The FCC hasn’t systematically studied the effect of the TV incentive auction on low-power TV stations (LPTV) and translators, and they don’t factor into auction simulations or repacking analysis, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Monday in a letter to Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C , in which he announced the circulation of policies designed to mitigate the auction’s effects on those broadcasters. LPTV industry officials -- and legislators in an October letter to which Wheeler was responding Monday -- have been pushing the FCC to release the impact studies used to create the auction, and a Freedom of Information Act request from LPTV investor Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia (FAB) for that information was rejected using similar language to Wheeler’s.
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 .
A draft item on accessibility for user interfaces on the agenda for the FCC's Thursday meeting contains a compromise on using voice or gesture commands to activate captions that is expected to satisfy both consumer groups and pay-TV carriers, said industry officials and pay-TV attorneys in recent interviews. Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the National Association of the Deaf and other groups filed a petition for reconsideration (see 1401240080) of the FCC's first user interfaces order, approved in 2013 as part of efforts to comply with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Along with a recon order containing a captions compromise, the draft item includes an order on training and notification requirements for pay-TV carriers informing their customers about accessibility.
Broadcaster participation in channel sharing could be affected by how the IRS taxes the procedure. Industry lawyers and broadcaster Entravision said that could depend on a seemingly innocuous administrative decision by the FCC: Will the commission pay out spectrum auction winnings to intermediaries, or require that the funds go directly to licensees? Broadcasters that channel share want the FCC to be capable of paying funds to qualified intermediaries or trusts, attorneys told us, because that could make channel-sharing transactions eligible to be treated as like-kind exchanges, allowing the broadcaster giving up its spectrum to defer gains taxes on the portion of the money paid to its sharing partner. Entravision has participated in “discussions” focused on whether "relinquishment proceeds that a broadcast licensee would receive are eligible to be used in a tax-free manner towards a channel sharing arrangement structured as a like-kind exchange,” said its ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268.
Kicking off the TV incentive auction on its appointed March 29 start date is among FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's top-most priorities, said Gigi Sohn, his counselor, at a Practising Law Institute event Thursday. The idea that the current FCC is more divisive than previous ones is “a bunch of nonsense,” Sohn said, referring to a recent story (see 1510280062). “In the past, there were interparty battles,” Sohn said, saying past FCCs have been similarly contentious. For that Oct. 29 story, the agency was provided a chance to comment and declined.
A lack of funding is a major barrier to public, education and government (PEG) channels providing closed captions, said consumer groups, FCC officials, and the PEG channel advocacy group Alliance for Community Media (ACM) during a roundtable discussion on PEG closed captioning at the FCC Tuesday. Though FCC rules and the Americans with Disabilities Act require captioning for PEG channels, both have exemptions for size and funding that most PEG channels fall under, several industry officials said. That hampers the ability of the hearing impaired to participate in their local communities, said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (TDI) Executive Director Claude Stout. “We're paying our taxes just like the rest of you,” Stout said. “How can I make an informed decision if I'm not informed?”
Pay-TV companies and groups still disagree with TiVo and the Consumer Video Choice Coalition over whether the FCC should take action based on the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee report and whether such an action would be legal, said replies in docket 15-64. AT&T, the American Cable Association, MPAA and NCTA believe the FCC would be overstepping congressional intent and its own authority if it tried to implement the downloadable security solution backed by the CVCC.
The proposal for a downloadable security solution advocated by the Consumer Video Choice Coalition (CVCC), isn't a sound basis for a rulemaking, a group of pay-TV companies, set-top box manufacturers and associations said in a meeting Tuesday. They met with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, FCC Chief Technology Officer Scott Jordan and Media Bureau staff, said an ex parte filing in docket 15-64. The industry delegation included the American Cable Association, Arris, AT&T, CableLabs, Comcast, MPAA and NCTA, and was composed mainly of entities that had supported the multichannel video programming distributor-backed proposals in the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee final report.
TV broadcasters considering selling all their spectrum in the incentive auction and leaving the industry need to consider the liability and contract ramifications of taking that step, said Pillsbury Winthrop broadcast attorney Scott Flick during a Broadcasting & Cable webinar on the incentive auction Thursday. The webinar also included University of Maryland auction economist Peter Cramton, Incentive Auction Task Force Vice Chair Howard Symons, and KLCS Los Angeles Director-TV Engineering Alan Popkin. Broadcasters need to consider that untangling contractual obligations could eat up a portion of the money they get for selling their spectrum, Flick said. “It’s not the size of the bid, it’s how you use it,” said one of the slides in Flick’s presentation.
The FCC reimbursement form and catalog of expenses (see 1510300064) for broadcasters that will be repacked after the incentive auction are designed to be accommodating to a broad range of possible broadcaster needs, but still leave some questions unanswered, broadcast attorneys told us. Though the catalog of expenses lists the kinds of things broadcasters may need reimbursement for, it doesn't list how much those things will cost, with price ranges to be addressed in a later document, said the public notice released Friday. And though Friday's PN makes it clear that broadcasters will need to extensively document the repacking costs for which they plan to seek reimbursement, it's not clear how that documentation will be evaluated, or what the threshold would be for the commission to challenge a reimbursement claim, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Dan Kirkpatrick.
NCTA and members of the Consumer Video Choice Coalition are sparring in ex parte filings and interviews over whether the CVCC is now recommending downloadable security different from the one it recommended in the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee report. NCTA asked the FCC for an extension of the Nov. 9 deadline for reply comments (see 1510280070) to adjust its filings to what it says is a changing position by the CVCC, first in initial comments from the group's members and then in a recent ex parte filed by members Public Knowledge and Hauppauge.