Current FCC Disputes Show Resilience of Long-Term Special Interests

We interrupt the single-minded attention to the election to remind people that the some of the government is still functioning, making decisions with billions of dollars on the table. The fuss surrounding those decisions shows why the culture of Washington will be difficult to change, regardless of who wins next week.

The arena for the disputes is, as it frequently is, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). There are more big industries with more big money up for grabs on a day-to-day basis at the FCC than at any other agency except for the Defense Department. Their Nov. 4 meeting is a good example.

On one hand, the big phone companies are fighting everyone else over the rates that companies pay each other to interconnect calls made within a state's borders. The fight stacks up like this: Big telephone companies think they are paying too much to connect to little phone company networks. Little phone companies, including rural companies and those competitive companies that are left, want to leverage their best asset -- their networks and don't think they are getting too much money. How detailed does this get? Down the $.0007 level, discussed as a rate for terminating calls. Full-page ads in the Washington Post from the companies that could get hurt call for delay in Commission action.

On the other hand, the FCC has to deal with one of the most historically intransigent lobbies in Washington, the broadcasters. Yet again, some pretender wants to use some of the public's airwaves that broadcasters claim as their own. For almost 90 years, radio and then TV broadcasters have used the public's airwaves (spectrum) without charge. At one point, they had some obligations to serve the public interest, but most of those were done away with in the great deregulation wave of the 1980s, even as over the years, the broadcasters padded their little nests, with goodies like "must-carry," which guarantees that every broadcast channel will be carried on cable systems, "distant signal" protection from satellite broadcasters and restrictive licensing for programming. At the same time, local programming has shrunk, some stations no longer even attempt to cover news and every attempt to allow free air time for candidates (advocated by Sen. John McCain, among others), gets beaten back.

That's the background to the current debate over how to use the vacant spectrum between channels when TV converts from its current analog setup to digital transmission in February next year. The concept of the "white spaces" between channels is simple. This line is a channel.

This line is another channel. The space just above here is blank. It's a "white space." The broadcasters don't want anyone to use it, even if they aren't using it. Some Internet and telecom companies figured out that those white spaces would make a dandy home for an unlicensed, wireless Internet service that could help fill in the gaps between the services offered by the big wireless companies.

The broadcasters' answer is predictable: No. Hell, no. That's not a surprise. In fact, broadcasters, defying the law of averages, have found that every attempt to create a new service to benefit the public will interfere with their spectrum. The FCC tried to create low-power TV (LPTV) and low-power FM (LPFM) services. Those got crushed.

Earlier this year, the broadcast industry even went to war against a couple of crippled satellite radio companies, trying to forestall the merger between XM and Sirius (now trading at 40 cents per share). It was too much competition for terrestrial broadcasters. It was a monopoly. The deal violated the restrictive license terms that benefitted broadcasters in the first place (no local content).

It is a tradition for broadcasters to oppose change. Check out this cute video from 34 years ago when the concept of cable TV was first raised. Head for the hills! Broadcast TV is threatened as never before.

That little trip into the past brings us to today, when some of our leading tech and telecom companies want to make use of the white spaces to help provide an unlicensed, wireless Internet service to help fill in the gaps and provide some competition to what the phone companies and their cellular affiliates provide. The FCC engineers decided it was technically possible to offer those services and not interfere with broadcasters, so now the broadcasters' propaganda war heats up.

From one side, the NAB raised the specter of a spectrum grab by high-tech companies, like Google. That's vaguely funny coming from an industry that pulled off the greatest spectrum grab in history by getting their digital spectrum for nothing and holding onto their analog spectrum for longer than they were supposed to. The whole idea of "digital TV" started when broadcasters didn't want Motorola to have spectrum for mobile services and thought up a new use for it to compete with the Japanese, which were years ago doing analog "high definition" TV. Besides, the beauty of the white spaces devices is that they would operate in unlicensed spectrum, so no one would "own" it.

Another line of attack is that white spaces devices would not only interfere with TV reception, but worse. Proponents of the new technology may be "motivated by the goal of destroying television," one broadcast-industry FCC filing read, or perhaps they are just "indifferent to the consequences" of interference. In letters circulated around Capitol Hill, members of Congress were urged to "Help Protect Your Constituents" by asking the FCC to put off its vote on white spaces devices.

The letter read: "If the FCC moves this proposal forward, despite its own data to the contrary, when disruptions occur, members of Congress will hear from frustrated television viewing constituents who will not have full access to their favorite television shows, local news and emergency information and no way of solving the problem." The broadcasters have already ginned up a bunch of letters to the FCC from their friends in Congress parroting those points. Here's one example. One industry commentator said that allowing white spaces-enabled devices would lead to the "eventual demise" of over-the-air TV, brought to you by people who believe TV has "absolutely no value."

Let us take a step back. The companies involved here make some of the most sophisticated devices on the planet, and write some of the most sophisticated software ever seen. More than that, it's likely that a great majority of the people involved also watch TV. What is the upside for anyone to make a device that would interfere with TV, or for regulators to approve a spectrum allocation that would interfere with TV, even if 20 percent of people are the only ones left watching over-the-air? None. There is no upside, so the dire warnings of disaster seem a tad foolhardy.

