DTV Allotments May Not Get Much Broadcaster Interest

The first two DTV allotments made by the FCC in five years may attract few broadcasters willing to bid for the licensees at auction and start operations from scratch, several industry lawyers predicted. Wednesday, the Media Bureau approved the second new allotment in as many months, for channel 5 in Seaford, Del. (CD April 29 p14). Because that slot and channel 4 in Atlantic City, N.J., are in the VHF band, where digital reception problems have occurred, and the stations are far away from large cities, interest may be limited, the lawyers said. One was upbeat about Seaford’s drawing interest because of the area’s demographics.

No broadcast clients of lawyer Harry Cole of Fletcher Heald have expressed interest in either allocation, he said. “There was certainly no upsurge in interest expressed in any comments” to the commission on either station, he said. “From that it’s reasonable to assume that we're not going to be seeing a whole lot of applications, but who knows.” Cole represents a client that unsuccessfully sought to move two western stations to Delaware and New Jersey under Section 331(a) of the Communications Act. An executive at the client company, PMCM, didn’t reply to a message seeking comment.

Allotment of the two frequencies by the bureau seemed designed to head off PMCM, considering that they're in the states it was interested in, said broadcast lawyer Mark Lipp of Wiley Rein. The Seaford station would be unlikely to reach Philadelphia or Wilmington, Del., he predicted. Nonetheless, “there’s always somebody who might want to try it because these TV opportunities don’t come up that often,” he said. “But it’s expensive to give it a shot.” This week’s bureau order noted that Wilmington is served by 14 stations, while Salisbury, Md., the market that Seaford is in, is served by four. “Consistent with Section 307(b) and the Commission’s long-standing television allotment policies, the allotment of a new channel in southern Delaware, rather than northern Delaware, results in a more equitable distribution of television channels.” Wilmington is in northern Delaware, and Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., had sought a station serving that city and other parts of the state. His spokeswoman had no comment. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

Seaford has its pluses because it’s near the beach areas of Delaware and Maryland where there’s a growing year-round retirement population and many vacationers in the summer, said broadcaster attorney Michael Berg. “They're the main nearby vacation meccas for Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia,” he said. “There could be a lot of interest” among would-be bidders, he said. “There could be a real service provided by a Seaford station because local weather is so important there,” he continued. “They regularly face hurricanes and nor'easters and other natural phenomena that people I think would be very anxious to get a local station’s information.”