gear maker Monroe Electronics. The first nationwide EAS test in 2011 had several issues.
FCC inaction on violations of the online political file rules led broadcasters to conclude they face “no consequences” for filing incomplete or inaccurate information on buyers of political ads, said a joint letter Monday to Chairman Tom Wheeler from the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Sunlight Foundation and the Benton Foundation. It referenced 11 violations filed by the entities in May 2014 (see 1405130044) and 16 new complaints against Scripps' WCPO-TV Cincinnati. At the time of the 2014 complaints, Wheeler promised to address the problem expeditiously, but that hasn’t happened, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represents the groups. “The FCC, in its failure to enforce laws that protect voters’ right to know, has clearly led broadcasters to freely ignore existing regulations with impunity,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, in a news release.