FCC Needs To Reserve Space for NCEs After Incentive Auction, Public TV Groups Say

The FCC needs to ensure that the incentive auction won't create “white areas” where there's no access to noncommercial educational broadcasting, said officials from the Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS in a meeting Tuesday with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O'Rielly. The FCC has “the authority to reserve a portion of the public airwaves for noncommercial educational service and the obligation to continue doing so,” the public TV entities said in a filing in docket 12-268. “The Commission has never made the continued existence of noncommercial educational reserved spectrum subject entirely to market forces and cannot reverse this well-settled policy now.”