Low-Powers Have High Anxiety Over Repack

Passionate operators of most low-power television stations are afraid the upcoming incentive auction and subsequent channel repack will severely damage — or even destroy — their sector of the broadcast industry.

Except for the Class A variety, LPTV stations can’t participate in the voluntary auction and they also won’t be included in the FCC’s database when the channel repack takes place, says Peter Tannenwald, an attorney with Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth who represents several LPTV clients. As a result, many LPTV operators expect the worst: being squeezed out of their channel and out of business.

“So [the FCC] is basically ignoring low-power TV, and therefore, no low-power TV station, right now, knows whether it’s going to be able to survive,” says Tannenwald. “It’s not very comforting.”

The FCC is trying to clear out 120 MHz of TV spectrum from full-power and Class A stations and sell it to wireless carriers. To do that, it came up with the incentive auction plan, which actually is two auctions in one.

Broadcasters who opt to give up their spectrum will sell it to the government in a reverse auction, in which the government sets ever higher prices until it accumulates as much spectrum as it wants. The government then sells it to wireless carriers in a conventional forward auction.

The reallocation would likely involve packing the remaining TV stations into the lower end of the UHF TV band and that, in turn, would mean new channel assignments for many of them.

Under the auction’s authorizing legislation, the FCC needs to make “all reasonable efforts” to protect full-power and Class A TV stations in the repacking, but has no obligation to other LPTV stations.

Class As are LPTV stations that enjoy the same regulatory status as full power stations because they have agreed to provide minimum amounts of children’s and locally produced programming. They account for about 25% of the more than 2,100 licensed LPTV stations in the U.S.

“The FCC’s interpretation of that is that Congress made a decision that [non-Class A] low power stations are secondary and that’s the way they have to stay,” Tannenwald says.

“My interpretation,” he continues, “is a little different from that. The statute says ‘nothing in this statute changes the rights of low-power TV stations.’ I don’t see anything that constrains the FCC in any way with anything it wants to do. It just says the statute doesn’t change their rights.”

The FCC is looking at ways to preserve some lLPTV stations, Tannenwald says, including putting all low-power stations in a market onto one channel following the repack. Another solution includes protecting certain LPTVs based on criteria like how much money the station brings in or how important its content is to its market. For example, a low-power station with a high Hispanic population in its market might be protected if it offers Spanish programming.

Desperate for answers from the FCC, LPTV advocacy groups want to see hard data showing there is a national spectrum crunch and want evidence that their communities will be better served if they’re ultimately squeezed out of business.

“Show me how a large wireless company is going to better reach and speak to and communicate with my community, better than how I do it,” says Rod Payne, president of the Wichita Falls, Texas-based Christian Family Network Television, which operates a Class A station.

Payne is also the chairman of the Broadcast Alliance, which represents LPTV operators and aims to preserve and promote the efficient and effective use of all television broadcast spectrum.

“We take, very seriously, the license that was given to us, and with that, the responsibility that the FCC has entailed.”

Payne says the plan that the FCC has put forth is like something he would expect in a communist country. “It’s more like a confiscation and redistribution type plan,” he says. “[T]hey say, ‘We’re going to pull this away from you and we are going to redistribute it.’ Now the sad thing is, in a communist country, the model normally would be, take it from the wealthy and distribute it among all the people.

“Here what we’re doing, we’re taking it from some little guy out there, who’s invested $150,000 to $200,000 or more, and is really serving the people in the community, and we’re saying we’re going to take that from you and sell it to someone who already has a huge amount of infrastructure and an enormous amount of finance.”

Paul Broyles, president of the Texas-based International Broadcasting Network, which operates 10 LPTVs in the state, believes the auction and repack jeopardizes far more than just low-power stations.

“The International Broadcasting Network believes that going forward with the auction and repacking scheme will be chaotic, will result in the total destruction of the LPTV industry and will lead to the demise of the entire television broadcasting industry,” Broyles wrote in an email to TVNewsCheck.

Not all low-power station operators share that extreme of his outlook. Eric Wotila, GM of WMNN-LD Cadillac, Mich., says he would be more concerned as a low power operator if he operated in a larger market. “I wouldn’t say we’re out of the woods, but I certainly don’t take a sky is falling attitude,” Wotila says. “I think the real issue is for people in large markets where there are already a limited number of channels available.”

Wotila says his station is in DMA 119, a relatively large geographic area in the northern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula, where only two low-power stations are on air.

Greg Herman, president of Spectrum Evolution, an LPTV advocacy group, wants the FCC to set aside some channels that low power stations in the same market could share. In comments to the FCC, he also suggested that if a low-power station can’t find another channel in a market, or if it can’t find one with adequate coverage, then the FCC should allow that station to aggregate the lost population on a channel in neighboring market.

“If I can’t be in market A, but let’s say I found a channel in market B, they would then be required to grant me that channel in market B. It wouldn’t necessarily give them back the community that they were in, but it would certainly keep them as viable and most certainly allow them to say that they won’t end up with nothing,” he says, noting that it would be tough for most LPTV stations to set up business in another market.

“It wouldn’t necessarily give them back the community that they were in, but it would certainly keep them as viable and most certainly allow them to say that they won’t end up with nothing,” he says, although admitting that it would be tough economically for most LPTV stations to set up business in another market.

Small broadcast operators aren’t the only people concerned. Network-affiliated owners like Sinclair Broadcast Group have many LPTV stations they operate to extend the reach of their full-power stations or to carry networks in markets where there are not enough full-power stations to go around.

For example, in Salt Lake City, about 30% of Sinclair’s viewers come from low-powered facilities.

“There’s a concern only because there’s nothing explicitly stated by the FCC when it comes to protecting these stations,” says Mark Aitken, Sinclair VP of advanced technology. “If the FCC is willing to voice a return that says, ‘Why would we do that?’ let’s get that in writing.

“We’ve been through the comment and the comment-reply period, but there’s been no feedback that has, in any way, clarified any questions that have been asked of the FCC when it comes to protecting low power stations. These are real concerns.”