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REPACKING RANT
TEXAS BIG MAP OF CA, CD, LP, LD, AND TX LICENSES AND NEW PERMITS
THE GRAND
DECEPTION OF THE REPACK
MOST DISPLACED LPTV & TV TRANSLATORS WILL
NOT GET THE FULL 39 MONTHS TO REPACK!
We have reported on this before, way back in early 2016 when NAB was in (still is) a battle with the ACA (American Cable Association) about the repacking process, and the conflicting needs of the both the broadcasters, and the auction winners. You got to wonder why the small cable operators are in this fight at all. But with the official 39 month repacking schedule to start within a few weeks, NAB once again is striking back at the FCC about the repacking process, and now is attempting to expand the conversation to include the FM stations it reps.
"The Commission's overriding goal as it manages this process should be to protect viewers and listeners. In practice, this means not forcing broadcast stations to go off the air or reduce their service due to circumstances outside their control."
Really? If the above should be the overriding goal, then LPTV and TV translators should not be displaced at all!
What, LPTV is not a protected or auction eligible entity for this crappy auction process? Too bad folks, OUR VIEWERS ARE NOT SECONDARY!
What is really messed up about the NAB filing is that the majority of the authors are recent hired FCC staff! So either they know something the rest of us do not, from having been the staff to make these decisions at the FCC, or they are now just paid experts for the big dog broadcasters, and are towing the party line of more time, more money, more corporate welfare, and our viewers are more important than your viewers kind of folks.
These big dog broadcasters need all of the help they can get, since their rigged model is going to be severely stressed by a new free market oriented FCC. No way you say? The status quo model is here to stay for another decade? What most do not understand is that the 3.0 Next Gen system being touted by all, including us here in this pub, well it is going to change everything! And the big dogs are going to have to figure a heck of a lot of new ways of doing business which are not rigged, and not anti-competitive.
The reason we think that there is a grand deception about the repack is that 39 months is not 39 months in most every case. Depending on the location of your displaced channel assignment, you may have to vacate your current channel as soon as 2018, and most in 2019, and with many huge rush in early 2020 before the displacement funding runs out.
And, the FCC is not giving you the tools you need to make those decisions. It just wants you to move move move, now now now, hurry hurry hurry. All based on the partial economic areas your signals are covering. But the FCC will not tell each LPTV station which PEA they are affecting, nor will it tell us which transition phase we are in. They want us to figure it out on our own, but then penalize us if we do not move in time.
Here is the official PEA map again, as we have published it a few times already, but you now really need to understand it. There are 416 of them versus the 210 TV DMA out there. If your signal bleeds into another PEA from where you are transmitting from, you could be forced off the air sooner if that PEA is clearing sooner.
So what happens to the viewers of LPTV and TV translators? Are they any less important as the primary station viewers? Of course you will answer no, or would you?
Here is what the FCC has said about LPTV and the transition plan:
And how come we don't get any fancy color timelines like the auction eligible folks get? Guess we got to pay more in filing fees.
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