Noncommercial Broadcasters Push FCC for Spectrum Reserve

Top public broadcast officials paid a call to the Federal Communications Commission to push for a guarantee that there would be some spectrum reserved for noncommercial broadcasting in each market.

Noncommericals have already petitioned the FCC to make that change in its May incentive auction order, but it made the point in numbers they hope are too big to ignore, including PBS President Paula Kerger, CPB President Patricia Harrison and almost a half-dozen top execs from both organizations, all of whom met with Gary Epstein, chief of the Incentive Auction Task Force, Bill Lake, chief of the Media Bureau, and FCC managing director Jon Wilkins. They pointed out that universal service is their statutory mission, and that the FCC has supported that mission in the past and should do so into the future. They want the FCC to rewrite the May order to specify that if a noncommercial gives up its entire channel for auction, at least one channel will be reserved during repacking of stations, essentially a placeholder, to enable a new noncommercial to take its place.