FCC Needs to Be Sure ATSC 3.0 Won’t ‘Impose Costs and Burdens’ on Cable, Says NCTA

The FCC needs to be sure broadcasters’ ATSC 3.0 deployment won't "disrupt consumers or impose costs and burdens on cable operators,” NCTA told commission staff in Thursday meetings, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-142. NCTA wants the FCC to require broadcasters “to continue to transmit a robust ATSC 1.0 signal" during the transition. “Rather than end certain key transition requirements after an arbitrary three-year period,” as NAB's Sept. 8 filing proposed, the commission “must continue to require simulcasting until it determines that conditions warrant allowing a broadcaster to no longer provide an ATSC 1.0 signal,” it said. During the move, NCTA thinks the 1.0 “simulcast stream must continue to serve the same coverage area and community of license from a ‘host’ station as it did prior to the launch of the ATSC 3.0 signal on its regularly assigned channel,” it said. “The ATSC 1.0 simulcast signal should be required to transmit the same format as before the transmission of the companion ATSC 3.0 signal, with the same programming except where technically infeasible due to the nature of ATSC 3.0.” If 3.0 signal transmissions are to be “completely voluntary,” as broadcasters have proposed, “there is no basis for allowing broadcasters to use access to an ATSC 1.0 signal to secure new carriage rights for ATSC 3.0 signals in a manner that imposes costs and hardships on MVPDs and their customers,” said the cable group. NAB didn’t comment.