Big Crowd Expected at FCC Nashville Meeting—If It Occurs
FCC members could hear from a half-dozen low-power TV executives and face more than 100 station employees, including many minorities and women, at Wednesday’s Nashville hearing, broadcast executives said. But the low-power crowd may not get a chance to press commissioners in person on behalf of a rulemaking notice backers claim would help small stations survive the analog cutoff. It remained unclear late Friday whether the meeting would occur (CD Oct 10 p2), given scant commissioner support for the notice, several agency officials said.
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As of Friday afternoon, neither Chairman Kevin Martin nor any other commissioner had voted for the notice, FCC officials said. At least some commissioners seem inclined against the item in current form, out of concern implementing it would entitle Class A low-power stations to cable carriage, and other concerns, they said. Martin might cancel the meeting if he thinks he doesn’t have the votes to approve the item, they said. An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment.
Martin already has indicated he might cancel the Oct. 15 Nashville meeting and members would next publicly meet Oct. 30, in Washington, D.C., a commission official said. Martin moved the Oct. 15 meeting from Washington to Nashville so he and colleagues also could attend a Vanderbilt University event on child obesity that Commissioner Deborah Tate helped organize.
Low-power broadcasters are planning as if the Nashville meeting will take place, they said. They hope their numbers persuade commissioners to vote for the item. It’s promoted as increasing diversity because minorities own a higher percentage of low-power stations than they do of full-power operations. Class A TV stations would be guaranteed cable carriage if allowed to upgrade to full- power, as the notice proposes, which would help the small broadcasters keep viewers after the DTV transition, executives said.
“If it’s not persuasive for the commissioners to see the very owners of the businesses they regulate and whose existence they control, I don’t know what would be persuasive,” said Greg Herman, vice president of technology for the Community Broadcasters Association, representing low-power stations. If the Nashville FCC meeting does take place, agency officials have said that five to seven speakers probably would get two or three minutes each to testify, said CBA Executive Director Amy Brown. “Having this diverse group of people attend and having requested their testimony, the FCC may have to be late to their obesity meeting to face these people who have come to Nashville.”
“We are sincerely hoping that despite the controversy” commissioners see “this is an issue of fundamental fairness and vote accordingly,” said President Randy Nonberg of Una Vez Mas. “At the end of the day I think the commissioners will understand.” But the notice’s 2012 deadline for all low-power stations to go digital may not give them enough time, said Peter Tannenwald, a lawyer for the CBA. Full-power broadcasters got 10 years to make the digital transition, “and they're offering us three and a half,” Tannenwald said. “I don’t see why the FCC won’t work with us and all those things” won’t be worked out.