DTV Delay Bill Won’t Aid Early Digital Switch, Barton Says
Broadcasters may find it hard to make an early switch to digital transmissions if Congress passes a law extending the analog signal cutoff to June 12, Republican Commerce Committee leaders told the FCC in a letter Monday. The letter asks the FCC to list or estimate the percentage of stations that could cut off analog signals early if the Feb. 17 deadline is moved to June 12, with responses due by 3 p.m. Tuesday. The House scheduled a Wednesday vote on delay legislation (S-352) that the Senate passed unanimously last week.
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Committee majority leaders sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter Monday urging support of S 352. Without a delay in the date, many households might not receive converter box coupons in time for the Feb. 17 switch, said the letter. It included the latest figures from the Commerce Department on the number of people on the coupon waiting list, broken down by congressional districts. “In the average congressional district, 5.7 percent of the households are not prepared for the transition,” said the letter from Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California and Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher of Virginia.
Republicans, who successfully blocked an effort to pass similar delay legislation last week, said they're worried public safety will face a setback in network planning due to the delay in access to spectrum. “We are concerned that broadcasters and the public at large have been misled as to how many stations would be allowed to transition voluntarily,” said Reps. Joe Barton of Texas, ranking member of House Commerce Committee, and Cliff Stearns of Florida, ranking on the Telecom Subcommittee, in a letter sent Monday to the FCC.
“We understand that your Media Bureau has already been inundated with requests by broadcasters to transition before June 12 should the transition be delayed,” the letter said. Interference concerns likely would impede early switches because channel assignments the FCC put together for the transition were “predicated on everyone moving at about the same time,” the letter said. Broadcasters seeking an early switch need a channel where they can broadcast in digital at full power, “otherwise viewers will lose service,” and those signals must not cause interference with other channels, the letter said. It also asked the FCC to state whether any more than a “de minimis number of broadcasters would be able to transition before the delayed date.”
Public safety groups sent letters to the Hill expressing support for the delay. “We encourage the House to quickly adopt” S-352, said a Monday letter from the National Emergency Number Association to House Commerce Committee Democrat leaders. “If there is a delay in the transition, then it is very important that public safety agencies have the option to gain expedited access to channels that have been vacated by broadcasters before the new DTV transition deadline,” the letter said.
The Senate bill won unanimous approval after public safety groups dropped earlier opposition to language in the bill that would have required an FCC sign-off before public safety could operate on vacated channels. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, and police and fire associations suggested amended language that the Senate Commerce Committee adopted eliminating the FCC requirement. “All 50 states and some local governments already have FCC licenses for 700 MHz spectrum,” the letter said. In situations where a station chooses to turn its signal off early, there’s no need for an FCC determination to allow public safety to operate on that channel, the APCO letter said.
But Barton fears public safety groups may not understand the difficulty of early switches. NAB didn’t comment on the Barton letter at our deadline.