[grc] Wheeler: FCC Will Try to Preserve LPTV Voices

[juice at whidbey.com]

This should be of interest to KYES and all LPTV operators and TV
translators. 
Tom Voorhees.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/wheeler-fcc-will-try-preserve-lptv-voices/142883
[1]

	FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said Tuesday (July 28) that low power TV is
an important voice that the FCC will work to preserve after the
incentive auction, even though Congress did not protect them in its
auction legislation. 

	That came in the chairman's testimony at an oversight hearing in the
House Communications Subcommittee. 

	He said that help for LPTVs and translators—low-power
retransmitters of high-powered stations to hard-to-reach areas—would
take three forms: First, the FCC will help them find channels if they
get displaced, he said. Second, the FCC is opening a rulemaking on
letting them share channels if they are displaced, as full-power
stations voluntarily giving up their spectrum are allowed to do.
Third, they won't have to vacate their channels until wireless
companies are ready to turn on their service—which will likely be
several years after the 2016 auction. 

	All those, he said, will help mitigate the impact. 

	Wheeler did not pledge to give LPTVs priority over unlicensed devices
in the TV band if only a single channel remains after the repack, but
he did say the "vacant channel" priority to unlicensed would only
apply to a handful of markets, and even then would likely effect few
if any LPTVs, though he appeared to be talking about a different
vacant channel proposal (see below). 

	Also testifying at the hearing was senior Republican commissioner
Ajit Pai, who said he thought LPTVs should get priority over
unlicensed devices in the TV band, rather than reserving the last
channel for unlicensed. 

	Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) opened his questioning of
Wheeler and Pai by asking how the FCC would minimize disruption to
LPTV and translators in the post incentive auction TV station repack.
Wheeler said he had an interest in insuring their "voice continues." 

	Walden also had issues with the vacant channel proposal. Wheeler
insisted it would have limited impact. 

	An FCC official clarified to B&C after the hearing that Wheeler, when
he was talking about the vacant channel issue was discussing proposals
submitted to the FCC about adding a second vacant channel in the
handful of markets that may have a broadcaster placed in the duplex
gap, which the FCC has not teed up for comment, rather than the vacant
channel proposal to give unlicensed the vacant last channel in a
market, which the FCC has proposed. .  

	As to the general issue of helping LPTVs, Wheeler reminded the
congressman that it was Congress—Walden helped write the auction
legislation—that had given LPTVs no priority in the auction while
at the same time was encouraging freeing up more spectrum for
unlicensed. 

	But Walden, a former broadcaster who had experience with radio
translators—said that the legislation did not give priority to
unlicensed, either. He said he was concerned that translators would go
dark in favor of unlicensed devices and suggested the FCC had a public
interest obligation to try and prevent that. 

	Wheeler said the FCC was "breaking our tails" to balance competing
interests, a point he made about the auction in general.       



Links:
------
[1]
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/wheeler-fcc-will-try-preserve-lptv-voices/142883