Repacking Proceeding During Shutdown; Broadcasters Feel Other Effects
The partial federal shutdown isn’t affecting the repacking directly. But inability to get transaction applications and other non-auction filings processed is making things tough for some broadcasters, lawyers and industry officials told us.
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Industry officials expect the repack to increasingly run behind schedule as the phases progress. Phase 2 ends April 12, and the final phase, 10, ends in July 2020.
FCC staffers who deal with auctions have remained at work, and repack questions and issues are being handled quickly, said FDH Infrastructure Business Development Manager Don Doty. Displacement applications for low-power TV stations and repack matters are “trucking along," said Wilkinson Barker lawyer Howard Liberman. Doty and others in the broadcast tower and antenna industries had planned to meet with the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force this month to discuss projections of snowballing repacking delays (see 1811160037), and that's still planned, he said. A Jan. 10 filing deadline for mutually exclusive LPTV displacement application went without incident, industry lawyers said.
“The shutdown hasn’t applied to us interacting with the FCC” on the repacking, said Cocola Broadcasting CEO Gary Cocola. He owns full-power and LPTV stations that have changed frequencies during the repacking. The agency didn’t comment.
The “only oddity” is that with some commission systems offline during the shutdown fees on some applications, such as those for special temporary authority, can’t be paid online, said Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer. It’s not clear if such applications will be acted on without their accompanying fee payment, he said.
A bigger inconvenience to broadcasters is all the non-auction related applications that aren’t being processed, attorneys and broadcasters said. LPTV licensee and LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino said he has large sums of money tied up in transactions the regulator currently can’t process. Broadcasters that can’t get pending deals done can have trouble getting access to needed funds, or be forced to continue operating stations they were planning to unload, said Fletcher Heald broadcast lawyer Peter Tannenwald.
The problem is said to go beyond transactions. Stations seeking to relocate antennas or go off-air for reasons unrelated to the repacking now can’t get permission, throwing off equipment delivery and work schedules, Tannenwald said.
Being unable to file is unlikely to prevent deals from being discussed or agreements being reached, but it does delay the start of the countdown clock to them being approved, said Wilkinson Barker's Liberman. “They don’t go on public notice, that’s an issue.”