FCC-Commissioned Repacking Report Short on Information, Stakeholders Say
The FCC-commissioner Widelity report on the projected costs of repacking broadcasters after the incentive auction doesn’t provide enough information, underestimates the effects of industry bottlenecks and downplays the amount of time the effort will take, commented broadcasters, antenna firms and industry associations. Stations won’t know in advance whether their channels will change or the availability of workers and equipment to physically enact that change, said antenna-maker Dielectric. Most comments were posted Tuesday in docket 12-268. The “fundamental problem” with the report (CD March 24 p12) is that “the FCC has not provided sufficient public information to stakeholders about what the repacking plan is and how they can prepare for it properly,” Dielectric said.
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That lack of information makes it hard for the antenna, tuner and tower industries to bulk up in preparation for a repacking surge, said Dielectric, tower company Stainless and the National Association of Tower Engineers. The industry capacity could be expanded to “approximately 500 antennas” over the next three years if manufacturers could quantify the impacts of the auction and repacking, Dielectric said. “But, manufacturers are unable to do this, because there is no credible method to estimate how many stations will have to move channels and in what time frame.” If the repacking requires more than 500 antennas over a three-year period, “it would be virtually impossible for the industry to allocate sufficient human capital and/or equipment to meet that production need,” Dielectric said.
The lack of trained personnel and resources for building, moving and rigging antennas and towers is also likely to affect the Widelity report’s cost estimates, said Dielectric and NATE, along with Sinclair and other broadcasters. “When supply is limited and demand ramps from zero to one hundred overnight, costs will grow and, inevitably, errors requiring costly corrections will be made,” Sinclair said. Because repacking costs are likely to change, the FCC should stay away from estimating the costs of procedures, said several broadcasters jointly. “The Spectrum Act does not give the FCC the authority to micromanage each station’s repack,” said the filing from stations owned by companies affiliated with Block Communications. “The Widelity Report looks like the beginning of a process where the FCC avoids paying certain costs it deems ‘unreasonable,’ not the process of full reimbursement that Congress envisioned.” NCTA said it found the report’s estimates for tower rigging and RF processing cost to be lower than the association’s by thousands of dollars.
The resource crunch may also have consequences for worker and tower safety, said NATE and Stainless. A similar lack of qualified personnel led to an increase in tower-related fatalities in 2006 during the DTV transition, “as more and more contractors rushed to take advantage of TV stations’ need for tower-related services leading up to the 2009 analog sunset,” said Stainless. Faced with the urgent need to complete the repacking and a limited number of tower specialists, broadcasters may be tempted to hire inexperienced or improperly trained crews, Stainless said. “The risk of using an unqualified tower contractor cannot be” overstated, Stainless said, citing examples of fatalities and tower collapses caused by inexperienced crews. The reimbursement plan should take the need for contractor insurance into account, Stainless said. “No station should be forced or coerced to absorb the financial and other risks of retaining a crew that is not qualified for the particular job or a contractor that is not fully insured."
The bottleneck problems in the antenna and tower industries and broadcasters’ inability to preplan are likely to be exacerbated by a rigid timeline for the repack, said several commenters. The Widelity report doesn’t provide enough time for international coordination for stations near the border, said Sinclair. “In light of the complexity of the incentive auction, it is extremely unlikely that international coordination will occur more quickly than the slow manner that has been historically been the case.”
The FCC should create a dedicated coordinating body to oversee the repacking as soon as possible, said Transmit Consultancy, which compared the repacking to a similar effort in the U.K. that was overseen by a body called Digital UK. Though Transmit Consultancy suggested the body would work with the broadcast industry, the Widelity report recommended the FCC quickly hire a third-party administrator to oversee the reimbursement effort. Block disagreed: “Adding a third party to this process will simply add another layer of bureaucracy, expense, and delay to a process that must move quickly and efficiently to be successful.” -- Monty Tayloe (mtayloe@warren-news.com)