System/Policy

FCC requests comments on details of spectrum auction rules

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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.

System/Policy

FCC reps tell CPB board of growing interest in spectrum auction

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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.

System/Policy

Auction delay allows time to think hard about selling spectrum

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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.

System/Policy

FCC delays spectrum auctions by several months, until early 2016

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The FCC has postponed its auction of television broadcast spectrum to early 2016, according to a blog post on the commission website Friday. Gary Epstein, chair of the Incentive Auction Task Force, wrote that “court challenges to the auction rules by some broadcasters have introduced uncertainty” into the run-up to the auction, which is mandated by Congress to clear broadcast bandwidth for the growing number of mobile devices. Under the FCC’s earlier timetable, the auctions had been slated for mid-2015. Though Epstein didn’t identify the court cases, two organizations’ complaints have been consolidated and are pending before the before the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The National Association of Broadcasters filed a petition in August, challenging the FCC’s methodology for predicting coverage areas of TV stations among other elements.

System/Policy

FCC report aims to play up payout from spectrum auction

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An FCC-sponsored report projecting huge potential paydays for television broadcasters in next year’s spectrum auctions could prompt public TV licensees to reconsider decisions about participating in the complex proceeding. A full-power station in Los Angeles could fetch up to $570 million by giving up its assigned channel, while a similar property in New York might generate up to $490 million, according to a report by the investment banking firm Greenhill & Co. Issued Oct. 1 to spur interest in the voluntary proceeding, the report broadens the pool of prospective participants by projecting jaw-dropping values for TV channels outside of the top 30 markets. Full-power stations in Palm Springs, Calif., could bring to $180 million in the auction, for example, while a station in Providence, R.I., may be worth as much as $160 million, the report said.

System/Policy

Public TV organizations ask FCC to protect noncoms when repacking spectrum

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Three national public broadcasting organizations are asking the FCC to change its spectrum auction rules to ensure that channel repacking leaves no community without noncommercial television. The Association for Public Television Stations, PBS and CPB are concerned that repacking, or the channel shifting that will occur after the auction, could create such “white spaces.” Public television’s mission includes universal coverage, providing every American household with access to free educational television content. In a Sept. 15 petition, the organizations asked the FCC to “reconsider and revise” its auction rules based on the precedence that the agency has long recognized noncom TV spectrum as protected and distinct from commercial. The spectrum auction rules make no distinction between commercial and public spectrum.

System/Policy

Private equity gobbling up public TV stations: what does the public get?

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Public stations in Connecticut and San Mateo may be at the leading edge of a mass sell-off of public media assets in next year’s FCC spectrum auction. These stations have entered into agreements with LocusPoint Networks, a subsidiary of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, whereby LocusPoint shoulders the stations’ operating costs until the auction and then takes a significant share of the auction revenue after the station has sold its spectrum to wireless bidders. These deals have to be disclosed to the FCC, but their details do not. When the spectrum is auctioned, stations  may receive tens of millions of dollars for their spectrum, especially in congested coastal areas. This money is unrestricted and can go back into community-based digital media, or into university gyms, or into a city’s general treasury.

System/Policy

CPB eyes TV CSG rules in anticipation of spectrum auctions

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CPB will review its television Community Service Grant policies to clarify how to handle station revenues from the upcoming spectrum auction. The auctions, mandated by Congress to be conducted by the FCC before 2022, will clear spectrum for wireless devices. All broadcasters must decide whether to participate, and a station’s sale of spectrum could bring in millions of dollars. So far, two recent noncom TV deals in California and Maryland, in which a speculator paid stations up front for a share of future spectrum proceeds, each topped $1 million. The value of a similar deal in Connecticut was not made public.

Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network

Conn. network strikes deal with LocusPoint on proceeds from spectrum auction

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The Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network plans to relinquish the spectrum assigned to WEDW-TV in Bridgeport, one of four stations in its statewide network, in the FCC’s upcoming auction, according to documents filed with the FCC. Under its agreement with spectrum speculator LocusPoint Networks, the pubcaster received an undisclosed cash payout from LocusPoint and will share a portion of its future auction proceeds with the company. Financial details of the contract, approved by the network’s board of trustees in June 2013, have been redacted from FCC records due to a mutual confidentiality agreement. Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc. is among the sole-service public TV licensees identified in a July CPB white paper warning of the creation of a “white area” — the loss of PTV broadcast service — if pubcasters choose to auction off their spectrum. But that won’t happen in this case, according to officials from LocusPoint and CPBN.

System/Policy

In spectrum auction, FCC should protect public TV’s coverage

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The FCC recently released the entire text of its Report and Order detailing rules for the upcoming broadcast spectrum auctions, making it clear that it intends to make no effort to preserve public TV signal coverage. The 484-page report, “Expanding the Economic and Innovation Opportunities of Spectrum Through Incentive Auctions,” rejects the proposal supported by CPB and other leading broadcast organizations to preserve at least one station per geographic market. If you dive into this ponderous document, I recommend paragraph 367 and footnote 1090 (unfortunately, not a typo — there really are over 1,000 footnotes). In paragraph 367, the FCC states that it declines to “restrict acceptance of such bids based on the potential loss of television service or specific programming.”

The FCC further states that any such restrictions “could reduce the amount of spectrum available” to carry out the auction and undermine the “goal of allowing market forces to determine the highest and best use of spectrum.” The long and short of it is that if the entities that hold America’s 289 UHF public TV licenses decide to sell their underlying spectrum in the forthcoming “incentive” auction, that spectrum will be lost to noncommercial television forever. It need not be so.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: APTS, PBS, CPB criticize FCC auction rules; ‘Bob Ross Bar Crawl’ set

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• Pubcasting is not happy with the FCC’s spectrum auction report, with three of the system’s major organizations saying June 6 that the new rules violate the Public Broadcasting Act. “We are obliged to express our profound disappointment that the Commission has rejected one of public television’s most important policy goals in the auction process — our request that the Commission ensure that no community find itself without free access to public television service in the aftermath of the auction,” read a joint statement from the presidents of  the Association for Public Television Stations, CPB and PBS. • The second annual “Bob Ross Bar Crawl” will take place Sept. 30 in Chicago. Ross fan Jimmy Barrett got the idea for the event after holding a Halloween party in which two of his friends coincidentally both dressed as the Joy of Painting star. Attendees will ride a rented trolley around Chicago’s North Side, decked out in beards and Afro wigs, according to DNAInfo Chicago.

Quick Takes

FCC green-lights rules for TV spectrum auctions

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The FCC formally adopted rules today for the television spectrum auctions slated for mid-2015. Most of the provisions align with what the FCC has said leading up to today’s announcement. The commission formally declined to provide protections to low-power TV stations and TV translators. Neither facility category is eligible for protection under its current rules, the commission’s order said,  and shielding them would “unduly constrain flexibility in the repacking process and undermine the likelihood of meeting the objectives for the incentive auction.” The commission will open a special filing window for LPTV and translators that provide “important services” to select new channels, and establish an special process for relocating displaced stations. The report and order also lays out a timetable for participating broadcasters to vacate their channels.

System/Policy

CPB urges FCC to preserve public TV coverage in spectrum auction

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — CPB’s Board of Directors unanimously approved a resolution Thursday urging the FCC to avoid allowing “white areas” that would lack public television coverage after the upcoming spectrum auction and channel repacking. The resolution followed a meeting Tuesday in which network broadcasters and CPB management met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to discuss the auction, set for mid-2015. It will clear bandwidth to be used by the burgeoning number of wireless devices. Television broadcasters face three choices: sell spectrum and get out of broadcasting, sell a portion of spectrum and share a channel with another broadcaster, or opt out of the auction. Vinnie Curren, CPB c.o.o., told the CPB Board Thursday that it has identified “half a dozen major communities” where auctions could occur and where the pubTV station “is operated by an institution whose primary mission was not public broadcasting,” such as a university or government agency.