Time for FCC to Get Off Spectrum Scoring Bandwagon, Padden Says
LAS VEGAS -- The FCC needs to drop, once and for all, a proposed system for scoring the value of TV licenses sold in the incentive TV auction based on an evaluation by FCC staff, or get ready for failure, said Preston Padden, executive director of the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, Wednesday during a spectrum panel at CES.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
"The FCC needs to stop driving broadcasters away from this auction by talking about scoring stations in the auction,” Padden said. “Unfortunately last week” economists retained by the FCC to advise it in the auction reportedly told an economics conference in Philadelphia that scoring has an advantage in limiting payments to broadcasters. Padden shared a program with Gary Epstein, head of the Incentive Auction Task Force. “That is exactly the wrong signal to send and I would urge my friend Gary Epstein to rein in his brilliant, but seemingly clueless economists,” Padden said.
Epstein said he disagreed with Padden, but the coalition was playing a useful role in the debate. “I much appreciate Preston’s constant dialogue on this; it really does help sharpen the issues,” he said. “This is all about money, it’s all about the spread about what the value of the spectrum is for wireless broadband use and for what the station think its value is,” Epstein said. “That’s not our judgment to make. This is a voluntary auction.” The FCC has made no decision about whether it will use scoring in the auction, he said: “But it is worth exploring."
Padden said many small broadcasters “are still in the dark” about what they will be paid if they agree to sell their spectrum. “These prices are the incentive in the incentive auction,” he said. “The FCC has been given by the Congress the burden of convincing TV spectrum sellers that this auction is the best and most certain path to monetize their spectrum, a path better than waiting for future technological and regulatory changes."
"Success will be reallocating 120 MHz of spectrum from broadcast television to wireless broadband as outlined in the National Broadband Plan,” Padden said. “2014 will be the year that the FCC either succeeds or fails to attract a sufficient number of TV spectrum sellers to make this auction work,” Padden said. “Right now the commission is very far behind the curve on that. If it doesn’t succeed in attracting sufficient broadcasters, it’s game over."
Epstein and his team have done a good job of listening to industry players, said Austin Schlick, now at Google, former FCC general counsel. “I'm not going to add to the fire,” he said. “One thing that can never be said is that Gary and his team have not listened enough to everyone. … We are a secondary player in this whole thing and they've given us enormous time.”