PROCESS RANT 

 
WHEN IS  39 MONTHS 
NOT  39 MONTHS?
IT'S ALL ABOUT YOUR PEA



   
For most of you who are not bidding in the auction, and may not know the lingo, what is being sold by the FCC in the incentive auction, the "product", well that is a PEA; a partial economic area. 

There are 416 of them around the country (and off shore), and they do not relate much to the 210 TV DMA's.  But you will have to watch your PEA very carefully, since when it is clear, well you will soon have to move to your new displacement channel which you hopefully got 6 months after the auction.




THE KEY POINT - When your PEA is cleared of auction eligible broadcasters, the winning wireless bidder is ready for testing, and a government mandated regional repacking will be forced on LPTV and TV translators, all without compensation.  Regional repacking of PEA's will force move LPTV and TV translator licensees as soon as one year after the auction. But the worse part is that we are not included in the regional repack, ie, have access to the tower crews for our own installations on the same damn towers the repacked primaries, nce, and class a's are on.  

Unless of course, all willing and able LPTV and TV translator licensees and permittees are also built-out at the same time. Otherwise over 2000 new build CP's and the remaining 1500 A-D, analog to digital conversions, will not be able to be built for years.


COALITION COMMENTARY -  As we leave the familiar world of TV DMA's, and prepare for the post-auction world of PEA's, LPTV and TV translator station licensees and permittees need to know which PEA's their current contours are reaching.  And we need to know it now, for all licensees and permittees.  The FCC has never provided our industry with this analysis, and it should have.  Is not the clearing of a PEA an essential element of the repacking so that the provisioning of the spectrum for productive flexible use can be accomplished as soon as possible?  The FCC should have studied this impact, that is part of their overall responsibilities to licensees and permittees they have empowered to use the spectrum.


CLEVELAND OH TO WASH DC LPTV AND TV TRANSLATORS - BUILT AND NEW CP



PEA MAP OF SAME CLEVELAND OF TO WASH DC CORRIDOR


TV DMA MAP OF SAME CLEVELAND OF TO WASH DC CORRIDOR


In a related NAB ex parte filing with the FCC, NAB goes into quite a bit of detail about the "trade" it has made with CTIA and CCA members about getting the repack done as soon as possible (and as we have reported on before, this is the trade for NAB members getting additional repacking costs), and was part of our complaint last year about the lack of ex parte disclosure.  What CCA wants is no change to the 39 months for repacking, sanctions on broadcasters who do not make the move in time, blah blah blah.

You see folks, when NAB, CCA, and CTIA (and PBS was in the room), they never considered the Class A's, of which we now know that at least 69 were not given opening bids.  And of course, 8000 LPTV and translator licenses and permits were not considered also. 


NAB ATTACKS THE GOO
SAYS GOOGLE'S VACANT CHANNEL COMMENTS ARE  INACCURATE  AND MISLEADING 

"There is an irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of this proceeding. On the one hand, the Commission proposes that it is necessary to reserve Google Channels for TV white space operations because there will be fewer channels available for such operations following the incentive auction. On the other hand, white spaces proponents assert that this reservation will not harm low power television and translator stations because there will be plenty of channels left to accommodate these stations following the auction. Both of these statements cannot be true. Nevertheless, white spaces proponents are desperate to avoid acknowledging the concrete and immediate harm this proposal will cause."



COALITION COMMENTARY
Good read as NAB lays out the case for why the Goo is wrong. Actually, we do believe that both NAB and the Goo do not include valid construction permits, and there are over 2000 of them out there which will be part of the LPTV repack.  So if you read the NAB filing, which we strongly suggest you do, just add a couple orders of magnitude to how off the Goo is in their analysis.




FCC RELEASES REPORT AND ORDER ABOUT PROMOTING DIVERSIFICATION OF OWNERSHIP IN THE BROADCASTING SERVICES








COALITION COMMENTARY
We have not yet gone through this R&O, but we wanted you all to have it.  If you see something we all should be concerned about, please let us know.  In the past few years we have complained a lot about how the ownership reports does not accurately reflect true ownership patterns for LPTV and translators.  In fact, ownership of translators have not been studied at all, and is a key part of the post auction repacking.  No impact study coul








COALITION COMMENTARY
Please do check out LinkNYC.  It is a new spectrum ecosystem in NYC which could presage deployments in urban areas around the world.  And when you review the site, think ATSC 3.0 and what it could do in a similar way.  And how it could be part of it.
SPECTRUM LICENSE SALES AND LEASES
FCC REPRESENTATION

 

Frank Montero - 703-812-0480 - montero@fhhlaw.com

Peter Tannenwald - 703-812-0404 - tannenwald@fhhlaw.com

Davina S. Sashkin - 703-812-0458  - sashkin@fhhlaw.com

Kathleen Victory - 703-812-0473 - victory@fhhlaw.com

 




UHF VHF PRODUCT CATALOG





COALITION COMMENTARY
While LPTV does not get to benefit from retransmission consent agreements, and actually are materially harmed by these rules which prohibit us from engaging in free trade with the cable industry, it would be cool to have must carry and retrans rights.  But to the larger part of the article, that the MVPD are attempting to pad their wallets at the expense of the broadcasters, well I think that it misses the point for LPTV and translators.  Post auction, the MVPD are getting a windfall of new channel capacity, and are losing on their systems, a huge amount of "public service obligation" programming.  And there is no process to replace it since the wireless industry has no public service obligations for localism.



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If you would like to be part of our collective effort to make sure LPTV and TV translators are treated fairly in the Incentive Auction and channel repacking JOIN US today!


Mike Gravino
Director
LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition
(202) 604-0747
lptvcoalition@gmail.com
http://www.lptvcoalition.com