DRT Freeze Won’t Affect Most Broadcasters
An FCC Media Bureau freeze on digital replacement translator (DRT) applications and low-power, translator and Class A TV displacement applications won’t have strong consequences for broadcasters, said industry lawyers in interviews Thursday. They said the DRT freeze(CD June 12 p14) may slightly complicate things for low-power TV (LPTV) and Class A operators experiencing interference. DRTs are used by full-power stations to bridge gaps in their coverage left by the transition to DTV. LPTVs use displacement applications to move to a new channel when a full-power station interferes with their signal.
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Since the DTV transition caused the need for DRTs, there isn’t much demand, but the issue of LPTV stations facing interference from full powers can still happen, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald, who represents many LPTV clients. While Wednesday’s public notice announcing the freeze also says there will be a waiver process for such situations, that additional layer of bureaucracy “shifts the burden to those who can least afford it,” said Tannenwald of low-power operators.
With few stations affected by the freeze, some attorneys told us it’s not clear why the bureau bothered to issue it. The reason stated by the bureau is the incentive auction. The freeze was enacted “to protect the opportunity for stations displaced by repacking of the television bands to obtain a new channel from the limited number of channels likely to be available” after the repacking, said the bureau (http://bit.ly/1kREBVn). Since DRTs and LPTVs aren’t protected in the incentive auction, any new DRT or moved station would have to get out of the way of a repacked full-power station anyway, said Tannenwald and broadcast attorney Jack Goodman.
The move could be aimed at curbing the filing of displacement applications by LPTVs that seem intended to position the stations on channels less likely to be affected by the incentive auction, said Goodman and Tannenwald. They said those sort of filings were relatively rare, and that they weren’t aware of them being a burden on the bureau staff. The bureau wouldn’t comment.
The bureau’s stated reason makes sense, said engineer Bob du Treil, president of du Treil, Lundin and Rackley. Though he agreed few applications are likely in the works for new DRTs, he said he was aware of “activity in that area.” By stopping new applications, the bureau is planning to preserve the few channels that might have been taken up by DRTs or displaced LPTVs for the reassignment of LPTV and translator stations after the auction, Du Treil said. The number of channels preserved by the freeze won’t be large, he conceded. “It might be a bit of a formality."
The freeze notice offers waivers for displaced low-power stations, but the bureau may be reluctant to grant them, wrote Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford on his blog (http://bit.ly/1qC02u2). The FCC has recently been “very limited” in granting waivers of the full-power modification freeze, he noted. “If that is precedent, don’t look for many other waivers of these freeze orders until after the TV incentive auctions are complete.”