commentary by Dennis Haarsager
A ‘Racing Form’ For The Spectrum Auction
For the past several months, for my own curiosity and on behalf of a dozen clients, I’ve been interested in what sort of “Racing Form” the FCC may have given us that could be helpful in the reverse auction. In fact, I believe it has given us one, and this essay is meant to be a sort of guide to how to interpret this information. Learn whether your station or others in your market could be “winners.”
This article was originally posted on technology360.typepad.com
A “good portion” of the UHF television has already been cleared. First it was channels 70-83 that were cleared. That didn’t cause us viewers many problems as it was easy to relocate translators to lower UHF channels. But when channels 51-69 were destroyed it did have a negative impact with increased interference and the loss of some program choices. Now the FCC is going to take away more channels causing the loss of more stations. If the goal is to eliminate OTA television for those of us who use antennas for our television service they are doing a good job. It seems like the FCC should be helping improve television. The “winners” will sure not be the viewers.
You were promised OTA TV. Not infinite choices of OTA TV.
Chuck-Should the FCC approve 3.0 you’ll get your choices back and probably better reception in the bargain. Something TVNewsCheck hasn’t reported on yet is a big fat lawsuit that just got slapped on the FCC by a group of LPTV broadcasters in the district court of appeals. All the issues are addressed in that suit and it has the potential of delaying the auction. The few weeks will be very interesting.