“Keen observers know that the FCC is in the midst of the 600 MHz band repack,” says Chairman Ajit Pai.
That’s the post-Spectrum auction process that sees hundreds of television stations shifting their transmission frequencies to make space for wireless services.
Last week, the Commission issued a public notice noting that the repack is ahead of schedule, but that there’s still “much work ahead” for the FCC.
The Commission’s March Open Meeting will see a vote on a key matter tied to the repack.
In a blog post written by Pai and posted to Medium, the Chairman notes how Congress in 2018 OK’d an additional $1 billion to cover broadcaster transition costs while widening the list of entities eligible for reimbursement. As such, affected low-power TV stations, TV translators and FM radio stations can get cash to recoup their costs.
But, when that cash will be sent to those seeking reimbursement still needs to be finalized.
Hooray, bureaucracy.
The Commission has finally set a vote on the Report and Order that would establish rules for the disbursement of this funding. It will come at the March Open Meeting, scheduled for the Ides of March — the 15th.
Another agenda item of keen interest to broadcast TV companies is the latest Order to come out of its “media modernization” initiative.
In Pai’s view, the Commission currently has a “burdensome” process for authorizing “satellite” television stations.
Those are defined as full-power stations that generally retransmit some or all of the programming of another television station, known as the “parent” station.
Satellite stations are critical to providing television service to many rural areas. Until Nov. 19, 2017, WCDC-19 in Adams, Mass., served as a full simulcast of Nexstar-owned ABC affiliate WTEN-10 in Albany, N.Y., providing a signal visible to the southern tip of the Albany DMA in the analog era, and prior to cable TV proliferation in the Catskills.
Satellite stations are still found today, in particular in the Great Plains and Mountain West. For Pai, a problem exists for these stations: should any entity want to assign or transfer a satellite station, it has to go through “the time- and resource-consuming” reauthorization process all over again.
In other words, the station’s status as a “satellite” must be reauthorized, he says.
“These burdens can discourage companies from seeking to keep satellite stations on the air,” Pai says. “We proposed last year to change that, and public input we received indicates that we were on the right track.”
As such, the FCC will vote on whether to streamline the process while ensuring that the Commission and public still have adequate information to assess whether reauthorization serves the public interest.
Taking many headlines, however, is Pai’s announcement that the March Open Meeting will see him offer a proposal to make a segment of the 900 MHz band available for broadband. He seeks the authorization of “a market-driven, voluntary exchange process that would allow existing licensees to agree on a plan for relocating incumbents and transitioning the band—smoothing out, in an economically and technically sound way, the transition from point A to point B.”
The NPRM would also seek public input on two other ways to carry out this transition—an overlay auction and an incentive auction—to ensure the Commission has other tools available for repurposing this spectrum going forward.
