Martin Revamps DTV Education Order to Codify APTS, NAB Plans
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin overhauled a proposed digital- TV consumer-education order, circulating for a vote since October, to reflect proposals by two broadcaster organizations, commission officials said. The revised document would allow commercial stations to fulfill FCC education requirements if they meet requirements proposed by the NAB for a safe harbor, they said. Noncommercial stations could comply by following a plan from the Association of Public TV Stations for noncommercial stations, sources said.
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Stations that didn’t follow either plan would be required to air more public service announcements than the groups’ proposals call for, commission officials said. PSA requirements were the backbone of the draft order that Martin circulated Oct. 16 for a vote by the commissioners. The measure quickly picked up the votes of the chairman and Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps. Commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate haven’t voted, sources said. That gave the NAB an opening to propose Dec. 28 for the commission to exempt from its PSA requirements members that take part in the association’s DTV education program. The commissioners have spent the last several weeks reviewing the NAB’s plan. Some didn’t think it went far enough (CD Feb 6 p3).
The NAB revised its proposal Feb. 8 to increase its education commitment, FCC officials said. The original one had all participants in its campaign airing 16 PSAs a week on average until Feb. 17, 2009. The new proposal would require NAB to distribute a 30-minute program in English and Spanish on the transition and take other steps such as agreeing to run 25 percent of those PSAs in the evening, said a filing by the group Feb. 11. Stations also run 16 screen crawls, tickers or snipes weekly on average and file quarterly reports to the commission on their efforts. The NAB declined to comment on the new FCC order.
NAB’s plan has gained wide support among commissioners, and there’s a good chance of a 5-0 vote for Martin’s new proposal, a commission source said. The chairman extended the deadline for a vote again, to Feb. 19, and commissioners want to act soon, sources said. The deadline, put off many times, could be postponed again to give commissioners more time, the sources said. An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment.
Martin testified at a DTV hearing a Wednesday that the commissioners were considering whether to adopt NAB’s latest proposal. “We are currently in the process of evaluating this new proposal and hope to finalize this item quickly,” he said. Martin circulated the revised order to the other commissioners the night before the House Telecommunications Subcommittee hearing, commission sources said.
The new proposed order lets noncommercial broadcasters follow APTS’s plan instead of the FCC’s PSA requirements, commission sources said. APTS said Feb. 8 that public stations should be allowed to carry out their on-air education duties by running at least 60 seconds of spots a day in various time slots through April. That figure would increase to 120 seconds a day May through October and to 180 from November through completion of the digital switch. “We have not reviewed anything nor are we aware of it at this time,” an APTS spokeswoman said. “If it would be anything that would implement the changes that we proposed to the chairman’s office, then obviously we think that’s a definitely a step in the right direction.”