John Eggerton

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler says that the spectrum auction will clear the second most spectrum of any FCC auction, but that it was not the FCC's role but the marketplace's to determine that price or how much spectrum should be given up.

He was asked about the supposed demand for wireless beachfront spectrum given the demand that the auction revealed—broadcasters have been questioning that demand after the total broadcasters were willing to give up was reduced repeatedly after wireless companies declined to bid for the higher spectrum targets. Chairman Wheeler said it was Congress (in auction legislation) "that told us to create an auction that gave broadcasters an opportunity to sell their spectrum to us, and us to re-band it and turn around and sell it to wireless carriers." But it was Congress implementing an element of the National Broadband Plan offered up by the FCC and Chairman Wheeler's predecessor, Julius Genachowski. Chairman Wheeler said the FCC's job was to create the marketplace, "not so say 'this is how much spectrum has to clear, this is how much it has to generate.'" He said marketplaces "are frequently unpredictable."

OTA Broadcasting has agreed to pay $32,000 to settle an Federal Communications Commission investigation into its political file practices. The FCC's Media Bureau released an order outlining the settlement. The FCC said its investigation was into whether KAXT-CD San Francisco's political file omitted information on paid ads for some California State Assembly candidates. The FCC said it did. To settle the investigation, OTA agreed to ensure that all its stations complied with political file disclosure obligations, as well as to pay the civil penalty. The FCC has closed the investigation.

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau says that, effective immediately and on its own authority, it is freezing applications for the digital companion channels for low power TV stations and translators. Those are the second channels that LPTVs and translators will need when they are required to make their own digital transition.

That comes as the FCC is about to close its broadcast incentive auction and starts repacking broadcasters in smaller spectrum space. LPTVs and translators are not protected in the repack. The FCC says that because LPTVs and translators displaced in the repack will be filing displacement applications (for new spectrum homes) in a special window following the end of the auction and to make sure that the limited number of channels available go first to those displaced stations, it says it was appropriate to freeze new companion channel applications, particularly given that the FCC has postponed the LPTV DTV transition deadline until 12 months after the completion of the 39-month repack.

Reaction began pouring in after the Federal Communications Commission's incentive auction met its two benchmarks Jan 18, meaning it will close after bidding dries up in stage four. Former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, under whose watch the spectrum auction was drawn up, agreed with current Chairman Tom Wheeler that the auction had been a success, and despite some naysaying at the outset.

"Today it's clear the auction will be a success," he said. "Of course when we originally proposed the idea many said it was crazy and would never happen. The auction will recover an unprecedented amount of spectrum for the mobile ecosystem, both licensed and unlicensed spectrum, and it gave broadcasters an opportunity for a market-based monetization that wouldn't have otherwise been available. It's the first wireless auction of its kind in the world, and important that it happened in the United States. The challenge now for the FCC and new administration is how to keep pushing the envelope on spectrum policy and ensure the US maintains its global leadership."

The Federal Communications Commission will be able to close the spectrum auction and at an 84 MHz spectrum total some had suggested was the last clearing target for a successful auction. The second round of stage four of the forward portion of the FCC incentive auction ended Jan 18 with bidders raising their ante to $18 billion but more importantly $1.2570 per POP.

The spectrum auction isn't over until it's over, but the final stage rule has now been met, with forward auction bidders having bid enough to both cover the broadcasters' ask (the second component necessary to close the auction) and the $1.25 per MHz POP price. The auction will continue until there is no more bidding in any market. Now that the final stage rule has been met, the FCC's spectrum reserves kick in, where up to 30 MHz has been reserved in each market for auction-eligible bidders--small businesses, women, minority-owned. The FCC set aside some spectrum so the larger players could not simply buy it all up.

The successful completion of the final stage rule was a going-away present of sorts for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who exits Jan 20. Chairman Wheeler took a bow for the entire FCC team, past and present, in a statement following the announcement that the auction would close after the current stage. “The word’s first spectrum incentive auction has delivered on its ambitious promise. Reaching the Final Stage Rule means the benefits of the auction are indisputable. We will repurpose 70 MHz of high-value, completely clear low-band spectrum for mobile broadband on a nationwide basis," Chairman Wheeler said. "On top of that, 14 MHz of new unlicensed spectrum – the test bed for wireless innovation – will be available for consumer devices and new services. The auction will provide $10.05 billion to broadcast television licensees who participated and billions towards deficit reduction."

“There is still a long road ahead to successfully implement the post-auction transition of broadcast stations to their new channels and bring the new wireless and unlicensed spectrum to market. This will be an extremely important task for my successor and the new Commission; I wish them well," he said. The fact that the FCC had to reduce its spectrum clearing target from 126 MHz to 84 Mhz will mean less money for broadcasters and less spectrum for wireless operators, but it will make that repack easier given that there is much more room to repack TV stations in, which means not TV stations will be repacked into the duplex gap (between wireless uplink or downlink spectrum, or in the wireless band at all.

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) has joined with five dozen other journalism associations and outlets to ask President-elect Donald Trump to make commitments to transparency and not punishing reporters, commitments they say were not forthcoming from the Obama Administration. Trump has already cut off access to reporters and outlets whose stories he did not like, so he could be a tough audience. But the outlets were looking for commitments from the new administration to do better than his predecessor in that and other regards.

The groups said their priorities for re-opening the discussion about transparency and access are: "The ability of reporters to directly interact with government employees who are subject matter experts, rather than interacting with Public Information Officers (or having all conversations monitored by PIOs); access to the activities of the President; and ensuring that the Federal Freedom of Information Act remains as strong as possible."

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has introduced a bill that would require the Federal Communications Commission to roll-back a decision requiring board members of noncommercial broadcast outlets to provide ownership information to the commission, party of a larger decision on broadcast ownership disclosures. The bill has yet to get a name or bill number, but it has the outgoing Democratic FCC's number. It would require the FCC to revoke parts, but not all of an FCC decision, a targeted approach Congressional Republicans could use to tailor already-passed FCC regulations.

The FCC Media Bureau recently denied a request by noncommercial broadcast groups to revisit its decision. A phalanx of noncommercial broadcasting entities asked the FCC to reconsider and reverse the January 2016 order that was billed as improving the data collected from broadcasters to help the commission analyze ownership and diversity issues.

President-elect Donald Trump met Jan 16 with Federal Communications Commission senior Republican commissioner Ajit Pai, according to transition and future White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who said it was the President-elect's last meeting of the day. Commissioner Pai is widely expected to be tapped as interim FCC chair when President-elect Trump becomes President Trump on Jan 20 and could be named permanent chair as well, though his fellow Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly is also in the conversation. Trump also met with former Federal Trade Commission Republican member Joshua Wright.

Although AT&T and Time Warner have signaled they expect to bypass the Federal Communications Commission review of their proposed $108.7 billion merger—a review that would be triggered by the exchange of FCC licenses like those used to transmit CNN and HBO—AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson signaled a spin-off of CNN was not in the cards. "I don't know why we'd even talk about that," he said. "It doesn't seem relevant to approving a deal like this. What would be the competitive issue that you're remedying with spinning off CNN? There are not competitive issues with owning CNN." President-elect Donald Trump, who has been highly critical of CNN, has threatened to block the deal, leading some to see a spin-off as a way to ease the path to approval. But Stephenson said in the interview that he sees it as a "basic vertical merger" that will ultimately be approved.