Monty Tayloe

Some opponents of Sinclair buying Tribune argue in petitions to deny posted by the FCC Tuesday that the new company would have unprecedented ability to drag the post-incentive auction repacking to a halt, and would want to do so because of its massive investment in ATSC 3.0. “Sinclair’s ‘all-in’ posture on ATSC 3.0 gives it a strong self-interest in using whatever leverage it has to promote the adoption of this standard,” petitioned T-Mobile. A delay in repacking would give Sinclair more time to lobby the commission to devote more reimbursement funds to paying for stations to buy 3.0 equipment, said the filing in docket 17-179.

The Sinclair/Tribune merger deal should be rejected by the FCC and can’t be made more palatable with merger conditions, said an ‘informal coalition” of Dish Network, Common Cause, the American Cable Association, the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer and Communications Industry Association and One America News Network, in a press call Monday.

The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition said it's “declaring a truce” in the debate over a proposal to reserve vacant channels in the TV bands for unlicensed use (see 1707110015). The declaration came in an email newsletter Tuesday. Though NAB and Microsoft have been actively pressing the FCC on the matter, a broadcast industry official told us the two sides remain far apart, and the coalition announcement doesn’t indicate any of the other parties active in the vacant channel proceeding have reached an agreement with the coalition. The group is working on a plan under which licensees would be offered “economic opportunities to utilize their spectrum rights to participate in the solving of national problems,” the email said. LPTV spectrum could be used for rural broadband, and to assist in the rollout of ATSC 3.0, the email said. Microsoft didn’t comment. NAB "remains strongly opposed to the Microsoft proposal," a spokesman said in response to the coalition announcement. "Microsoft’s proposal could damage TV reception for tens of millions of people living in both rural and urban America.”

FCC reimbursement fund administrator EY had to press broadcasters for additional information on their repacking reimbursement requests because many are upgrading to ATSC 3.0-compatible equipment and didn’t submit actual price estimates, said FCC Incentive Auction Task Force Chair Jean Kiddoo and industry officials in interviews.

The FCC should allow fixed wireless service to share the 3700 MHz-4200 MHz band with the incumbent fixed satellite service (FSS) because the satellite users are underutilizing the band and are doomed to lose that spectrum anyway, said speakers from Google and rural wireless ISPs. The comments came at a New America Foundation-hosted event in support of a petition for rulemaking in June by the Broadband Access Coalition (see 1706210044). “If the military can learn to love sharing, the satellite industry can, too,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “It’s better than losing it.”

A proposal to reserve vacant channels in the TV band for unlicensed use would make it hard for broadcasting to transition to ATSC 3.0, broadcasters and broadcast attorneys told us. Many of the new capabilities expected out of the new TV standard would require broadcasters to upgrade their facilities to use single frequency networks, a change that would become extremely difficult if vacant channels are reserved for unlicensed use, they said.

The preliminary estimated expense of the post-incentive auction repacking of $2.12 billion (see 1707140054), $365 million more than the $1.75 billion reimbursement fund intended to cover those costs, drew some concerns even as the shortfall was less than some feared. That Incentive Auction Task Force number could change as broadcaster requirements and standards for what's reimbursable become clearer and a few submissions that hadn't been included from a small number of broadcasters and MVPDs are totaled. Having a deficit to cite is expected to bolster broadcaster lobbying efforts to have Congress increase the reimbursement fund amount, said Pillsbury broadcast attorney Scott Flick. Such legislation may come soon.

The broadcaster spectrum consortium based on ATSC 3.0 started by Sinclair and Nexstar is accepting new member groups as both “affiliates” and “founders” and is in negotiations with “a ton” of prospective member groups, said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley at a Media Institute event Tuesday.

Sinclair’s proposed buy of Tribune Media would put too many U.S. homes within reach of not enough voices, media consolidation opponents, union officials, academics and MVPD officials told us. After the $3.9 billion deal, the resulting company would reach 69.4 percent of U.S. homes. “I’m not sure it’s a great thing for the American consumer,” said DePauw University media professor Jeffrey McCall. Though some broadcast-side proponents of the deal said it’s necessary for Sinclair to grow to compete in the modern media market, analysts and broadcast officials said the transaction is intended to increase Sinclair’s reach and enhance the viability of the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard.

The FCC’s ATSC 3.0 rulemaking gives the commission “an important opportunity to unleash innovation, not by requiring a particular type of equipment, but by facilitating voluntary industry adoption of a new technology in response to consumer demand,” CTA said Thursday in reply comments in docket 16-142. It was the first time in the 14-month-long proceeding that CTA filed comments on its own rather than jointly with NAB and the other groups that petitioned the FCC last April to authorize ATSC 3.0 as a voluntary, market-driven service (see 1604130065). CTA said it did so to independently stress to the commission the importance of not imposing tuner mandates.