WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Tuesday (3/22) will conduct an Executive Session that will consider 12 items on the agenda. The fifth order of business is S.3405, the “Low Power Protection Act.”
Sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the bill has bipartisan support but just three co-sponsors. The March 22 hearing could change that. For the LPTV Broadcasters Association, any support of the legislation requires an important markup — one that would greatly increase the number of stations eligible to apply for Class A status.
Ahead of the hearing, the association led by Executive Director Michael Lee and founded by President Frank Copsidas, wrote to Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (R-Wash.) to address three main concerns of the legislation as written.
Speaking with RBR+TVBR on Monday, Lee went right to the heart of the matter. “The legislation as it is currently written will effect only a very small group of LPTVs that may want to apply for Class A status, based on household size based on Nielsen DMA rankings of 177-210.”
If that were to stay as is, just 95 of 1,055 LPTVs would meet that eligibility threshold. That’s unacceptable to the LPTV Broadcasters Association, and Lee wants a rewrite that would increase the number of DMAs, thus yielding a bigger number of households.
How high does the LPTV Broadcasters Association want to go? They seek 500,000 households, shifting the range all the way up to DMA No. 60, down to DMA No. 210.
With such a dramatic increase, one wonders why the DMA range was established in the first place. Asked the question by RBR+TVBR, Lee cited “pressure from other areas of the TV industry,” which have put their influence toward limits such as this.
Could Lee be referring to the NAB? “They have a different view of the act than we do.”
As Lee and the LPTV Broadcasters Association see it, the “Low Power Protecting Act” should be about protecting low power stations, and their ability to offer the most local programming among the nation’s local broadcasters.
In its letter, Lee and Copsidas say, “The Low Power Protection Act needs to protect all qualified LPTV stations, regardless of geographic location. The LPTV stations that need protection most are the ones in urban or suburban areas that provide the best ‘public interest’ programming from local, independent journalism to religious and racially/ethnically diverse programming. Rural LPTV stations are generally the least in need of ‘protection.’”
There’s an opposing view of suburban or urban LPTVs, however. In some cases, these stations could be “Big Four” affiliates owned by one of the nation’s biggest local TV broadcast groups, giving them a way to skirt FCC ownership restrictions that only involve full-power stations. Meanwhile, it is via LPTV that RBR+TVBR‘s home DMA of West Palm Beach gets its lone locally based Spanish-language television station, which carries Azteca América network programming and news not found anywhere else.
Yet, the LPTV Broadcasters Association fight is on protecting LPTV stations in populated areas. “The concept of protecting rural LPTV stations is akin to giving out sand in the desert,” Lee and Copsidas write to Cantwell. “Most rural LPTV stations have nothing to be
protected from, being that there are plenty of available channels in the coverage area and
displacement by a Full Power broadcast station is highly unlikely.”
The LPTV Broadcasters Association also reasons in its letter to Cantwell that with nationwide rollout of NEXTGEN TV, providing “protection” to LPTV stations to realize
Class A status will make them eligible for SBA and preferred lender financing. “LPTV stations are currently not eligible for SBA or preferred lender financing as they do not consider an LPTV license as collateral whereas they do for ‘Protected’ Class A stations,” Lee and Copsidas say.
How many LPTV stations will apply for Class A Protection? “In speaking with our members, the LPTV Broadcasters Association does not anticipate more than 15% of eligible LPTV stations to request Protection if there were no geographic boundaries,” Copsidas and Lee state.
Why so few? “Many LPTV stations either do not want the burden of responsibilities for running a Class A facility or they sustain a business model of leasing out sub-channels to produce income with no locally produced programming.”
