FCC Spectrum Repack May Darken Screens Of Many Rural TVs

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal to repack the television transmission spectrum, scheduled to take place within the next few years, will likely hinder the ability of the Moapa Valley Television District (MVTVD) to continue to deliver its current programming to local Over-The-Air (OTA) TV viewers. And, experts fear that will go for similar rural TV translators all over the country as well.

In 2012, Congress authorized the FCC to conduct an auction that would free up television frequencies and feed the demand for more wireless brandband service. Over the past two decades, more and more of the TV viewing public, especially in urban areas, had made a switch from using OTA signals to purchasing subscription services like cable and satellite TV. This was seen as a possible opportunity to reshuffle the spectrum and pack it more tightly; in order to meet the strong demand for additional wireless spectrum.

But experts in the translator industry fear that the proposal will have it’s most signficant impact on rural areas in the west.

“Under the best of circumstances, we believe that the repack will result in translator service being lost,” said National Translator Association President Byron St. Clair in a telephone conversation with the Progress last week. “And we fear that quite a lot of service will be lost in rural areas.”

St. Clair says that there are about 5,000 TV translators in operation across the United States. In the remote areas of many western states, like Nevada, these translators play a signficant role in providing OTA television to small rural communities where other services are scarce.

Take the Moapa Valley for instance. MVTVD board chairman Daniel Pray said in an interview last week that the district continues to fill an important need in the community.

“I always use the example of the little old lady in Overton,” Pray said. “What options does she have? We don’t have cable service available in our area. On a fixed income, she can’t afford to pay the $40-$80 per month for satellite TV. And she is homebound and really relies on our service to get information to her. Without that, she would simply not have television service. That is an example of someone who will be hurt the worst by all of this.”

Pray explains that, because of the area’s topography, free-to-air primary broadcast signals out of Las Vegas or Salt Lake City are not able to be received directly by local residents. So for nearly 60 years now, the task of the MVTV district has been to receive those primary signals from a place where they can be picked up; at a station high atop Beacon Hill, near the I-15 exit 93. Those signals are then amplified and rebroadcast down into the Moapa Valley communities for local residents to view in their homes.

In recent years, the district has executed a $25 annual assessment which shows up on the property tax bill of all local property owners. This assessment has enabled the district to update both it’s receiving and broadcasting equipment to allow for a strong digital signal to be rebroadcast down into the communities. But the proposed repacking could put some significant limitations on that operation.

The MVTVD is currently rebroadcasting on ten channels distributed across a broad spectrum encompassing roughly 475 MHz through about 698 MHz. The proposed repack would clear all current broadcasters off of the TV spectrum above about 589 MHz. For the MVTVD that would result in a loss of half of its broadcast channels.

Pray admits that, if that happens, small translators like the district would be given the opportunity to file for something called a displacement. In theory this would reshuffle the deck and assign the district a new spot lower on the spectrum for each of its lost channels. But Pray doubts the likelihood of the district ever being made whole that way.

“With the total remaining spectrum that would be available to us after the repack, only about 17 frequencies would be available,” Pray said. “We’d need ten of them to keep us whole; 10 out of 17. Yes, the channels are available. But are they going to available to us? That’s the question.”

In addition, in order for the district to file for displacement, it would have to pay for detailed engineering to be done showing that the bandwidth is truly available and that using it wouldn’t affect any existing transmissions licensed in the area. The cost of that engineering would be placed fully on the shoulders of the district. There may also be additional costs incurred by the district to purchase or recalibrating equipment and hardware in changing over broadcast to new frequencies, Pray said.

“There are a lot of hidden costs all over the place in there,” he said. “And there is no compensation for small translators mentioned anywhere by the FCC in all of this.”

Even worse, after the repack, a deadline is set by which time existing broadcasters must finally stop transmitting on the cleared frequencies. But that doesn’t mean there is a new broadcaster waiting in the wings to fill the void.

Rather that frequency may just suddenly go silent. That’s because bandwidth is purchased and assigned on the national level. And while there may be an intense need for that bandwidth for wireless service in urban areas of the country, there is plenty of empty space in the vast rural areas of the country. What’s more, it may be years before anyone comes along who wants to actually build out the infrastructure required to transmit on those rural frequencies.

Pray refers to a similar experience in 2009 when the FCC similarly cleared away a portion of the spectrum in order to sell it to wireless providers. The district was then required to move some of it’s frequencies down the spectrum.

“At that time we were happy to do it,” Pray said. “We didn’t need all of that spectrum and there were other places we could go. But the funny thing is, to this day no one is transmitting anything on most of those channels. So the question is: Why clear us off if you don’t have anyone who will be filling the spot?”

That is one of the main points that St. Clair is fighting for in his negotiations with the FCC on behalf of the National Translators Association in this matter.

“We feel strongly that existing transmitters should not be required to vacate the frequency on some arbitrary deadline date, unless a new user has bought the space, paid for it and is actually prepared to use it,” St. Clair said. “Otherwise, the existing broadcaster should be able to continue transmitting on the frequency. That could give them maybe another ten years or more of using that bandwidth where otherwise it would just be silent.”

Even though small TV translators are regarded as secondary services by the FCC for licensing purposes, Pray insists that they still play a vital role in providing OTA television signals to broad swaths of the population.

“The importance of this should not be overlooked,” Pray said.

As an example, he points to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina. In a scenario like that, wireless service could only provide streaming from one transmitter to one receiver, Each person who comes online seeking information requires additional bandwidth, Pray said. So when transmission goes down, a lot of people are left without a signal.

But OTA television transmits one signal to many, Pray said. Thus a single signal using only a very small segment of bandwidth can relay information to millions of people at once, he said.

“When elected officials open up the spectrum to wireless providers and then the FCC makes it almost impossible for television translators to continue functioning; I just don’t think that they are understanding that important concept,” Pray said.

In any case, all the district wants to do is to continue to provide its ten stations of programming to the OTA television viewers in the Moapa Valley, Pray said.

“Just let us provide our service to that little old lady in Overton without making it more difficult or expensive than it needs to be,” Pray said. “That’s all we want.”