Repacking Ends Monday, Work to Continue for Years

Instead, work stemming from the incentive auction’s mass relocation of broadcast signals will continue for years, said broadcasters, tower crews, attorneys and FCC officials in interviews this month. The repack's phase 10 ended July 3. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Incentive Auction Task Force Chair Jean Kiddoo and others will discuss the repacking’s end at an American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research event Monday.

A handful of stations set for repacking will remain on their old spectrum after the official end date, but the transition plan calls for the agency to continue making reimbursement payments until July 2023, said Kiddoo, cautioning against any broadcaster waiting until the last minute. A wide swath of industry officials praised the FCC for getting through the repacking without major delays or snags predicted by many during the transition planning stages. “It’s fair to say I was among the world’s leading pessimists about the repacking,” said Gray Television Deputy General Counsel Robert Folliard. “I was 100% dead wrong.”

“The FCC was true to their word to be flexible,” said Don Doty, Stainless director-broadcast services. Doty was part of a group of tower and broadcast industry executives who raised concerns with the FCC early in the repack about weather delays (see 1811160037) and a timeline NAB then called “overly aggressive.” Depending on the federal government to organize something as complicated as the repacking is “usually a nightmare,” Doty said, but the Incentive Auction Task Force was accommodating throughout, he and several broadcasters said. “Typically with a government-run program, you brace yourself, but there was nothing negative from the FCC side,” said Pollack Broadcasting CEO William Pollack.

The FCC’s transition plan was so flexible “it was even able to accommodate a pandemic,” said Kiddoo, noting COVID-19 had a minimal effect on the repacking schedule (see 2003170064). “The most important thing was clearing the band,” she said. That priority led to many broadcasters operating on interim equipment with reduced power levels over the course of the repacking, a broadcast attorney said: That solution was due to NAB losing its legal challenge against the incentive auction rules, which freed the FCC to require broadcasters to vacate by the phase deadlines even if it reduced their coverage. Kiddoo said last week that just 13 percent of broadcasters remained on interims. “They are coming off quickly,” she said. The FCC has granted extensions past the July 13 date to four stations, including WFOX-TV Jacksonville (see 2006180043), Kiddoo said. None of the stations occupies 600 MHz spectrum, and each is expected to be relocated by September, she said.

One way the industry and regulator made the repacking happen on schedule was greatly expanded use of helicopter lifts to get massive equipment to the top of broadcast towers, Doty said. Helicopter lifts are pricier but speedier, and Doty says their expanded use during the repacking helped address the paucity of tower crews. “It was like having an extra crew,” he said.

All Worth It?

With the incentive auction and repacking process winding down, views vary on whether the whole thing was good for broadcasting.

“Some people got serious amounts of money, but it wasn’t the success the National Broadband Plan predicted,” said broadcast attorney Jack Goodman. For many smaller entities, the disruption of the process and the high consultancy fees necessary to navigate it were a huge burden, said Fletcher Heald broadcast lawyer Peter Tannenwald. He called repacking reimbursement the “worst processing headache” of his FCC career. Pollack said he hadn’t run into reimbursement problems, and called the process a net gain for his stations because they now have all new equipment.

The repacking jump-started the ATSC 3.0 transition, said Folliard. If the new standard takes off, broadcasters will miss the TV spectrum they lost in the incentive auction, he said. “In 10 years, we’re gonna look back and realize transferring broadcast spectrum to wireless wasn’t the highest best use.” Folliard said the exodus of small owners wasn’t as big as broadcasters initially feared -- many stations that sold their spectrum continued operating through channel sharing. “It didn’t fundamentally reshape the industry,” he said.

Monday’s milestone has no practical effect on most crews, said Coast to Coast Tower Service CEO Todd Jackson. His company has repacking work on the books that will take him to the end of 2020, and more is expected, he said. “We’re up to our snorkles in projects,” said Doty. He and Jackson said projects include changing stations from interim antennas to permanent ones and structural tower work that didn’t get a high priority during the repacking phases, such as removing old, disused antennas.

Jackson said he doesn’t expect a contraction in the tower industry post-repacking because the industry was artificially depressed leading into the incentive auction by FCC freezes and broadcaster uncertainty. With those factors out of the way, there should be enough work, he said. Broadcasters that weren’t repacked have been delaying buying ATSC 3.0 equipment and getting needed maintenance because of the repacking resource crunch, and now that work will have to get done as well, Doty said. He expects to be “playing catch-up” through 2023.