TuffTV, which is distributed by Luken Networks, and which many of you carry on your stations, has started which may be the first crowdfunding campaign for a broadcast network. They are using a Georgia-based company called SparkMarket to raise capital.  While there are a lot of investor restrictions involved in these new capital raising projects, they are also using  various "Rewards Categories" which are easy for most anyone to participate in, similar to Kickstarter.  The Coalition will be tracking this first-of-a-kind project and are buying one of Rewards ourselves!

In the second part of our series on the future of LPTV we want to share with you again a White Paper which from Fred Campbell. He is the former head of the FCC Wireless Bureau, and up until recently was the Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and now has his own policy shop, CBIT, Center for Boundless Innovative in Technology.  He has been writing on how to create a free market TV industry, and has recently been submitting into various FCC proceedings.  This paper goes into how various market forces and government policies are all dead-set against broadcast television be a viable medium in the future.  How this relates to LPTV?, Well we soon will bring you that, so stay tuned, and READ THIS PAPER!!

While the practice is not new for FCC staff taking jobs in the private sector with those industries and companies they were just regulating the week before, it is starting to become a trend. This quote is from TV Technology...

 

"The National Association of Broadcasters announced that Robert Weller, the Federal Communications Commission's chief of Technical Analysis, will join NAB as vice president of Spectrum Policy on July 28, 2014. He will report to Rick Kaplan, executive vice president of Strategic Planning.

Since 2008, Weller has led the FCC's group tasked with rulemaking and analysis of spectrum policy areas, including radio propagation, interference, RF safety, frequency allotments and new technologies. He has also served as the technical lead on broadcast coverage and interference issues during the commission's broadcast spectrum incentive auction proceeding."

 

Now this gets even more strange in that Kaplan himself used to run the FCC Wireless Bureau and came over to NAB also.  Also at the end of last year key FCC Spectrum Auction staffer Rebecca Hansen took the top DC policy job with Sinclair Broadcasting.

 

So we ask, when will the LPTV industry hire someone like these key former FCC insiders?  But let us not forget that our own rabbitears guy is now inside the FCC's Office of Engineering & Technology.

 

I guess the big takeaway from the Weller hiring is that NAB is finally taking spectrum seriously, and that may just help us all. Although to be frank, NAB has yet to push for anything at all which supports all of LPTV instead of just their own translators. Hey NAB, want to help LPTV with must-carry, retrans, increased power?  Don't forget, over 100 LPTV stations are major network affiliates and are totally unprotected in the auction!

NAB Nabs Another Key FCC Senior Staffer

That secretive broadcast group, the Advanced Television Broadcast Alliance, which does not release who its' members are (although they say it has full powers, LPTV, and industry partners), broke a long silence in the FCC Spectrum Auction proceedings and filed a technical brief describing issues which could affect LPTV by interference from LTE and wireless services.  Similar in great part to the NAB filing the same day (no wonder, ATBA is a non-voting member of NAB and agrees with most everything NAB says or does), they do make some key points about how LPTV could be affected in a post-auction operating environment.

And when it rains it pours, so the FCC the same day begins to seek comments about the ATBA Petition for a Blanket Waiver for LPTV Construction Permits which was submitted back this past winter.  The Coalition has commented on this Petition publicly before saying that ATBA made both a strategic timing mistake when they made the Petition, and in the details of what they asked for.  Timing wise, the Coalition had already been in talks with the FCC to delay the Sept. 2015 sunset date for analog to digital conversions. And by asking for all LPTV CPs to end on that date, ATBA effectively asked for LPTV to have to build out their facilities right in the middle of the spectrum auction process!  So you can easily see that by acting alone in secret and not sharing with the rest of the LPTV industry what they are doing, ATBA has now created a minor problem.  The Comments and Reply Comments period for their Petition will conclude at the end of August, next month.  And then, and only then, will the much anticipated and awaited LPTV Further Notice of Rule Making start. What this has done is to push until Q1-2015 the final LPTV rule making and any hope of a clean 2015 business planning cycle for LPTV is now gone.  

On the issue of a "blanket waiver for all LPTV CPs", this is a huge issue which will be discussed in much detail as it relates to all other LPTV issues within the LPTV rule making this fall. So thanks ATBA, keep working in secret, we just love not knowing what you are up to!

And please let your buddies over at NAB know that LPTV wants the same government mandated benefits the full powers have.  If you are going to say you represent LPTV but support NAB, well, ya gotta make a choice!  Since you paid $1000 of LPTV licensee funds to join NAB, they have only tried to get a priority in the repack for NAB translators, have continued to keep LPTV out of the auction, and will not help LPTV get must carry or retrans negotiations.

The Defense Department has consolidated three media outlets into one new organization: DoD News.

Formed on July 8, DoD News consists of the Pentagon Channel, American Forces News Service and Defense Department Social Media.

 

While the merger is meant to harness the three organization's strengths to improve news quality, it comes after cuts to the Defense Media Activity, the parent organization for all three entities.

 

The Pentagon Channel was forced to scale back production in 2012 after 22 employees were laid off. Since then, it has served as mostly as a sort of C-SPAN for Defense Department news briefings and military-related congressional hearings.   LEARN MORE

Now wouldn't that be a cool headline to read one day? Nope, it was not those tired, beaten down, worn out, and forgotten 1836 LPTV licensees which overloaded the FCC website again today (and made this newsletter hard to find some inks for), no, it was those pesky internet and net neutrality legions of doom.  But it was fun to think about for a moment...hey, any of you got a white hat hacker in your employ?   Check out the cool chart from Roll Call.

The Lifehacker website does one of those simply comparisons for consumers, which I rarely put any value to, but it is a slow news day, and the server is humming along inserting those wonderful per inquiry spots for age spot removal, so I thought you might like this one.

WHEREAS, there are more than 1,500 Public Educational and Government (PEG) access centers in the United States that manage upwards of 5,000 cable television public, educational, and governmental (PEG) channels that each week carry 20,000 hours of original programming from local governments, schools, health and jobs organizations, social services agencies, religious groups, and local residents; and 

WHEREAS, PEG channels and production centers have become the primary vehicle for preserving localism by providing vital local government information, educational content, civic and cultural information and religious and political expression to residents in local communities across America; ......  LEARN MORE

For those current Coalition members we really appreciate you working with us during this past year.  While we have not yet won the war to completely protect our spectrum usage rights, we have certainly had a positive impact on the process.  And we are now prepared to help craft our own rule making.  And for those of your who are new to this effort we welcome you to join and help the LPTV bring a huge collective voice to the policy debates which dictate and shape how we run our businesses.  If you have any comments or question please let us know and we will try to get them answered for you.

Sincerely,