Blog Shows Wheeler Critical Of Broadcasting

Even before President Barack Obama announced his decision on Wednesday to nominate Tom Wheeler to be the FCC’s new chairman, the National Association of Broadcasters had churned out a news release commending the appointment.

“NAB welcomes the nomination of Tom Wheeler as chairman of the FCC,” said Gordon Smith, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, in a news release Tuesday evening. “He has the experience and temperament to serve the agency with distinction, and we look forward to working with him.”

But one well-placed industry source said that, judging from Wheeler’s personal history as the former head lobbyist for both the cable TV industry (NCTA) and the wireless industry (CTIA) in Washington — and the entries on his blog page, www.mobilemusings.net — broadcasters have reason for some anxiety.

“NAB put out a nice statement about Wheeler, but I don’t think they are turning cartwheels over there [at NAB’s Washington headquarters],” this source said. “He [Wheeler] is a wireless guy.”

One broadcast industry executive also told TVNewsCheck he was “very disenheartened” by Wheeler’s selection. “A lot of his blog writings display a blatant animosity to broadcasting,” this executive said.

A quick review of the more than 50 entries on Wheeler’s blog suggests that Wheeler wholeheartedly buys the wireless industry’s argument that many broadcasters are wasting their spectrum.

“When only 10% of households rely exclusively on over-the-air signals (for TV reception) and digital technology can cram most market’s existing signals into a single license allocation, the question gets asked whether there might be a higher and better use for those airwaves,” Wheeler wrote in a Nov. 4, 2009, blog entry (see here).

“Broadcast spectrum is being kept out of the hands of rapid-paced innovators, while those who hold the spectrum appear to be taking their time embracing the opportunities digital presents,” he wrote on Jan. 11, 2011 (here).

In still another entry, Wheeler revealed that he had been “mystified why broadcasters had declared jihad” against the then-planned  effort by the Obama administration to promoting an incentive auction aimed at repurposing broadcast TV spectrum for smartphones and other wireless devices.

“Getting big dollars for an asset for which you paid nothing while still being able to run your traditional business over cable (the vast majority of its reach anyway) and maintain a broadcast signal at another point on the dial seems a pretty good business proposition—unless you really are serious about providing new and innovative services and need all that spectrum,” he said (here).

“If broadcasters respond to the digital spectrum debate the same way they responded to cable TV 30 years ago, with opposition and cries of the end of the world, then they will experience the same result: progress will go forward without them,” he warned (here).

In still another blog entry, Wheeler also said that he at least previously supported the concept of requiring broadcasters to pay for their spectrum. “Congress gave the nation’s broadcasters new (digital) spectrum so they could convert to enjoy the benefits of digital technology,” he said. “The political rationale was to enable high-definition television over-the-air. At the time of Congress’s decision [2007], some of us thought broadcasters should pay for their spectrum just like wireless carriers had to pay for theirs. Congress decided otherwise, however,” he wrote here.

Along with the tongue-lashings for broadcasters, the FCC-chairman-to-be’s blogs are laced with tips about the sorts of potential business opportunities that he might be amenable to helping broadcasters pursue.

In one blog, for instance, he suggests that broadcast channels might be ideal for delivering “bandwidth-hogging video” to iPads and other mobile receivers. “While video may drive bandwidth demands, broadcasting is also the most efficient means of powering the next generation of wirelessly delivered apps such as newspapers, eBooks and digital signage,” he wrote. “The Kindle and iPad are wonderful devices, but the one-by-one continual reiteration of identical content is a very inefficient way to deliver the New York Times, textbook updates or digital advertising. The economics of such new mobile-delivered services requires the efficiency of feed-once, then deliver-to-all, rather than the serial one-at-a-time delivery of the current mobile infrastructure,” he said (here).

In yet another blog, he suggested that he might be open to clearing the way for broadcasters to lease excess channel capacity. “They [broadcasters] wouldn’t have to worry about subscriber relationships, just lease access to their capacity to wireless carriers the same way they lease access to their towers for wireless antennas,” he said (here).