FCC Auction Tag Team to Address APTS

It looks like the FCC's tag team incentive auction task force heads will be making their pitch in person to noncommercial stations.

Gary Epstein, chair of the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force, and Howard Symons, vice chair, are scheduled to address the Association of Public Television Stations' Public Media Summit Feb. 23 in Washington. They have been leading the FCC's incentive auction road shows in Philadelphia and New York this week.

Giving up spectrum while staying in the business —by sharing a channel or moving from a UHF to VHF channel— would be a way for frequently cash-hungry noncommerical TV stations to collect millions while staying in the business.

But in case some stations want to exit the business entirely, APTS petitioned the FCC to reserve at least one channel in each market for noncommercial service. The proposed FCC auction framework had no such guarantee, which did not please APTS or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.