The National Association of Broadcasters is continuing its effort to forestall the sudden entry of unlicensed devices into the cracks between licensed television stations. Such devices have recently failed FCC tests, but proponents are still pushing for the right to flood the market with them. IN order to protect this television space, the FCC is utilizing another medium, radio. Adds have been placed on three key Washington DC stations, Citadel’s WMAL-AM and Clear Channel outlets WTNT-AM & WWRC-AM, all of which are in News and/or Talk formats. The idea is to put the case in from of regulators and legislators, and perhaps just as important, their key staff members.
TVBR/RBR observation: Most of the legislators and regulators who have weighed in on the DTV transition have expressed nothing but fear. It is therefore a continuing source of amazement that anybody in Washington would even consider experimenting with unlicensed devices right before the most critical change in broadcast spectrum infrastructure in history. For now, the official stance on white spaces should be "let’s wait until the day, some time after 2/17/09, when everybody is actually receiving broadcast television on their set at home, and THEN we’ll see what we can squeeze into the white spaces." Period.