FCC Extends Channel-Sharing

WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission today unanimously voted to let LPTVs and translators share a channel with full-power and Class A licensees, providing them with more options to stay on the air once the musical-channels repack process begins. The vote also affirmed established carriage rights within these arrangements.

This new flexibility will further assist secondary stations that are displaced by the repacking process and may reduce construction and operating costs for resource-constrained secondary stations, including small minority-owned stations, said Shaun Maher of the FCC's Media Bureau.

Displacement by the Numbers

The post-incentive auction TV band will be reduced by 14 channels, from Ch. 38 to Ch. 50, inclusive. (The TV band previously extended to Ch. 51 but those licenses were frozen after their wireless neighbors-who won 18 TV channels in the 2008 auction-reported interference.) Stations now assigned to UHF frequencies on Ch. 38 or above will have to move to fewer, lower frequencies in a channel repack following the March 30 close of the auction.

With regard to the numbers, according to the FCC's Dec. 31, 2016 station count, there are:

1,033 full-power commercial UHF stations

351 full-power commercial VHFs

289 full-power educational UHFs

105 full-power educational VHFs

393 Class A UHFs

24 Class A VHFs, totaling

1,600 UHF LPTVs

366 VHF LPTVs

2,911 UHF translators

878 VHF translators

All told, there are 6,226 broadcasters operating in UHF spectrum, which extends downward to Ch. 14, so not all of them are on the relinquished frequencies

According to the FCC's own estimate, 1,274 full-power and Class A stations will have to move. According to the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition-a lobby formed by LPTV and translator licensees to protect their interest through the incentive auction process-said 3,150 LPTV and TV translator licenses and new permits are sure to be displaced, and possibly as many as 4,000.

The full extent of displacement will not be made public until after the final phase of the auction concludes March 30, when the commission will issue its Auction Closing and Channel Reassignment Public Notice.

In the meantime, the National Association of Broadcasters continues to hammer against the FCC's hard 39-month deadline for completion of the repack. The NAB filed a petition for reconsideration of the FCC's repack rules March 17. There had been no response as of this writing. D.D.McAdams

LINK:	http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0002/fcc-extends-channelsharing/28065...
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