[opendtv] Re: Opinion: Putting A Price Tag On TV Spectrum

November 25, 2009: The Minority Media and Telecommunications has asked the FCC not to accept applications specifying channels 5 and 6 in its January 2010 filing window for low-power TV stations and TV translators, and would also like the FCC to delay processing those applications in the August 25, 2009 window.

MMTC Exec. Director David Honig notes in the letter that it's been proposed in the FCC's ongoing diversity hearing that the channels be used for FM broadcasting and says, "It is critical that the commission avoid accepting applications for new Channel 5 and 6 stations and delay processing the pending applications so as not to prejudice the commission's consideration of the various proposals that have been submitted for the use of this spectrum for FM broadcasting."

Honig points out that the MMTC filed comments in support of a proposal from the Broadcast Maximization Committee to use the channel 5 and 6 spectrum for new and displaced LPFMs, to expanding the noncommercial educational service, and for reallocating AM stations as digital-only transmissions. Indeed, he says the BMC proposal "may be the only means to save the AM stations in a digital-only world."

He writes that "without a freeze on the filing and processing of applications for Channels 5 and 6 in the LPTV digital filing windows, the commission will preclude the proposed uses of this spectrum space and waste the remaining spectrum space that could be much better used to save the AM service, eliminate the sharing arrangement with FM and LPFM stations and respond to the large number of interested parties wanting new NCE stations."

Honig also says that the FCC's granting new station authorizations in the spectrum would "violate basic procedural due process requirements" when interest has been expressed in other uses for channels 5 and 6. He adds that the FCC has a "once in a generation opportunity" to solicit ideas for the spectrum and says it would be "extremely short sighted" of the FCC to process applications for the channels.

Dan Grimes wrote:

  

"Thomas Hazlett is professor of law and economics at George
Mason University. He formerly was chief economist of the FCC."

There appears to be irony here.  Does this mean he wasn't taken
seriously while part of the FCC, or is this a new opinion for
Prof. Hazlett?
    

Not sure what you mean. I think that shifting RF spectrum from TV to other uses has been a very long term trend at the FCC. In fact, the justification for the FCC pushing the analog TV switchoff was just this. Putting the TV spectrum, some of it, to other uses. So aside from some specific suggestions for carrying out this policy, what Hazlett wrote was not unexpected from the FCC, IMO.

Examples from past FCCs are reassigning the 800 and 700 MHz bands, and the use of TV "white spaces."

Seems to me there has been renewed vigor in implementing this policy, in the Genachowski FCC, to respond to the Congress mandate for the FCC to create a "national broadband plan." That's just a matter of degree, though.

I didn't see anything new in the article, actually. Even the idea of paying off broadcasters for the spectrum on which they sit had been published previously.

My question is, how will Congress view this tactic of the FCC? Will Congress also dismiss FOTA TV? Or will they recoil at this, and tell the FCC to back off, as they did wrt the "broadcast flag"?

Bert
 
 
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-- 
Regards,
Mark A. Aitken
Director, Advanced Technology
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