Frank: FCC Auction Plan Like ‘Leno In Prime’

Even if the FCC incentive auction plan is as voluntary as the FCC says it is, it still could damage a broadcasting service that is a unique blend of national and local service and the “envy of the world,” Post-Newsweek President Alan Frank said Monday at a NAB panel session — Spectrum:  The Air That We Breathe.

The question is not so much how the auction is going to affect the minority of broadcasters who choose to participate in it, he said. The question is how it is going to affect the majority who choose not to.

The auction puts the entire broadcasting system “at risk” in ways that cannot now be understood, he said. “We just don’t know; nobody knows.”

At the very least, he said, the non-participants will lose interference protection and coverage as the FCC “repacks” the spectrum following the auction to clear large national blocks for the auction winners. Such degradation of service “is a given,” Frank said.

Before broadcasting made the final shift from analog to digital in 2009, the FCC and broadcasters thought they had it all figured out.  But afterward, they discovered problems that none had anticipated. “It’s a tough position to be in.”

“To me, the whole thing feels like, ‘Let’s put Jay Leno in prime,” he said, eliciting laughter.

“Incentive auction” is shorthand for the FCC’s plan to coax broadcasters to give up spectrum by allowing them to share in the proceeds from the auction of the spectrum to wireless broadband providers. The FCC hopes to recover up to 120 MHz of spectrum in this way.

However, broadcasters have been wary of just how voluntary it would be. That skepticism was expressed by Frank: “I had the honor of serving in the Army and I understand voluntary.”

The man on the spot at the session was Bill Lake, who as chief of the FCC Media Bureau had to explain and defend the plan.

Responding to Frank’s concern, Lake promised that it was not the FCC’s intention to degrade broadcast service in any way and that questions on how it might could be addressed in rulemakings leading up to the auction, which he said probably would not take place until 2015.

Since before the FCC formally unveiled the plan in March 2010, the agency has been promising “models” that would predict what would happen to stations in the broadcast band under various auction and repacking scenarios.

Asked about those models, Lake acknowledged that they are overdue, but partially because of the FCC’s desire to make them more accurate.

For instance, he said, they are now using actual signal contours of stations rather than simple distances to describe the coverage of stations. The FCC has also had to revise the models to take into account Mexican and Canadian stations along the borders, he said.

Pressed for a date of when the models might be released, he said, in the “next few months.”

To proceed with the plan, the FCC needs congressional authorization before it can cut broadcasters in on the auction proceeds. Asked to handicap the chances of such legislation being enacted this year, panelist John Hane, a communications attorney who has been tracking the spectrum plan closely, set the odds at between 30% and 50%.

In any case, the legislation — three bills have been introduced — bears watching. “It’s very important for broadcasters…. You have to pay attention,” he said.

According to Hane, the FCC officials may be having a tough time selling the incentive auction plan to broadcasters because some of those officials had suggested that broadcasting was an obsolete medium when they first pitched the incentive auction. That may not have been the message that the FCC intended to send, but it’s the message that was received, he said. “That did not set the dialog off on the right foot.”

And the FCC continues to underestimate and underappreciate broadcasting, Hane said. While it recognizes that broadcasters are now experimenting with broadcasting extra channels and mobile DTV service, he said, it fails to see what broadcasting could be.

“I don’t see the FCC … saying: ‘You know, free TV is a damn good thing and we ought to figure out how we can make it better.’”

For broadcasting to achieve it potential, it must be freed of technical constraints and ownership restrictions, he said. “Then, maybe there is something positive; maybe there is a win-win here.”

Hane also challenged the FCC’s assertion that there is a “looming spectrum crisis” in wireless broadband that makes it imperative that the FCC recover some spectrum from broadcasting.

The assertion has “nothing to do with reality,” he said. “There is no shortage. There is vastly more spectrum already allocated to mobile broadband than there is capital to deploy it.”

In response, Lake said, the FCC doesn’t have to be right about spectrum forecasts. “If there is no real demand, the auction will tell us that…. We did our jobs and we can all go home.”