FCC May Not Prioritize Displaced Services After Auction, Lake Says

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC may not prioritize low-power television or TV translators in the post-auction repacking process, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said during an LPTV panel at NAB Show. The commission can’t prioritize everything, and “maybe the best answer is not to prioritize any of them,” Lake said. The panel dealt with several plans for helping soften the impact of the incentive auction on LPTV and translators. The FCC very clearly recognizes the value of LPTV and translators,” Lake said, but the commission is bound to consider them secondary services. One LPTV broadcaster summed up the FCC’s view as “tough luck.”

Those suggesting that no service receive priority after the auction are “reveling” in the confusion caused by the lack of clarity, Fletcher Heald LPTV attorney Peter Tannenwald said. LPTVs and translators face a host of problems after the auction, Tannenwald said, and the commission’s efforts to mitigate them have left him “not too comfortable” with LPTV’s status, he said. Tannenwald and Gray Television Executive Vice President Robert Folliard urged LPTV licensees to lobby their congressional representatives to act to address LPTV issues with the repacking. "It may take an act of Congress” to get those issues addressed, he said.

The inability of TV stations to complete their transition to a new repacked channel before the FCC’s 39-month deadline may be one such issue, Folliard said. Congressional leaders who face the prospect of multiple channels in their districts going dark are likely to act, he said.

A proposal by Gray Television and others to allow LPTV stations that survive the repacking and meet some other requirements should be an “after-auction issue,” Lake said. The many uncertainties created by the incentive auction make it very unlikely that the FCC would examine that concept before the auction, he said. The policy would allow such stations some certainty after years of being moved around in industry transitions, Tannenwald said. "We feel like a whipped puppy," National Translator Association President Jim McDonald said: “We’ve walked this walk before and sadly it feels like we're going to do it again.”