[opendtv] News: Spectrum-Reclamation Amendment Passes

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA457257.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP

Spectrum-Reclamation Amendment Passes

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/29/2004 6:52:00 PM

A compromise spectrum-reclamation amendment passed the Senate Wednesday.

The amendment would require broadcasters occupying channels 62-69 to 
give up their analog spectrum by Dec. 31, 2007--earlier than other 
broadcasters must turn over theirs--but allow them to keep it longer 
if giving it up would disrupt viewers and no first responders are 
actively seeking the channel.

The wording was a compromise between Senate Commerce Committee 
Chairman John McCain, who wanted the hard giveback date, and Senator 
Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who wanted to give broadcasters plenty of 
waiver wiggle room.

McCain argued that the waiver was a loophole that allowed 
broadcasters to drag their feet on the DTV switch while keeping the 
spectrum from the emergency communications personnel that say they 
need it.

McCain cited a hearing he held in 1997 on emergency communications 
that featured testimony about the failure of emergency communications 
during the Oklahoma City bombing. "That hearing was seven years ago. 
We are no better off today. Nothing has changed." He then invoked 
9/11 communications problems, saying "nothing has changed.

"We can't wait for decades, for another Oklahoma City or Pentagon or 
New York, and hope broadcasters will operate in the best interest of 
the public rather than themselves. We have to act now."

Burns countered that broadcasters themselves provide emergency 
communications and that the spectrum could be found elsewhere.

In the end, they met somewhere in the middle, though it seemed more 
on the side of Burns and broadcasters.

Also on the broadcasters' side was the elimination of an 
amendment--from N.J. Democrat Frank Lautenberg-- that would have 
established guidelines for DTV public interest obligations. There is 
also a billion dollars earmarked from spectrum auctions to help buy 
DTV converters for viewers who can't afford them, but McCain 
suggested the absence of a hard date for that reclamation meant there 
would be not money either for the boxes or to help fund emergency 
communications.

McCain suggested NAB's support for the compromise was tantamount to 
selling out the 62-69 stations, many Hispanic and religious, and 
though he endorsed the compromise, asked the FCC and the House 
Commerce Committee to investigate its "discriminatory treatment" of 
those stations.
 
 
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