Broadcast, Wireless Industries Keep Powder Dry

Walden says Benjamin essay about killing broadcasting was "abomination"

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/15/2009 12:56:34 PM

The heads of the broadcast and wireless industries left the tough rhetoric at home Tuesday as they each made their cases for the future of spectrum in an increasingly broadband-centric world.

National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith and CTIA President Steve Largent avoided turning the proceedings in a referendum on the relative value of broadcasting versus broadband.

Smith said that either/or was a false choice, and that would need to be part of the communications future. Largent's focus was on getting more spectrum, "wherever it comes from."

All the witnesses were in agreement on the two baseline bills that were the subject of the hearing in the House Energy & Commerce Committee Communications Subcommittee. Those bills would require the FCC and National Telecommunications & Information Administration to inventory spectrum use with an eye toward freeing up more for wireless broadband and then to find a more efficient way to re-auction and reallocate that spectrum.

The hearing touched on a number of points, including alternatives to reclaiming spectrum from broadcasters that included dynamic spectrum sharing, compression and modulation improvements that would make more efficient use of the current spectrum holdings.

But Dale Hatfield, an independent consultant and former chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC, said that while such spectrum efficiency measures like compression and modulation would help, they would likely not be enough, and that the most promising avenues were reclaiming spectrum and sharing.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) a former broadcaster, brought up the recent revelations about the FCC's new Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Stuart Benjamin, who wrote a provocative essay suggesting broadcasters should be regulated out of existence and their spectrum turned over for better uses.

Walden called it "offensive" and "an abomination" and did not understand why he had been named to his post by the FCC.  He asked Smith whether Benjamin's counsel would lead to "just throwing $2 billion in the paper shredder," the figure Smith had said earlier the government spent to make sure viewers with analog TV's could still get an over-the-air signal after the switch to digital.

Smith agreed, saying it would be throwing away taxpayers' money, plus the billions spend on HDTV TV's to get the new over-the-air signal, which broadcasters argue is superior to that delivered over cable.  "Suffice to say my phone has been ringing off the hook ever since this gentleman's work was revealed," he said.