Expanding Economic and Innovation Opportunities of Spectrum Through Incentive Auctions NPRM

Broadcasters will have the unique financial opportunity in the broadcast television spectrum incentive auction to voluntarily return some or all of their licensed spectrum usage rights in exchange for incentive payments. One of broadcasters' bid options will be to relinquish rights in order to share a channel with another licensee, allowing them to continue broadcasting while receiving payments that can fund new content, services, and delivery mechanisms.

In the First Order on Reconsideration, the FCC refines the rules to provide greater flexibility and certainty regarding channel sharing agreements (CSAs). Among other things, we modify our rules to allow broadcasters that relinquish rights in the incentive auction in order to channel share to enter into CSAs after the auction and, whether they enter into CSAs before or after the auction, to determine the length of their agreements. In the companion Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), we tentatively conclude that we should authorize channel sharing by full power and Class A station outside the incentive auction context, including "second generation" agreements in with one or both entities were parties to an auction-related CSA whose term has expired or that has otherwise been terminated. By providing greater flexibility and certainty regarding CSAs, our objective is to encourage voluntary participation by broadcasters int he incentive auction.