Carr Floats Auction of Broadcast Spectrum, Warns Broadcasters
In two recent interviews, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggested that the agency could auction the spectrum of broadcasters that don’t wish to comply with its public interest standard. “Maybe some of these broadcast TV stations that have the public interest obligation and don't want to comply with it anymore, we can effectively auction that spectrum if they want to purchase it without the public interest discount,” Carr said in an interview Tuesday on the Salem News Channel’s The Hugh Hewitt Show. “Maybe that's an idea that we should do, is reauction those broadcast airways.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
He made similar comments on an episode of the NewsBusters podcast released the same day, describing a possible auction where broadcasters would pay to own their spectrum without being bound by the public interest standard. “That’s fine, but we should be able to recoup the value of that spectrum to the taxpayer."
Both interviews largely concerned Carr’s previous comments that there would be work for the FCC to do if networks and broadcast groups didn’t act against Jimmy Kimmel Live! (see 2509170064). Though ABC, Sinclair and Nexstar took Kimmel off the air hours after Carr's interview (see 2509170076), he maintained to Hewitt that his comments, which mentioned “an easy way and a hard way” to address Kimmel's monologue, weren't a threat (see 2509220059). “There's been a lot of misconstruing of those words, and I guess in hindsight, they were susceptible to different interpretations,” Carr told Hewitt.
However, in both interviews, Carr emphasized that the FCC could revoke broadcaster licenses over the public interest standard. “If there's nothing you could ever do that's so far beyond the pale that you lose the license, that's not a license, that is a property right,” Carr said during the Hewitt interview. “I do think broadcasters need to be mindful. You are not like a cable channel. You are not like a streamer.”