Repack Still on Track in Phase 3 Despite Weather Delays, Lack of Crews and Tariffs
Weather delays from the rainiest 12 months on record, a shortage of tower crews and, to a slight degree, steel tariffs are making the post-incentive auction repacking tough for some broadcasters. FCC flexibility and increasing use of auxiliary antennas are keeping it largely on track for the moment, said broadcasters, attorneys, manufacturers, tower crews and the FCC. Though at the repack’s start, industry officials had been concerned that snowballing delays would become a big problem by the current phase (phase 3), they now predict big problems in 5 and 6, which have the tightest deadlines.
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The “goal posts” for when repacking delays are supposed to pick up “keep moving,” conceded one broadcast attorney. Phase 3 began April 12 and ends June 21, making it more than two months long. Five and 6 -- starting in August and September, respectively -- are each little more than a month long. Many broadcasters won’t make their deadlines with such short windows, and FCC flexibility could be tested, broadcast industry officials said last week.
“We’re down to the wire and we are working like crazy to meet the deadline,” said Ed Smith, director-engineering for Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSTP-TV St. Paul, which is in phase 3 and thus must relocate its signal by the June 21 deadline. Smith said for weeks he has been waiting for a tower crew that got delayed on another repacking job in Louisiana, while Minnesota has experienced some of the nastiest weather in its history. The crew is now in place, but the delay means KSTP will have just a couple days to test its new frequency before the deadline. “We had hoped for a month or two of testing,” Smith said.
Tower crews can’t work in rain or high winds, and there aren’t very many crews to go around, said Tower King II CEO Kevin Barber. “The weather’s put us about two months behind on some projects,” Barber said. “We work outside, everyone else [involved in the repack process]works inside,” said FDH Infrastructure Business Development Manager Don Doty. With few crews available, a delay on one project affects all the jobs down the line, like “when somebody touches their brakes on a freeway,” Smith said.
With the timing so tight, many broadcasters are meeting repack deadlines by getting their repacked frequency up on an interim auxiliary antenna instead of a permanent one, they told us. The installation takes less time, and auxiliary antennas can offer comparable power output to a permanent antenna, said Dielectric sales executive Christine Zuba. The interim antenna can mean that the broadcaster has a different pattern, and industry officials said FCC flexibility in allowing this practice and granting extensions is a major reason few stations have missed their phase deadlines. The agency is in touch with stations that face weather delays or other issues, a spokesperson said.
Ongoing steel tariffs may also be causing prices for antennas and tower equipment to rise but likely not as much as the high demand created by the repacking, said Doty and other industry officials. The rising cost of steel has led to increased costs for manufacturers, which get passed on to broadcasters, said Electronics Research Vice President-Marketing Bill Harland. With the demand from the repacking, manufacturers are already charging premium prices, so any increase from steel costs isn’t immediately obvious to stations, said Cocola Broadcasting CEO Gary Cocola.
Since repacking work is being reimbursed, full-power broadcasters aren’t likely to sweat incremental price increases, Cocola said. The FCC has been seeing dollar increases in reimbursement submissions but not unexpected ones, the spokesperson said. It’s hard to quantify how much of that increase is related to steel costs, the spokesperson said. Although tariffs lead to increased domestic and imported steel prices, generally, markets eventually correct for such increases and prices adjust, said David Zalesne, president of Owen Steel.
Despite the weather, only some broadcasters are up against the deadline. Morris Multimedia’s WMGT-DT Macon, Georgia, is “right on schedule,” said Chief Operating Officer Bobby Berry. The station is airing commercials announcing the need for consumers to rescan channels on their TV tuners, he said. “We were very proactive with this,” Berry said, chalking his station’s preparedness up to years of planning. Cocola successfully repacked two full powers in an earlier phase, but now he's concerned about his low-power stations.
LPTV stations won't be fully reimbursed, and the FCC hasn’t yet started paying out to them. The agency is actively developing reimbursement systems for LPTV and is waiting on Paperwork Reduction Act approval before announcing filing dates to start the reimbursement process, the spokesperson said. “I’m still quite concerned,” Cocola said.