Reverse Auction Stage 2 Starts Tuesday

clearing target generally clears nine blocks of spectrum in each partial economic area (PEA) instead of 10 blocks and adds two additional channels to the TV band.” Only stations that had a status in the auction bidding system of “Frozen -- Provisionally Winning” will be included in stage two of the reverse auction. For stage two, those stations will now have a status “Frozen -- Pending Catch-Up,” the IATF said. “Bidders with stations that begin Stage 2 with the status of ‘Frozen -- Pending Catch-Up’ must be on their toes, as this status can change from one round to the next and will change by the end of the new stage,” said the blog post. “If a station’s status changes to “Bidding,” and the bidder fails to submit a bid for that station, the system interprets this as a bid to drop out and could lead to the station exiting the auction.” When stage two of the reverse auction is complete, the forward auction will pick up with prices starting where they left off at the end of stage one, the IATF said. “Overall there are fewer blocks available in almost every PEA but more of the blocks being offered are completely unimpaired -- 99.6%, to be precise,” the IATF said. “In some PEAs the supply actually remained the same or increased.” During the reverse auction, the FCC Public Reporting System (PRS) will “continue to display the final stage rule graphic with the status as of Stage 1,” the IATF said. Once the first round of the stage two forward auction is over, the PRS will again begin displaying the round by round progress toward meeting the final stage requirement, the IATF said. The auction may fall below some expectations (see 1609120054).