Broadcasters Want Changes to Fee for ATSC 3.0 Datacasting

ATSC 3.0-focused entities BitPath, OneMedia and Pearl TV want the FCC to delay or ameliorate congressionally required ancillary services fees on broadcaster datacasting, while public interest groups believe those fees should be used to cover costs to consumers from purported disruptions in the 3.0 transition, said comments posted at the FCC in docket 20-145 (see 2006090055). Noncommercial educational broadcasters want to be exempt from the fees, and low-power TV groups seek more flexibility to benefit from 3.0.

Broadcasters disagreed with MVPD groups about whether they should be required to provide a high-definition broadcast signal, commenters said. “A broadcaster devoting more than 90 percent of its capacity to something other than broadcasting can no longer maintain that its non-broadcasting service is ‘ancillary’ to anything,” said the American Television Alliance.

The FCC’s NPRM on ancillary service rules tentatively concludes broadcasters must pay a fee equal to 5% of the gross revenue they collect from ancillary services. That will discourage initial investment in 3.0 because revenue is likely to be low at the start, said BitPath. “If broadcasters don’t invest to create a reliable platform that can be defined and described to prospective users and other service providers, then nobody else will,” BitPath said. The fees should be payable only after broadcaster upfront capital investments are recouped, said the spectrum consortium. OneMedia seeks a five-year break on such fees for the same reason. “Immediate imposition of a 5% fee on a licensee’s gross revenues” would “disserve the public interest,” OneMedia said.

Don't include in the fee calculation “in-kind improvements” made by an unaffiliated spectrum lessee to a licensee’s facilities to make it easier to provide datacasting, Pearl TV said. NCTA disagreed: “The fee must recover an amount that, to the extent feasible, equals the amount that would have been recovered had such services been licensed at auction.” There is “no policy or legal justification to depart from the statutory standard.” NCTA and ATVA said the FCC should do an economic analysis to determine the precise value of spectrum to be used for datacasting. “One cannot take seriously the Congressional directive that fees must reflect the value of spectrum and the amount it would recover at auction without a substantial and robust economic analysis to determine such valuation,” said ATVA.

The transition to 3.0 will come “at great expense to consumers,” said Public Knowledge, Consumer Reports and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute in a joint filing. “The FCC should retain the ancillary service fees it must collect in order to off-set these consumer costs.” Using the fees to defray costs to consumers from the transition would address concerns that broadcasters are “walking away from their promise to deliver NextGen services to the public,” the filing said.

NCE commenters said public TV stations shouldn’t be required to pay ancillary service fees. “Public TV stations’ use of ancillary and supplementary revenues to support their public service missions essentially amounts to recovering 100 percent of such revenues for the public,” said America’s Public Television Stations. Public Media Venture Group and APTS said the agency should change language in its rules on how public TV stations use their capacity, which could prevent NCE stations from participating in datacasting.

Commenters disagreed on what should constitute “derogation” of a broadcast signal. The agency should “prohibit broadcasters from degrading HD signals in order to accommodate ancillary and supplementary services,” said NCTA. Adjust the rules so a single standard definition stream won’t satisfy the requirements, the public interest joint filing urged. “A standard definition stream of content does not constitute the advanced television services envisioned by Congress,” said PK, OTI and Consumer Reports.

The FCC declined to require broadcasters to transmit in HD when it approved the 3.0 transition, NAB said. “In a proceeding where the FCC seeks to remove regulatory barriers to innovation, adding additional requirements is counterproductive,” said NAB. Standards should reflect technological advances and require HD, said ATVA.

Allow increased flexibility for LPTV stations to use 3.0, said the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance. ATBA wants the FCC to allow transitioning LPTV stations to remain silent longer, permit quicker minor modifications and eliminate rules limiting where LPTV stations can be located. The FCC isn’t doing enough to examine whether widespread datacasting could cause interference for local broadcasters, said the National Translator Association: “The Notice is striking in its near total absence of any discussion of possible destructive interference.”

NTA and CTA flagged the FCC’s use of the term “Broadcast Internet” for 3.0 datacasting in the NPRM. “Manufacturers and broadcasters have invested substantially in branding, and consumers’ brand recognition is growing,” said CTA. “As the industry undertakes logo certification and conformance testing, CTA urges the Commission to continue to use the NEXTGEN TV™ name to prevent consumer confusion.” Broadcast Internet “implies that this initiative may assist in the current, overriding objective to assure high-speed broadband throughout the United States,” said NTA. “That is not the purpose of this proceeding, and it is most unlikely to be the result.”