FCC Extends LPTV Displacement Application Window

The FCC has given LPTVs an extra couple of weeks to file applications for new channels.

The applications had been due May 15, but will now be due June 1, the FCC's Incentive Auction Task Force and the Media Bureau said Wednesday (April 18).

LPTVS, translators and replacement translators were not guaranteed new spectrum space after the incentive auction, but the FCC is giving them a chance to find channels after full-powers have been assigned their new ones in the TV station repack that displaced them.

That two-week widening of the displacement application filing window was to "allow applicants further time to analyze data and other information and to prepare or make changes to their applications accordingly," the FCC said.

The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition had sought the extension, saying that at a coalition event at the NAB Show earlier this month after he said FCC staffers had provided new guidance on those applications and his members needed more time to digest it.

The stations still aren't guaranteed a channel, though the FCC will allow the parties to mutually exclusive applications to try and resolve them first before stepping in.

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.