Arguments that broadcasters received their spectrum for free...

Arguments that broadcasters received their spectrum for free from the government aren’t true, according to a recent Navigant study (http://bit.ly/1aoieDY), NAB said in a press release Tuesday. “Nearly all TV station owners paid market value for their spectrum licenses through private transactions,” the release said. The spectrum auction won’t be a “windfall” for broadcasters “just because the checks they wrote to pay for those licenses were made out to private companies, rather than to ‘Uncle Sam,'” the study said. It found 92 percent of all full-power television stations have been bought and sold since receiving their initial licenses. Transactions involving those stations have a cumulative value of more than “$50 billion, which includes the market value paid for the stations’ spectrum licenses,” said the release. The fact that the broadcast licenses originally given out free by the government can be transferred to a new holder is “irrelevant,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood in an email. “Say the government gives you land to use for free, and also gives you the possibility to sell that right to someone else. Does exercising that ability to transfer the license mean it wasn’t free in the first place?” Wood asked. The Navigant study also “refuted” the idea that broadcasters are unique in having been granted government spectrum, by pointing to cellular and satellite licenses, NAB said. Recognizing that broadcasters have “property rights” over their spectrum “will promote efficient spectrum usage, a robust private market-based system to reallocate spectrum, and technological innovation,” the study said.