Low-Power TV Group Blames FCC, Hill Inaction for Its Closing
The group that has lobbied for low-power TV stations since 1985 blamed its going out of business recently(CD Aug 14 p10) on inaction by lawmakers and regulators on DTV, carriage and digital equipment funding issues. The group, the Community Broadcasters Association, had long warned that additional low-power stations would close and the industry could face financial ruin without government intervention (CD March 9 p6). But the association said it shut down because it was running a budget deficit and members wouldn’t agree to a surcharge to cover it.
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Former officials of the group blamed high legal costs, of unspecified size, from a lawsuit by the association to make the FCC require that all DTV tuners eligible for government coupons have analog receivers, after the group failed to persuade the commission to make the change. “It was a daunting task,” said Amy Brown, who was the association’s executive director. “It was an expensive task. We were very successful in the marketplace, even though we lost in the courts.” A commission spokesman declined to comment.
After the association lost its case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it continued to press the commission to find that digital converter boxes covered by $40 NTIA coupons violated the All-Channel Receiver Act if they didn’t pass analog signals to TV sets. February meetings with Commissioners Michael Copps, then acting chairman, Robert McDowell, and Jonathan Adelstein, now at the RUS, bore no fruit, said Peter Tannenwald, who was the association’s lawyer. “Zero” commitments to help LPTV came at the meetings, he said. “We need the commission to do some things to keep this industry alive, which would include helping us with Congress to get on cable, getting funding to convert to digital … and if nothing else just buy our spectrum back from us.” McDowell declined to comment. We couldn’t reach Copps.
Lawmakers also bear responsibility, for not doing more the past two decades to give low-power TV stations money for the digital switch, as well as guaranteed carriage on cable systems that full-power broadcasters have, former association officials said. After trying twice to get must-carry legislation passed for the designated market area of each station, the group sought rule changes favorable to low-power stations from the FCC but got nothing, said Ron Bruno, the association’s treasurer until it closed July 15. “Automatically, the low-power stations across the United States -- because there is no cable carriage in the DMA -- they are shut out of virtually every advertising agency,” said Bruno, the president of Bruno Goodworth Network, which owns 11 LPTV stations. “The folks at the FCC and in Congress do not want low-power television” based on “the way they vote and the way they pass rulings.”
Ads, always difficult for many low-power stations to attract, became scarcer as the recession especially hurt the small businesses that make up most of the broadcasters’ advertisers, said Bruno and other executives of LPTV owners. “Small business is dying,” said Greg Herman, who was the association’s technology vice president. “Most low-power stations aren’t going to have any national advertising” and in economic downturns advertisers spend more of their budgets on national TV and less on local, he added. Bruno and Herman said they know of no profitable low-power stations. “It’s been a slow decline” in the case of Herman’s WatchTV, which owns 15 LPTV stations, he said. “We started reaching a point about 18 months ago, falling below break-even and falling and falling and falling.”
It costs at least $150,000 build a low-power DTV facility, and the absence of federal money for many stations hurt LPTV, said Bruno, Herman and Tannenwald. For lack of money, many low-power broadcasters remain in analog after the full-power broadcast DTV transition, so they can’t be viewed on TV sets with digital converter boxes that don’t pass through their signals, they said.
Full-power broadcasters and other industries could have done more to help low-power stations, said LPTV executives. The NAB policy that low-power broadcasters can join only as associate member is “misguided,” Herman said. “I would love to be a full member of the NAB,” and he said he knows many others who would. An NAB spokesman said that although the association’s bylaws allow only full-power TV and radio stations as “full-fledged NAB members,” many “full-power broadcasters also own LPTV stations, including NAB TV board members.”
The CBA said it averted “the catastrophic consequences of an ill-conceived DTV converter box program by fighting” for additional analog pass-through models. Consumer electronics industry officials credited the group for raising awareness of the pass-through issue. “We thought that the manufacturers really reflected what the market wanted,” said a CEA spokeswoman. “We worked with the CBA, and as the market demanded it, we produced passthrough boxes.” Most NTIA-certified boxes passed through analog signals, in part because of the CBA’s efforts, said a LG Electronics spokesman. “They should take pride in doing a great service to the digital TV transition and consumers in ensuring there was a wide variety of converter boxes with analog pass- through.”