Conservative Groups Take Aim at ATSC 3.0 Tuner Mandate; NAB Pushes Back
Conservative groups and the Consumer Technology Association argued in reply comments filed by Friday’s deadline that a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0, as NAB proposed, would fly in the face of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s deregulatory agenda. In its own comments, NAB argued that a mandate is necessary for broadcast competition, saying it's no different from the DTV transition.
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“At a moment when Chairman Carr and the FCC seek to slash regulatory red tape, the NAB proposal would encumber one of the most dynamic sectors of America’s economy in more red tape,” said the Center for Individual Freedom.
NAB’s plan “imposes a heavy-handed regulatory scheme that conflicts with the Trump Administration and FCC’s laudable commitment to deregulation, competition, and market innovation,” said the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
Digital Liberty pointed out that NAB’s call to force a transition runs exactly counter to its arguments for ownership deregulation. "Granting the petition would only impose on other market actors the same type of outdated, needless regulation that afflicts the broadcast industry at present, a regulatory capture play that no agency of the federal government should indulge.” Consumer Action for a Strong Economy said NAB “wants to force Americans down its chosen lane. Let’s call this what it is: An assault on consumer freedom.”
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) argued that consumer electronics manufacturers are churning out ATSC 3.0 products, and the public is purchasing them without a forced transition. “The voluntary, market-driven approach is working,” it said. “There is no basis whatsoever for heavy-handed government intervention or for justifying a regulatory mandate that will cost consumers money.”
NAB countered that the FCC “should reject the expressly anti-consumer approach demanded by CTA that would lead consumers to buy televisions that would be instantly obsolete and unusable with free over-the-air broadcasting.”
Characterizing the ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate as a new requirement is mistaken, the group also noted. “To be clear, NAB is not seeking to add an ATSC tuning requirement; rather we are seeking to shift the existing 1.0 requirement to a 3.0 requirement.” Lawmakers and consumers “would not be pleased if the Commission suddenly stopped requiring that sets actually receive the signal Congress mandated broadcasters provide.”
Broadcaster consortium Pearl TV said the 3.0 transition has reached a similar point to the DTV transition, where the FCC stepped in to require the shift. “Now that the standard is developed and widely deployed, Commission action is required to complete this evolution." However, the James Madison Institute said that in the DTV transition, the agency's actions were the result of directives from Congress, and their absence for the 3.0 transition would leave any FCC rule changes related to it vulnerable to legal challenges.
Broadcasters and related entities backed NAB’s arguments that a mandatory transition is required to move 3.0 forward. Doing away with the FCC’s substantially similar requirements “will help aid in ATSC 3.0 deployment, development, and innovation,” said a joint filing from the NBC, ABC, Fox and CBS affiliate groups. Digital Alert Systems said 3.0 would improve emergency alerting and “represents a generational leap in broadcasting capabilities.”
The Society of Broadcast Engineers said the NAB petition’s proposed timeline “is reasonable and achievable from a technical standpoint.” That timeline would see commercial full-power and Class A stations in the top 55 markets transitioning by February 2028, with remaining markets shifting over by February 2030. SBE conceded that “there are a range of factors beyond those which are purely technical” that will affect the transition’s speed, and appropriate timelines would likely vary for individual stations and markets. “But, from a purely technical standpoint, the Petition’s proposed timeline currently appears achievable.”
Broadcast groups pushed back on arguments that they shouldn’t be allowed to digitally encrypt ATSC 3.0 signals using Digital Rights Management (DRM). Assertions that DRM would prevent the free reception of broadcast signals “are overblown and misunderstand the necessity of encryption in the modern video content ecosystem,” said Pearl TV. NAB said that “when every other (legal) video service encrypts content to protect against piracy, encryption becomes table stakes in negotiations for the right to carry programming.”
Tech reviewer Lon Seidman, who led in part a YouTube-based campaign against 3.0 DRM, said broadcasters should take heed of the many citizen commenters opposing encryption. “Given how unsuccessful the industry has been” in convincing consumers to purchase 3.0 tuners, “I would argue that those submitting comments represent a majority of the ATSC 3.0 viewing public currently.”
Wireless microphone maker Sennheiser said the FCC must take care to ensure that an ATSC 3.0 transition leaves sufficient spectrum for wireless microphones, and it reiterated concerns that NAB’s proposed timing would adversely affect the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. NAB cited the "absurdity" of such concerns, because the coordinated transition would mean broadcasters could use spectrum more efficiently. “The change of standard from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0 will have no impact on the amount of spectrum available to secondary users such as wireless microphones during the 2028 Olympics or otherwise.”
NAB also said the FCC should ignore arguments from the MVPD industry against the transition. Opposition from “the cableopoly” to “a full, industry-wide transition to ATSC 3.0 is entirely predictable” and represents “a coordinated effort to preserve longstanding market dominance.”
NTCA said that if the FCC moves forward with a transition rulemaking, its cost/benefit analysis “should consider whether the new revenue streams opened up by ATSC 3.0 could be used to limit the costs that the transition will impose on consumers and MVPDs.”
Extending must-carry requirements to ATSC 3.0 signals “would likely violate both the First and Fifth Amendments,” said the James Madison Institute. “Must-carry rules constitute compelled speech by forcing MVPDs to transmit programming they would not choose to carry without sufficient compensation.” NAB said pay-TV providers are “cloaking their position in the language of consumer protection and regulatory restraint" as they "aim to prevent broadcasters from delivering the innovative, competitive services that ATSC 3.0 makes possible.”