Cable Groups, Broadcasters Battle Over ATSC 3.0 Multicasting

Cable groups and broadcasters are at odds over how FCC proposals loosening multicast rules for the ATSC 3.0 transition should restrict the number of multicast channels broadcasters can offer, according to reply comments filed in docket 16-142 by Monday’s deadline. The FCC “should rely on its predictive judgment about how reasonable actors motivated by financial gain could act in this undeveloped space,” said the American TV Alliance. ATVA wants the agency to limit broadcasters hosting each other in the transition to the number of multicast streams they have in ATSC 1.0. NAB said broadcasters should be limited to “carry only programming that they could carry on their own facilities as constrained by state-of-the-art technology.” Broadcast consortium BitPath suggested the “cable interests’ concerns can be fully addressed by plainly stating that no station may, through the hosting rules, end up with more capacity than it started with.” Broadcasters wishing to launch new multicast streams above their capacity by hosting them on other stations should be required to simulcast them in ATSC 3.0, said NCTA. The proceeding just codifies and streamlines procedures the FCC has been allowing for two years through grants of special temporary authority, said One Media. “The cable lobby has voiced phantom concerns that are aimed at slowing down or upending ATSC 3.0 deployments they view as a potential competitor to the pay-TV industry,” said NAB. “The routine grant of waivers by the FCC over the past several years to accomplish what the Second FNPRM proposes to codify has not strained cable capacity in any way,” said America’s Public Television Stations and PBS in a joint filing.