Genachowski Is Far From Plodding, Cautious

According to a story in the Washington Post this week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is an overly cautious and plodding regulator who has accomplished little in his tenure that everybody in Washington believes is coming to an end.

That’s not the way I see it.

For better or worse (and most broadcasters would say worse), Genachowski has had an extraordinary, if not revolutionary, impact on at least a couple of the key industries he oversees.

He set in motion a policy that, if allowed to play out over the next several years, could transform the mediascape and broadcasting’s place in it. It was bold, it was radical and it came out of nowhere in the early days of his administration.

I am speaking, of course, of what’s come to be called the incentive auction, by which the FCC hopes to recapture a huge swath of TV spectrum and turn around and auction it off to wireless broadband carriers that will, in Genachowski’s way of thinking, put it to much better use.

Recognizing that stations have property rights in their spectrum (a radical notion in itself), the FCC will pay stations that voluntarily give up their spectrum to be auctioned. That’s the “incentive” part.

Despite those property rights, network affiliates with thriving news operations that have no interest in the proposal see the incentive auction as a threat.

They believe that the repacking of the TV band that is incidental to the auction will degrade their over-the-air services — both current and future ones. They also believe that Genachowski has set a bad precedent. Future chairmen will keep coming back, chipping away at their spectrum.

They sure don’t see Genachowski as a do-nothing chairman. They wish he were.

Plodding and cautious?

The incentive auction moved from concept to proposal to federal law to FCC rulemaking in three years. For something so far-reaching and inherently contentious, that’s lightning speed by FCC historical standards.

In launching the rulemaking last September, poor Genachowski had to give himself a pat on the back for coming so far so fast, figuring perhaps that no one else would.

“When we first introduced incentive auctions in 2010, as part of a strategy to address the spectrum crunch,” he said, “one initial reaction was:  The idea won’t go anywhere, not in this town, not at this time.”

The incentive auction still has a way to go before anything really happens. At the rulemaking launch, the FCC said it hoped to wrap up the rulemaking next year and hold the auction in 2014.

That schedule is not going to hold. In voting for the rulemaking, every commissioner talked about how complex the proceeding is. Indeed, the deadline for the first round of comments just slipped.

Plus, you always have the threat of legal challenges and injunctions. I’m figuring the NAB, which is essentially representing the non-participating broadcasters, is cooking up all kinds of ways to delay, delay, delay.

But still as these things go the incentive auction has good momentum. Because the next chairman will be another Obama appointee, it’s likely he or she will keep pushing hard.

From the start, Genachowski and his broadband czar Blair Levin played the politics beautifully. There was nothing timid about in their method.

They spent millions to draft the incentive auction proposal as part of a massive National Broadband Plan without a formal proceeding and delivered it to Congress with the imprimatur of the FCC, but without an actual FCC vote. I’m still not sure how they got away with that.

Once it was on the Hill, they won bi-partisan support for the authorizing legislation by talking always about the billions the auction would generate for the federal treasury. For once, the lawmakers had a bill that would add to the budget rather than subtract from it.

Now, I could criticize Genachowski for dragging his feet on other matters of interest to broadcasting, most notably the media ownership rules. But given his fundamental view of broadcasting — that it should fade into media oblivion along with the LP and VHS  tape — inaction is probably the best broadcasters can hope for.

So far, the FCC’s only significant action involving broadcasting was its decision earlier this year requiring top stations in top markets to post their political advertising files online. The affected stations could have waited forever for that new and pointless chore.

Still to come, possibly by the end of the year, are the FCC’s long-awaited media ownership reforms. Broadcasters aren’t expecting much relief; they are mostly hoping the commission doesn’t close the loophole that allows them to operate multiple stations in smaller markets through joint sales and shared services agreements. Keep in mind that closing the loophole might encourage more stations to take advantage of the incentive auction.

So, look, I respect the Washington Post. I like to say I got my start in journalism working for the paper, delivering it to my neighbors in Wheaton, Md., in the wee hours as a wee lad. But I think the reporter got this one wrong.

The incentive auction, which merited just a half of a sentence in the her story, is a big deal.

Although some think otherwise, I think the incentive auction is going to work. Marginal broadcasters will take the money and run. There will be a massive reallocation of spectrum that will fuel the growth of broadband. Broadcasting will have to adapt quickly and smartly just to keep up.

That’s plenty of legacy for any one chairman.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted at 973-701-1067 or [email protected]. You can read earlier columns here.