Current (https://current.org/series/spectrum-auction/page/10)
Results of the FCC spectrum auction were released in April 2017, with dozens of public media licensees earning close to $2 billion by selling their spectrum for use by wireless companies. The aftermath is still playing out, with many TV and radio stations required to move to new spectrum, and some TV stations that sold spectrum seeking to stay on the air through channel-sharing deals. Stay up to date with our ongoing coverage.
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | Repacking the broadcast spectrum could create “unprecedented” holes in public TV signal coverage.
How do you determine the value of a public station for which public service, not return on investment, is the bottom line?
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | The proposals clarify key financial issues surrounding the FCC’s spectrum auctions, which could bring millions of dollars to stations.
A Virginia broadcaster might swap some of its UHF TV channels for VHF during the FCC’s incentive auction and wants a bigger payout than currently proposed.
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | CPB is aware of as many as six public television stations considering going off the air, said Michael Levy, e.v.p., during the meeting, which was held by phone.
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | The workshops will run nationwide between February and May.
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | After hearing statements of dissent from its two Republican commissioners, the FCC approved on a party-line vote Wednesday the release of a notice requesting comment on the nuts and bolts of the upcoming broadcast spectrum auction. The notice, which will be issued later this week, considers complex specifics of the auction of interest to broadcasters, such as calculations to determine opening bid prices and the process for reassigning television channels. It builds on the commission’s Incentive Auction Report and Order and Mobile Spectrum Holdings Order adopted in May, which set basic rules. Congress asked the commission to conduct the voluntary auction to clear bandwidth for mobile devices. Television broadcasters must decide whether to participate by selling off spectrum and dropping their licenses, selling a portion to share a channel with another station, switching from UHF to VHF, or not participating at all.
Broadcast TV in the U.S. will undergo two big changes in the next few years, and a clash in the timeline for those shifts promises big headaches for pubTV stations.
Dru Sefton, Former Senior Editor | WASHINGTON, D.C. — An increasing number of public broadcasters have been contacting the FCC in recent weeks for information about participating in the upcoming spectrum auction, according to commission representatives who spoke at a CPB board meeting here Tuesday. The uptick began after an Oct. 1 report by investment banking firm Greenhill & Co. projected massive paydays for television stations if they sell spectrum to wireless carriers in next year’s congressionally mandated auction. Most pubTV stations, the representatives said, have been asking the FCC for details about transitioning from UHF to VHF channels.
Selling or keeping spectrum is perhaps the most consequential decision that the current generation of public television station executives and their boards will ever make about the future of public media, not just in their communities but the nation as well. The FCC chairman’s postponement of the spectrum auction until at least 2016 is an opportunity for greater scrutiny of that weighty decision. Pitches from speculators and their FCC allies have focused on the one-time financial windfall to local licensees from selling noncommercial spectrum. However, balanced deliberation requires examining some key issues. Here’s my own short list:
Know when to hold ’em: Next-generation broadcasting technology will open up important new revenue streams for public and commercial stations.