NAB FM Repacking Study Aimed at FCC, Congress
An NAB study on how many FM stations will be affected by the post-incentive auction repacking is seen as part of the association’s efforts to secure an expansion of the $1.75 billion repacking reimbursement fund and delaying the 39-month repacking deadline, attorneys and industry officials told us. In what's seen as part of the same push as the study, NAB last month released an online video on the difficulty of repacking (see 1706210054). NAB “is devoting enormous resources” to “educating” Congress and the FCC on the repacking, an NAB spokesman said, saying the association believes the reimbursement fund is too small. “Ultimately, our hope is that lawmakers and regulators agree with us, and will craft legislative and regulatory fixes that are fair to broadcasters in what was a voluntary incentive auction,” the spokesman said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Since FM stations received no benefit from the incentive auction but still will have their operations disrupted through no choice of their own, their plight makes a more persuasive argument for NAB as it seeks repacking relief from Congress and the FCC, said Garvey Schubert radio attorney Bradley Deutsch. FM stations affected by the auction are “true victims,” Deutsch said. NAB is likely looking to not only accomplish its goals of repacking relief, but also to make sure lawmakers and the public are aware of the repacking's likely problems and their effect on local broadcasting, said Fletcher Heald radio attorney Francisco Montero. The digital TV transition had a much longer lead time and a more robust educational effort than the repacking is receiving, he noted. The disruption of the repacking to FM stations is something the FCC “continues to monitor” an Incentive Auction Task Force spokesman said. The agency will work to coordinate repacking efforts and seeks to minimize disruption to FM licensees, the spokesman said.
The study, done for NAB by V-Soft Communications, said 678 FM radio stations would be “affected” by the repacking. “Affected” means they might need to “reduce power, shut down, or operate from an auxiliary facility as work is being done on a neighboring TV station antenna,” said NAB Associate General Counsel Patrick McFadden in a letter to the FCC accompanying the study. Since the repacking involves so many variables, the study can’t predict how each station will be affected, attorneys said. Instead, it includes a list of all the likely affected stations, and whether they're adjacent to TV stations going off air or changing channels. The study said 10,175 stations are unlikely to be affected.
The disruption of the repacking could hurt stations’ bottom lines or their market ranking, since degradations in signal quality affect listenership, radio attorneys said. The study said 254 affected FM stations have an off-site auxiliary facility they could use to broadcast if their main facility has to shut down to make way for tower work. But an auxiliary facility is generally not as high or strong as a broadcaster's main one, which will mean a signal that doesn’t penetrate as far or is poorer quality, said Womble Carlyle radio attorney John Garziglia. The study said 454 affected stations don’t have off-site auxiliary facilities. That could mean they have to go off the air, attorneys said. Many stations are in competitive markets where the very small differences in rankings -- and ad dollars -- could be affected by days of a poor or absent signal, Garziglia said. TV stations, many of which get much of their viewership from retransmission over MVPD services, don’t have the same consequences for a disruption in service, said Deutsch. A radio station can’t tell listeners in cars to switch to the station's online streaming version, he said.
The problem is serious, but so far concerns about the repacking haven’t dampened station deals, said Patrick Communications broadcast broker Gregory Guy. Since the repacking disruptions are expected to last at worst a matter of days, they aren’t a factor for those considering to buy or sell a station, he said.
Though the Spectrum Act doesn’t include reimbursement for radio stations, many could see compensation through their tower lease agreements, Montero said. Larger towers and larger broadcasters often have more advanced lease agreements, with provisions that tower neighbors disrupted by another occupant's maintenance be compensated by the disrupter, he said. Smaller stations may not have such provisions, and may also be less able to absorb the hit from the repacking, said Montero.