PubTV urges commission to drop ‘OET-69’ proposal

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service and the Association of Public Television Stations are jointly opposing a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) to use a new software program to analyze television coverage and interference data.

The proposal was floated by the FCC in February and intended to update the analytical tools the commission will use in preparing for the 2014 broadcast spectrum auctions. In a letter filed with the FCC early this month, the three pubcasting organizations said the proposal would adversely affect many public TV stations by reducing the size of their service areas. Pubcasters were responding to a request for comments on “OET-69,” an FCC bulletin that described the methodology used by TVStudy, the software that the commission proposes to use to analyze coverage and interference among full-service digital and Class A television stations. The current software was implemented in the 1990s for use as stations transitioned from analog to digital broadcasting. Pubcasters didn’t specify the number of stations that would lose coverage under the new system, but referred to an estimate provided by the National Association of Broadcasters, which said that more than 60 percent of stations could see a reduction in service areas.