Some Broadcast-TV Footprint Contraction Possible, Says FCC’s Smith

Some contraction of TV stations’ footprints as part of voluntary broadcast spectrum auctions is a possible and acceptable scenario, said Sherrese Smith, an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Speaking for herself and not the FCC, Smith was responding to concerns for the voluntary auction process raised by Marcellus Alexander, president National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation. He said the voluntary incentive auction process may significantly lessen the reach of broadcasters who don’t choose to auction of their spectrum. They spoke during a National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications panel at NCTA Thursday night.

Alexander was describing the “worst case scenario,” said Smith. “We have been very clear” that broadcasters “should be put in the best position possible,” she said. “We are saying, ‘if you have 100 percent coverage and you go to 99.98, OK, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.’ Particularly when the benefits on the other side are national benefits,” she said. “We are not trying to put broadcasters in a position where their contours go from covering 100 percent to 20 percent. That is not what we are trying to do and our engineers are working with NAB and others to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I think we have been pretty clear that we are concerned about that and will make sure those things don’t happen."

The auctions are necessary to deal with the increasing reliance on wireless devices, said Jamie Hastings, CTIA vice president-external affairs. American wireless use is the most efficient in the world, she said. Wireless occupies 9 percent of available spectrum, while broadcasters and unlicensed users make up about 30 percent, with the rest allocated for government use, she said. CTIA is supportive of the incentive auctions but also wants to make sure the broadcasters are comfortable, she said.

The addition of guidance on what constitutes network management has led to an infusion of capital “because there are now rules to the road of who and when people can do reasonable network management,” said Smith. While net neutrality rules still have to go through a “crazy legal battle,” the FCC hopes to maintain the open environment the Internet had when it began, she said. The idea that an ISP is necessarily incentivized to restrict its customers’ broadband usage is not something Cox Communications agrees with, said Alysia Long, assistant general counsel. Not every company is as mindful of the open Internet principles as Cox has been, and some companies may seek to push their content over competitors’ and “that’s who we are concerned about,” said Smith.

The panel also touched on the debate over retransmission consent. About 99.9 percent of retrans deals go through without any viewer interruption, said Alexander. An increase in government intervention in the process may lead to more cases where either side decides to “wait and see” what the government says, rather than move forward on negotiations, he said of pay-TV companies and broadcasters. When there’s a system that works 99.9 percent of the time, “can the government make it better?,” he asked. But that 0.1 percent is especially painful and often occurs around the time of major TV events, said Long. Broadcasters are afforded some protections in the law for negotiating that the other sides are not, she said. For instance, cable companies can’t negotiate with another station of the same affiliation in another market if there’s an impasse locally, she said.

The FCC monitors when two sides can’t agree on retrans, but ultimately the FCC is bound by statute and is only able to get involved if one side isn’t negotiating in good faith, said Smith. Still, a broadcaster has never been found not to have negotiated in good faith, said Alexander.