Unanimous Approval Expected for Low-Power Protection Item

An FCC draft report and order slated for commissioners' open meeting Wednesday creating a one-year window allowing certain low-power TV stations to convert to Class A status is expected to receive unanimous approval and perhaps an early vote, agency officials told us. The Class A window would open on the draft order’s effective date. The draft item has attracted little lobbying since it was announced last month, with the most recent filings in the docket (23-126) from June.

Implementing the 2023 Low Power Protection Act (LPPA), the item would apply only to LPTV stations that broadcast a minimum of 18 hours a day, carry three hours per week of local programming and are located in markets of 95,000 households or fewer. The stations would need to have met those requirements for 90 days prior to the LPPA's Jan. 5, 2023 approval. Those parameters mean only very rural LPTV stations would be eligible for the window, LPTV groups have said (see 2206220070). “I’d be surprised if 30 LPTV stations qualify,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney Davina Sashkin, who has represented the LPTV Broadcasters Association. The window also would not be open to TV translators.

Class A status gives LPTV stations similar interference protections to a full-power TV station. Standard LPTV stations are considered a secondary service, and automatically can be displaced if their signals interfere with a full-power TV station. Class A status makes an LPTV station a safer investment for broadcasters, and would protect stations in the event of a second broadcast incentive auction, Sashkin said.

Under the draft item, stations that gained Class A status from the window wouldn’t lose it if their designated market area (DMA) rose above the 95,000 household threshold. “We conclude that Congress did not intend for LPPA Class A stations to subsequently lose Class A status through DMA changes that are not under the control of the station,” the draft item said. If a station’s market size changes due to factors within the station's control, such as through a move to a different DMA, it could lose its Class A status, the draft order said.

The draft order also concludes that the agency would use Nielsen DMAs to determine eligibility for the window. The LPTVBA and other groups proposed alternate systems of dividing markets based on U.S. Census Bureau data. “Such classifications do not reflect television stations in the market, the reach of those local stations, the location of the populations they serve, or local viewing patterns,” the draft order said. Fabricating a new classification system based on census data is “unnecessary due to the availability of Nielsen data which is appropriate for this purpose,” the agency said.