Americans for Tax Reform. Citizens Against Government Waste. Taxpayer Protection Alliance. These are just a handful of the groups that have written to the FCC urging the agency to toss the NAB‘s petition that would sunset ATSC 1.0 digital broadcast signals, replacing it with ATSC 3.0 signals powering NEXTGEN TV and broadcast data services.
Leading the charge for a group of advocacy groups linked by a disdain for excessive government collection of individual and business taxes is Grover Norquist, President for Americans for Tax Reform.
Norquist has gained a reputation for being fiercely against any tax increases, and is a National Rifle Association board member who has largely aligned politically with the Republican Party.
For Norquist’s group and 13 others, plus individuals Jeff Westling and Luke Hogg, rejecting the National Association of Broadcasters’ petition “to force competitors to use their preferred technology” is Task One.
They note, “While broadcasters operate under the strain of onerous regulation
dating from the Second World War, new mandates on other technologies are not
the solution.” Additionally, the groups claim that “more than three out of every four Americans” have access to ATSC 3.0, with availability in 80 markets, offering consumers a choice.
Whether or not that argument would pass muster with the executives at Sinclair Inc., which is shepherding the 25-year long quest to adopt ATSC 3.0 as the lone broadcast TV standard for signals is a question many may be asking. As RBR+TVBR has reported, retail interaction in multiple locales over the last several years has yielded low comprehension among sales floor staff at electronics retailers over NEXTGEN TV. Some retailers don’t even sell NEXTGEN TVs. Yet Pearl TV, the marketing arm of NEXTGEN TV led by Anne Schelle, continues to share data pointing to widespread sales of TVs equipped with the technology bringing ATSC 3.0 to consumers.
Norquist and his advocacy group peers, interestingly, want the Carr Commission to do what the Rosenworcel Commission did — putting a heavily GOP-aligned individual in line with a Biden Administration move. “The Commission should maintain its voluntary, market-driven adoption policy that has reached the vast majority of Americans, not embrace a mandate just to reach the small minority of markets broadcasters have struggled to penetrate,” the group leaders conclude. “In what is unfortunately a tale as old as time, they would rather use the government to limit genuine competition by forcing their competitors to adopt
their standards, ironically in the name of ‘competition,’ than petition the government to reduce their own regulatory burden so they can meet the challenges of the 21st Century. The Commission should take the plight of broadcasters seriously. They should be understood as a legacy technology that was saddled with a steep regulatory burden back when that was in vogue in the mid-20th Century. The solution now is to deregulate and allow genuine market competition to dictate which technologies survive and thrive. This is precisely what the FCC did in 2017 with the original ATSC 3.0 order. The FCC should stick to this roadmap that has empowered consumer choice while allowing broadcasters to consolidate and capitalize.”
