FCC Switches DTV Gears Yet Again for Wednesday Gathering

No items will be voted on Wednesday, at what was to have been a regular monthly meeting in Nashville, agency officials said. Instead, four FCC members will gather at Vanderbilt University’s medical center Wednesday morning for an en banc hearing on obesity, while Commissioner Michael Copps will participate by phone, agency officials said.

All members will hear about obesity at a meeting to begin at 10:30 a.m. Central time, the FCC said late Tuesday. The en banc will be as part of a conference on the epidemic at Vanderbilt University, the FCC said. Witnesses will include Sesame Workshop President Gary Knell and Kelly Pena, vice president of Disney Channels brand research, according to a schedule provided to us by Vanderbilt. An agency spokesman declined to provide a witness list.

The last-minute meeting switch was occasioned because FCC Chairman Kevin Martin yanked from the agenda a DTV- related item which was to have been the centerpiece of the meeting, agency officials said. All other FCC members said they would not vote for Martin’s rulemaking notice on whether certain types of low-power stations should be able to upgrade to full power and get guaranteed cable carriage, they said. Martin wouldn’t agree to an alternative proposal from the four commissioners, so the item remains circulating but won’t be voted on, several commission staffers said. Martin’s office told all other commissioners of the change at around noon Tuesday, agency officials said.

The other commissioners all asked Martin to split the notice into two parts, but he balked, agency officials said. One part, on the most controversial portion of the item, would have been a notice of inquiry asking about whether Class A stations should be able to upgrade to full power and get must-carry status, they said. The second part would remain a rulemaking notice and ask when all 2,600 U.S. low- power broadcasters originating content, including the nation’s approximately 500 Class A stations, should be required to go all digital, the officials said.

Commissioners seemed to agree that the regulator should set an analog cutoff deadline for the low-power stations, which lack one, they said. But FCC members were concerned that it would overstep its authority by paving the way for Class A stations to demand pay-TV carriage, as opponents believed the notice would do, they said. The FCC spokesman declined to say why the meeting was changed. First, the meeting was to have been in Washington, D.C., but last week it was moved to Nashville so members could speak at the Vanderbilt event, partly organized by Commissioner Deborah Tate.

Small cable operators welcomed the deletion from the agenda of the item, which Martin and low-power broadcasters portrayed as a way to help minorities, many of which own such stations. “Commissioners’ goal of promoting diverse programming is an admirable one, but this sort of mandate doesn’t serve consumers’ best interests,” said American Cable Association President Matt Polka. The NCTA declined to comment. Low-power executives, some of whom already had flown to Nashville, will voice their disappointment at Wednesday’s obesity en banc, said Peter Tannenwald, lawyer for the Community Broadcasters Association. “A lot of really bitter people are down there and if you think they're not going to be at the obesity meeting, you're wrong.” “A lot of really bitter people are down there and if you think they're not going to be at the obesity meeting, you're wrong.”

FCC members do generally agree that the best way broadcasters can educate viewers about the Feb. 17 transition is by giving them information specific to their market, Commissioner Robert McDowell told reporters Tuesday. The consensus arose at a Friday meeting where all commissioners met privately to discuss what they learned from their visits so far to broadcasters, viewers and others in 82 markets the FCC is targeting, he said. “The number one takeaway for each of us is that each market presents its own challenge” and “ultimately it’s going to be incumbent on each broadcaster to educate their own viewers.” Other commissioners seemed to find the meeting helpful, too, said FCC officials.

The FCC General Counsel’s office said the meeting comported with the Sunshine Act, and an official from that office sat in, McDowell said. It’s the first such meeting he’s attended during his tenure, which began June 1, 2006. The General Counsel said the meeting was okay because commissioners didn’t discuss rulemakings or pending regulation and instead stuck to the general subject of DTV, said other agency officials.

The FCC spokesman confirmed that the meeting, which he described as “informal,” was approved by the general counsel’s office. The meeting seems to violate neither the spirit nor the letter of the Sunshine Act because commissioners didn’t talk about particular regulations, said Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman, an occasional FCC critic. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “It’s much closer to them talking about football than it is them talking about a commission matter.”