Many Question Marks for Displaced LPTV, Translators
At the rough halfway point of the process of finding new homes for low power TV stations and translators displaced by the incentive auction, LPTV broadcasters and industry officials say uncertainty reigns. Though displaced LPTV owners are able to choose new channels during the ongoing LPTV displacement window and recent legislation earmarked reimbursement funds for LPTV and translators, they won’t know for a while if those new channels are final and almost no specifics about the reimbursement have been determined, LPTV broadcasters told us.
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“The thing we need is stability,” said Michelle Agha, COO of LPTV broadcaster International Communications Network. Perry Atkinson, president of LPTV station KDOV-LD Medford, Oregon, sees the displacement window as the latest iteration of an uncertainty that stretches back to the beginnings of the incentive auction. “This is a headache we’ve been dealing with for years now,” Atkinson said.
The LPTV displacement application window started April 10 and will last until June 1, due to a recent extension (see 1804180059). As of last week, more than 1,300 LPTV stations and translators had applied for new channels during the window, an Incentive Auction Task Force spokesman said. While the window is open, displaced LPTV and translators can lay claim to open channels in their markets. If some of those applications are mutually exclusive, they have the rest of the window and a planned post-window “curing period” to come to a settlement, and then the matter will be resolved through auctions, the agency said. Digital Replacement Translators have priority over the other entities in the window, the FCC said.
The issue of how mutually exclusive (MX) applications will be resolved is major concern for LPTV stations during the window, said broadcasters and attorneys. LPTV broadcasters are paying engineers to find new channels, but facing the risk that they may not end up with those channels, Atkinson said.
LPTV stations that don’t have a lot of money will be at a disadvantage in an auction and in MX settlement negotiations, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald. Since LPTV stations are owned by a diverse range of large companies, public institutions, and small private licensees, strategizing which channels to choose to avoid mutual exclusivity is “difficult,” Tannenwald said. In some markets, multiple stations worked through a common engineer to coordinate channel choices and avoid doubling each other, Tannenwald said. Most other broadcasters are simply waiting to see if another broadcaster will claim their chosen channel, industry officials said. “We’re hoping that won’t happen,” said International Communications President Maxwell Agha.
Though legislators authorized $150 million for reimbursement to LPTV and translators, it’s not clear how or when that money will be parceled out, LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino said. The FCC said it's working on a rulemaking, but the agency declined to comment on the timing this week. “There’s no way to apply for it,” said Atkinson of the funds. Since it’s unknown how much reimbursement LPTV stations and translators can count on, there’s no way to plan for the money, Michelle Agha said. She said she was told LPTV stations should be grateful to get anything, but she disagrees. “We worked for this, these stations are our blood, sweat and equity,” Agha said. It’s likely those funds could go to pay for replacement antennas and transmitters, industry officials said, but under the terms of the reimbursement bill, the money can’t be used for bids in an auction to resolve mutually exclusive displacement applications.
The atmosphere of uncertainty led many LPTV owners to get out of the business, said several broadcasters. Atkinson’s station KDOV is dark under a grant of special temporary authority from the FCC until it gets a new home, and he said it will be difficult to recapture his audience. Many LPTV stations have been sold in recent months to large companies such as HC2, Tannenwald said, and several LPTV broadcasters said they received recent offers. International Communications’ station KSDY-LD San Diego is one of the only stations on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and minority owned, Michelle Agha pointed out. If they can’t make it work, “there won’t be a voice here,” she said.