Finally, if those other two tactics don't work, there is always the diversionary tactic. In this case, the diversion is wireless microphones, like the kind used in Broadway shows or concerts, in big churches and even in the National Football League. In theory, wireless devices could interfere with those microphones. As a result, the broadcasters have been imaginative in their recruitment of people to flood the FCC with complaints. Ozzy Osbourne's sound engineer, Dolly Parton, 100 leading musicians, churches huge and small and Broadway producers have all begged the FCC not to let unlicensed devices interfere with their ongoing operations.

Those ongoing operations, by the way, are illegally using spectrum in the TV band, but that doesn't seem to bother the broadcasters even though the microphones use more power than would the new devices and have none of the interference protections. Go figure. The broadcasters even the National Grange weighed in, warning against jeopardizing rural TV. Perhaps they don't care about rural broadband.

The basic question: Should an industry so dedicated to stopping progress deserve any protections without any accompanying responsibilities? The basic answer: Everything should be on the table for discussion. It's time for a new policy for broadcasters because their world is changing, like it or not. The TV networks are starting to offer full episodes of shows online, so that viewers don't have to watch the television set or tune in to the stations the networks or their affiliates own.

The larger point is that regardless of who wins the presidential election, the broadcasters will continue to do what they do, and the big phone companies will continue to do what they do, and those members of Congress who work on behalf of big interests will continue to do what they do. Democrats are as guilty of this as are Republicans. That's what makes fundamental change so difficult, and why there will still be lots of work to be done starting on Nov. 5 if the culture in Washington is truly to change.

Follow Art Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/artbrodsky

Comments

[LinearBob]

Part three of three

I think a "train wreck" will happen next February because of the "I cannot put up a better TV antenna" problem. We will know the full extent of it when most analog TV stations shut down. Just about everywhere there already are "equivalent" (according to the FCC) DTV signals on the air today. I think most people will be able to count the number of "free over the air" DTV signals they receive on one hand, and not run out of fingers, regardless of where they live.

So what is the rush to reduce that number of watchable channels from three to one or two? Why can't the FCC wait until the reception problem THE FCC designed into the DTV system has been solved before allowing any further changes (which can only degrade DTV reception) to take place?

[LinearBob]

Part two of three

The fundamental problem is this; when the FCC designed the DTV broadcast system, they assumed most people would use an outdoor TV antenna mounted 30 feet above the ground, with a rotator. In the 1950s and 60s, that was a pretty good assumption. But today, how many people can put up such an antenna? There has been a quiet campaign to force people to pay for what should be free TV. The Cable industry has been quietly requesting zoning changes and putting restrictive "covenants" into the deeds of people buying into new neighborhoods. These zoning changes and covenants effectively prohibit outdoor TV antennas. Today, most people either use indoor TV antennas, or they pay for Cable or satellite TV because few people can use outdoor TV antennas.

The result is that today, three out of four pay for their "free" TV now, with the remaining viewers using indoor antennas. However, as people try indoor antennas with their new digital TV sets, they are finding they receive few, if any, DTV signals. The TV station I work for is already receiving numerous email messages and phone calls from our "over the air" audience asking us why we are not on the air with a digital signal. When we tell them we ARE on the air in digital and ask them to try a better antenna, they invariably tell us they cannot use a better antenna. Either the "association" prohibits outdoor antennas, or their landlord does.

[LinearBob]

This will have to be a multipart post because I cannot fit my reply into 250 words. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

I think there are a number of problems with this rush to use the "white spaces". Probably the biggest problem is this: IF your TV suddenly freezes and goes blank, what will you do? With analog TV, this does not happen. You might see a grainy picture (that's what noise looks like, and is often the result of a weak signal) or you might see "ghosts" (which are delayed, or "multipath", copies of the original signal which have bounced off some metal close to your antenna). Most people with indoor TV antennas watch through a combination of both because the human eye is rather forgiving of these impairments. Digital TV is not very "forgiving" and is unlikely to display anything given an equivalent signal impairment.

Digital TV exhibits what is called the "cliff effect" where slight impairments to the signal apparently have no effect. But as the impairments get worse, the TV suddenly goes from "perfect" to "gone" with no half way state. As a viewer, you will have no warning when the DTV signal you are watching is on the edge of the cliff. If your signal is marginal already, only a slight additional impairment can cause the sudden failure of your TV set to decode the signal. That is when your screen will "freeze" and go blank.

[Oldtimer]

Excellent post dense with substance. So who would you put on the Federal Communications Commission? I for one would ask Ralph Nader. We will know where Obama is the second he
starts making important appointments.

[Stanley]

Amen brother! Everyone is looking out for their own pocketbooks as would be expected. The subsequent spin to spread political fear is a mainstay to sway the ignorant or justify the corruption that holds sway on both sides of the aisle. It is a serious time in our history and we need some serious change. Our distinct advantage in communications and technology has been withering away. We revolutionize the world time and again but we can't seem to see the clear advantage to democratizing communications and creating huge opportunities to benefit job creation, lowering pollution, and improving education. This would most benefit the plight of the rural community who has lower real estate values and less access. But the problem is currently only those with an extra 100 a month can get high-speed internet and this excludes the benefits to the people who need them the most. This isn't about tv or phone service but a untethered society that can share information and human resources without polluting in the process.