Current.org | How to handle disputes over nonreserved spectrum?

How to treat public broadcasters in battles for nonreserved channels?

Originally published in Current, Feb. 25, 2002
By Mike Janssen

The FCC wants your opinion on a sticky question: What should happen when a commercial and a noncommercial broadcaster want to acquire the same nonreserved channel?

Two years ago, the agency intended to settle disputes over nonreserved channels with auctions. But pubcasters, fearful of the advantage auctions might give to wealthier commercial broadcasters, sued the FCC over the ruling and won last summer. An appeals court said the agency misread the 1996 Communications Act and ordered it to create a new process.

In a Feb. 14 [2002] decision, the agency presented three options, all of which fell short of pubcasters' hopes:

granting noncommercial educational broadcasters (NCEs) nonreserved frequencies only when no commercial broadcasters apply for them;
giving NCEs opportunities to reserve additional nonreserved channels, and
barring NCEs from applying for any nonreserved channels.

The FCC could adopt one or several of the options, the ruling said. Commissioners asked for feedback on the three choices and invited other ideas.

"'None of the above' is the correct answer," said Ron Kramer, executive director of Oregon's Jefferson Public Radio, which joined with NPR, CPB and APTS to sue the FCC over its original auctions decision. Kramer suggested reviving comparative hearings--the process the FCC wanted to end in the first place.

"Sometimes you really need to have a hearing in order to try to get to the bottom of things," he said.

APTS is following the issue because public TV's translators all use nonreserved channels. Translators that lose their channels in the switchover to digital broadcasting will need a safe harbor to return to when the transition ends.

"We will closely examine the FCC's proposals in light of the clear congressional intent that public broadcasting stations not only be exempt from auctions, but also have the ability to apply for spectrum to provide educational services to the public and fulfill our statutory mission of universal service," APTS said in a statement.

Commenters have 45 days to file after the Federal Register publishes the FCC's notice.

The FCC's search for a new process has delayed an auction of nonreserved FM frequencies, originally scheduled for December 2001.