Broadcasters Spar With MVPDs, CTA and Public Interest Groups on ATSC 3.0

Broadcasting’s current standard is “laser disc technology in an Internet Protocol world,” said Gray Media. “The primary benefits of a forced transition appear not to be improvements to broadcast television, but rather the ability of broadcasters to use ATSC 3.0 signals for unrelated services like datacasting,” said the American Television Alliance.

Sinclair said that without rule changes to allow the industry to advance and compete, broadcasters could “follow the path of the newspaper industry into gradual decline.” YouTube and Netflix combined have roughly the same total viewership as broadcasting but aren’t bound by regulations and don’t have “any material commitment to local news,” Sinclair said. Gray pointed to comments from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that sports broadcasts have programming options on streaming services that aren’t available on current broadcasts. “To preserve its relationships with the NFL and other sports leagues and entertainment properties, broadcasters must have cutting-edge technology equivalent to [their] Big Tech streaming competitors,” Gray said. It's “an operational nightmare” for broadcasters to transition to ATSC 3.0 while having to maintain 1.0 service, said Trinity Broadcasting Network. The spectrum constraints caused by having to operate in both standards have prevented the industry from showcasing 3.0’s full capabilities, Scripps said.

CTA said there's “no basis whatsoever for heavy-handed and risky government intervention to justify a regulatory mandate when the marketplace is working.” Consumer electronics manufacturers are meeting the existing consumer demand for ATSC 3.0, CTA said. NCTA said “the reality is that the ATSC 3.0 transition has progressed relatively slowly,” pointing out that there are only 138 ATSC 3.0 stations operating, compared with more than 1,700 full-power stations in the U.S. “A tuner mandate does not ensure a successful transition to ATSC 3.0; high-value content driving consumer demand and adoption does,” said CTA. “Government mandates for technologies will increase consumer prices by requiring all devices to include tuner technology regardless of consumer need or intended use.” Gray Media said the price of a 3.0 TV set now is substantially cheaper than HDTV sets were at a comparable point in the DTV transition.

The cost of a mandatory transition to 3.0 would “be borne disproportionately by households with limited means” and vulnerable populations, said a joint filing from Public Knowledge, Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups. Low-income households, seniors and people with disabilities are among the “most reliant on broadcast television for news, emergency alerts, and educational content,” the groups said. “They are also the least likely to have disposable income to purchase new equipment.” The lower-cost converter boxes touted by broadcasters are expensive and don’t work with all TVs, they said. “Without targeted support, millions of Americans may be effectively disenfranchised from access to public airwaves.”

The public interest groups' joint filing took particular aim at plans to encrypt ATSC 3.0 broadcasts using digital rights management (DRM) technology. “The public interest cannot be served by creating technological barriers to reception of free broadcast signal,” said the filing, adding that hiding broadcast signals behind DRM constitutes “the privatization of access to the public airwaves.” Numerous citizen commenters also weighed in on the issue of DRM in 3.0, which has been the focus of several online campaigns. New Orleans resident Thomas Nolan said it's “imperative” that 3.0 be as “Easily Accessible as possible,” and he didn’t understand the need to encrypt over-the-air broadcasts.

Sinclair said DRM is “common throughout the video ecosystem” and used by streamers and MVPDs to protect valuable content. “Piracy is a material business concern for programmers and rights holders.” If the FCC prevented broadcasters from using DRM, “it would effectively be picking winners and losers in the market,” Sinclair said. “We urge the Commission not to be swayed by a paroxysm of astroturf concern generated by vloggers hostile to the concept of intellectual property.”

The public interest groups also said that NAB hasn’t offered enough assurances that consumer privacy will be sufficiently protected by ATSC 3.0 broadcasters. With 3.0, “for the first time in the history of U.S. broadcasting, [there's] a persistent return path via internet connectivity that enables the collection of individualized user data,” they said. “At present, there are no federal privacy laws that specifically apply to broadcasters using the ATSC 3.0 return path to collect viewer data,” and Communications Act provisions that impose privacy rules on MVPDs don’t apply to broadcasters. “Without appropriate safeguards, data collected through the return path could be shared with third-party advertisers, sold to data brokers, or even accessed by government agencies without a warrant.”

NCTA and ATV said a forced 3.0 transition would require costly upgrades for MVPDs, and extending the existing must-carry rules to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts would be unconstitutional. The FCC “should avoid amplifying the already-serious constitutional infirmities associated with forced carriage by refraining from extending must-carry obligations to ATSC 3.0 signals,” said NCTA. The costs of network changes to allow MVPD carriage of 3.0 could include the purchase and installation of new transcoders, receivers, engineering studies and patent royalties, running into the tens of millions, NCTA said

Several groups took issue with NAB’s planned timeline for the transition, which would require the top 55 markets to shift to 3.0 by February 2028. “That’s just five months before the start of the LA Olympic Games,” said the Wireless Microphone Spectrum Alliance. “A change in spectrum use of this magnitude, in the core band used for wireless audio, should not be attempted until after the Olympic and Paralympic Games has concluded.” The timing could also threaten the FIFA World Cup and 250th American Independence celebrations, which are the subject of White House executive orders, the alliance said. America’s Public Television Stations and PBS said public TV stations shouldn’t be bound by NAB’s timeline. “Local public television stations should be permitted to transition to ATSC 3.0 based on their local assessment of the unique needs of their local communities.”

NAB hasn’t adequately considered the effect of the transition on rural translator stations and the customers they serve, said the National Television Association. NAB’s proposal exempts translator stations from mandatory 3.0 broadcasting, but “should an originating station change from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0, the translator station’s equipment will immediately stop broadcasting,” NTA said. NAB “does not propose any coordination efforts or process for a Translator to convert.” Under the NAB plan, all full-power broadcasters would switch to 3.0 by 2030, meaning no customer with a new TV purchased after 2030 would be able to receive a 1.0 signal from a translator, NTA said. Translators that shift to 3.0 may still find themselves without viewers because many ATSC 3.0 tuners require a constant internet connection, which isn’t always available to rural households, NTA said.

Several commenters said the FCC imposing a tuner mandate and requiring 3.0 broadcasting would run counter to the regulatory reduction goal of the agency’s “Delete” proceeding. “NAB’s regulatory mandate approach would be contrary to the deregulatory goals of the Trump Administration and the Commission,” NCTA said.