FCC DTV Education, Delay Order Approval Expected This Week
The FCC commissioners probably will unanimously approve this week a second order for carrying out the DTV Delay Act, said commission officials and industry executives. It’s expected to deal with viewer education and requirements imposed on stations going all-digital before June 12. Officials of the Media Bureau and commissioners’ offices worked late last week on drafting the order, FCC officials said. They said the bureau was expected to circulate the proposal on the eighth floor late Monday. Approval should be quick because commissioners’ offices started working through details before circulation, the officials said.
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The order probably will require stations to tell viewers if their digital coverage won’t reach everywhere their analog signals did, said commission officials and industry executives. The three commissioners support the notification, FCC officials said. The order probably will require stations whose digital signals reach 98 percent or less of the people in their analog contours to air spoken and written messages explaining that, they said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.
The FCC has said 319 stations will lose 2 percent or more of their analog coverage (CD Dec 24 p1). But the commission said in December, and broadcast industry executives have noted since, that almost all of the country’s nearly 1,800 full-power stations will have additional potential viewers after the transition. Predicting digital coverage areas is an inexact science, dependent on many considerations that can’t be modeled before analog service is cut, a broadcast lawyer said. That means stations could warn viewers of signal loss that won’t take place, the lawyer said. “The kind of detailed advance notification that the commission is talking about does not appear to be feasible.”
Commenting last week on a rulemaking notice that led to the draft order, the NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television said stations are willing to alert viewers when analog contours will shrink by 2 percent or more. Broadcasters should “have the flexibility to design the best way to communicate” such information on-air, such as by running a notice weekly saying that “a small percentage” of over-the-air viewers may lose reception and they should visit AntennaWeb.org for instructions, the groups said. Commissioners think that approach is a good one, but haven’t settled on the kind of notice to require, FCC officials said.