Let’s Get Serious About The Repack Gap

Let’s call it the repack gap.

The FCC is giving TV stations 39 months to move to new channels in the repacking of the TV band that will follow next year’s spectrum auction.

If the incentive auction is modestly successful — say, the FCC is able to buy enough spectrum from broadcasters to clear 84 MHz nationwide — some 1,200 stations will have to be moved and it will take 11 years, according to an NAB-commissioned study by Digital Tech Consulting.

Do the math and you have a gap between the FCC and DTC of 93 months, or seven years, nine months.

The gap gets smaller if the auction is a big success and the FCC acquires, say, 120 MHz. Since fewer stations have to be moved, maybe only 800 or so, DTC figures the migration will take just eight years. In that case, the gap shrinks to just 59 months, or four years and 10 months.

Either way, or anything in the middle, it’s a damn big gap. Even if the DTC study is off by a third, it’s still a damn big gap.

As I reported last week, the DTC study goes into great detail about why it’s going to take so long to move all those channels. In a nutshell, it’s because RF equipment manufacturers and service providers will be overwhelmed when broadcasters start knocking on their doors all at once next fall when they get their new channel assignments.

There simply are not enough consulting engineers, tower structural engineers, antenna manufacturers, RF component manufacturers, transmitter manufacturers, RF transmission system installers and tower and antenna installers to go around.

The repack gap is a big problem. The way the FCC rules are written, if a station isn’t able to complete its move to its new channel within 39 months, it’s too bad. Ready or not, the station has to shut off its old channel so the FCC can packaged it up neatly for the wireless buyers.

If nothing gives, and the DTC study is remotely correct, hundreds of stations will be sitting out there 40 months after the end of the auction unable to feed their signals to cable systems and to millions of over-the-air viewers.

Of course, something will give. It has to, even the FCC now recognizes it.

During an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill this week, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) asked the five commissioners to promise that they would not force stations off the air during the repack. They all did, including Chairman Tom Wheeler, the incentive auction mastermind.

Professing his love for local broadcasting (yeah, really, he did), Wheeler said he would work something out with the broadcasters. “This is not a drop-over-the-edge-of-the-table situation,” he said.

Of course, Wheeler couldn’t also resist blaming the NAB for the gap, noting twice that the trade group had originally said the transition would only take 30 months. (Yes, that’s true, NAB retorted, but that was before anyone understood the true dimensions of the channel shuffling that the repacking would demand.)

The gap is not only a problem for broadcasters, but for the incentive auction itself. The longer the repack period, the less valuable the spectrum at auction. If wireless carriers have to wait eight years to take possession of the spectrum they buy in the auction, they are going to pay less than if they could get it and put it to work in three.

So, despite his pledge on Capitol Hill, Wheeler is going to be mighty reluctant to stretch the repack much beyond the current 39 months and devalue the spectrum as it goes on the block.

But there may be a solution and it was described to me for TVNewsCheck readers by Jay Adrick, a well-known RF pro who was one of the authors of the DTC study.

Adrick says the answer is to repack the band one region at a time so that all the RF resources can be concentrated on a single region. “There needs to be some orchestrated and managed approach to the repack rather than just firing the starter’s pistol and [letting] the fastest guy get the resources,” Adrick told me.

Such an approach is possible because the regions can be isolated RF-wise from each other by using natural barriers like mountains ranges and sheer distance.

The entire repack may take as long as the all-at-once approach, but the most populated regions — the places where wireless demand is greatest — could be repacked in relatively short order. By going first, the Northeast could be online in less than three years, according to Adrick.

Regionalizing the repack is not a new idea. In fact, in setting down the rules for the repack last May, the FCC anticipated some kind of phased-in approach would be necessary, including by region. “This tailored approach will ensure that stations have the time they need to complete construction while making spectrum available for new uses as rapidly as possible.”

The scheme that Adrick described, I subsequently learned, was cooked up the NAB and it has been trying to sell it to the wireless industry through its principal trade group, CTIA. The NAB is still hopeful it can make some sort of deal, and bring it to the FCC for its blessing.

The CTIA has good reason to take the negotiations seriously. The shortage of necessary resources for the repack is real. I know this because I spent the better part of a day at the NAB Show in April talking to the transmitter and antenna vendors, RF consulting engineers and tower companies on the exhibit floor. Faithful readers may recall my column on that.

And I can’t imagine the wireless carriers want to be the bad guys in the saga of how big government and big business conspired to knock regular folks’ favorite TV stations off the air so that millennials can spend even more time poking at their smartphones. These are, after all, public airwaves that the government is selling to the highest bidder. I’d love to be on the broadcasters’ side in that PR battle.

But, then, broadcasters really don’t have to worry about the repack gap and getting knocked off the air before they are ready with their new channels. All five commissioners pledged this week not to let it happen, regardless of what the repack rules now say. And we know FCC commissioners never, ever break their word.

N.B. During his testimony on Capitol Hill this week, Wheeler told lawmakers that the FCC is already empowered to grant six-month extensions of the 39-month repack deadline. Well, yes and no. The rules say that the FCC may grant extensions to stations for the construction of their new channels, but not for vacating their old channels within the 39 months and vacating the old channels — potentially being forced off the air — is what the fuss is all about.

An FCC spokesman points out the rules also allow the FCC to grant stations “special temporary authority” of up to six months to broadcast from any open channels or towers “to minimize any time broadcasters may be off the air.” That’s nice, but doesn’t that last phrase imply that some broadcasters will be off the air?

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