DBS, Broadcasters Continue to Fight Over STELA Antenna Standard

Broadcasters’ arguments against the use of an indoor antenna standard to determine significantly viewed signal eligibility are “all either non-existent or easy to resolve,” Dish Network and DirecTV said in reply comments with the FCC. The two DBS companies get congressional intent wrong when they seek to change proposed FCC rules implementing STELA so indoor antennas can be used, a wide array of broadcasters said in docket 10-152. Broadcasters and DBS disagree whether indoor antennas can be used to test if a subscriber can’t receive terrestrial signals from a local TV station and so is eligible to get a distant station affiliated with the same network (CD Aug 26 p2). The law requires the commission to act by Nov. 23.

There are as many variables with the external antenna standard as there are with the internal standard, the DBS companies said. “The relevant differences of the indoor world can be readily defined and accounted for, in contrast to the differences implied by a large number of land use and land cover scenarios, which the [external] model today has to negotiate and predict.” Broadcaster concerns over manipulation of the indoor antenna standard for on-site testing ignore the requirement that the tester be independent, they said. A tester whose compensation isn’t tied to the test’s results wouldn’t have any incentive to “manipulate or tolerate manipulation” of the tests, the companies said.

The deletion of statutory language specifying that an outdoor antenna to be used for the standard that was included in previous legislation can’t be ignored “as if Congress erased the words by accident,” the DBS providers said. The removal of the language was intentional, they said. Broadcaster claims that an indoor antenna standard would undermine the DTV transition seems at odds considering the FCC encouraged indoor antenna use in its transition efforts, the companies said.

"A full reading of the statutory framework” of STELA and a policy of providing viewers access to local programming mean that the FCC should “once again reject the satellite carriers’ attempts to ignore the true structure of the American broadcasting system and undermine localism for their own financial gain,” six TV industry organizations said. The Association for Maximum Service Television, NAB and the Big Four network affiliate groups said: “The carriers’ effort to impose a different and unprecedented regime using an indoor antenna standard is based on a misreading of the language of STELA. On any plausible reading of the statute, Congress did not embrace the radical vision that the carriers advance. That Congress did not dictate use of indoor antennas is clear from the decision not to specify an ‘indoor antenna'” or similar wording.

DirecTV and Dish want to impose a service standard that would be “crippling” if applied to the DBS business, since it needs line-of-sight from satellites to outdoor antennas, the broadcast groups said. It would also hurt broadcasters, they contended. “To achieve this previously unknown assumption for service, TV stations would need to use staggering power levels and face multimillion dollar electric bills every month,” the groups said. “Even assuming that such high electric usage could occur, the interference among stations’ signals would render broadcast service virtually useless to the public."

What the DBS companies seek would expand carriage of distant signals, contrary to Congress’s intent in passing STELA, state broadcast groups said. The legislation’s focus is to limit distant-signal importation to DBS subscribers who “absolutely cannot get the local signal, thereby reducing the harm of signal importation to the local station,” said the Named State Broadcaster Associations. “The Satellite Providers therefore seek to stand STELA and its predecessors on their head.”