PUBCASTERS SAY WIRELESS INDUSTRY UNRESPONSIVE TO SPECTRUM OFFER

The APTS offer had drawn a mixed response from the wireless industry (CD April 15 p4), with many officials calling it a “step in the right direction” even as they were skeptical about its prospects without the support of commercial broadcasters. CTIA had said it was more interested in the FCC’s proposal for accelerating the digital transition than the PTV offer because the PTV proposal was “kind of self-serving.” Lawson said public broadcasters had been talking about spectrum policy “for months now and looking for creative solutions not only to complete the transition but also to roll out new digital services. We are not really hearing from those interests who are most vocal in describing the benefits to the economy if they were allowed to have access to broadcasting white spaces.”

Lawson dismissed as “hypocritical” the criticism by the CTIA of the APTS offer as self-serving. “We hear a lot of hypocritical statements in Washington, but that one takes the cake.” He said the APTS staff had discussed with the board the trust fund proposal and a set of conditions under which stations could embrace a hard date for analog switch-off. “We will continue our station consultation over the next weeks and months and would hope to announce something publicly sometimes this summer.”

As for the view that analog switch-off proposal wouldn’t take off without support from commercial broadcasters, he said commercial counterparts weren’t “really comfortable talking about any hard date for the return of analog spectrum.” However, he said, there was growing interest among the commercial broadcasters in “bundling and branding” DTV over-the-air services on the lines of the U.K.’s Freeview service, a free-to-air digital service credited with a surge in sales of digital set-top boxes in that country. Freeview is a partnership of the BBC, Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB and commercial broadcaster and transmission experts Crown Castle. There are no firm plans, he said, with the commercial broadcasters like public TV focused on cable carriage issues: “But we are seeing growing interest in over-the-air DTV as a stand-alone service that could be delivered directly to the consumers.”

Lawson said public TV shared the concerns of NAB and MSTV about interference to broadcast signals arising from the FCC’s rulemaking that would clear the way for use of more unlicensed devices in broadcast white spaces (CD May 14 p1). Public broadcasters also wanted the FCC to ensure there were enough channels to go around when the digital transition is complete and broadcasters have to repack their channel allocations, he said. Public TV concerns not shared by commercial broadcasters included the absence of FCC rules for migrating translators to digital, he said, and “we want to ensure that spectrum is available in rural areas for that transition because it is vital for too many our stations for serving rural constituents.” However, public broadcasters were open-minded about the benefits of unlicensed devices, he said. Besides helping provide a wireless return path for DTV datacasting and programming, it could lead to “millions of smart radios populating the TV band that could include ATSC tuners for almost no extra costs,” he said.

The FCC’s new polices on indecency and profanity were a “big deal” for public broadcasters, he said. The APTS had cautioned the FCC in a filing about the “unintended consequences if their ultimate rules on indecency are too sweeping… and broadly defined.” While public broadcasters believe indecency on the air was a legitimate issue for the FCC to tackle, “we just are suggesting that they exercise care and not interpret rules so broadly that they limit legitimate and necessary expression.”