Paul Gluckman

CEA and the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition (CERC) unholstered their big guns last week in meetings with FCC Chmn. Martin and others to press their petition to scrap the July 1 deadline by which 50% of 25-36” TV sets must have ATSC tuning, it was disclosed in an ex parte filing.

Given public objections by House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.), the MPAA is unlikely to push to include a broadcast flag component in DTV legislation establishing a 2008 hard date, an MPAA spokesman told us Mon.

Berlin’s successful cutoff of the analog TV service in Aug. 2003 was a key case history for the House Commerce Committee as it compiled its recently released draft legislation setting Dec. 31, 2008, as a hard DTV deadline in the U.S. But a House Telecom Subcommittee hearing on the draft last Thurs. (CD May 27 p1) revealed that Berlin’s smooth imposition of tuner subsidies for low- income families would likely prove a tough act to follow here. Judging from that hearing, it also may represent a make-or-break issue in how DTV legislation advances through Congress.

CEA “unequivocally endorses” Dec. 31, 2008, as a hard deadline for the cutoff of analog TV services because it’s the best way possible of bringing “certainty to the DTV transition,” CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro will tell the House Commerce Committee in hearings today (Thurs.) on the panel’s newly released DTV bill draft, according to copies of his written testimony provided Wed. by CEA. Shapiro will call the hard date a “win-win” for all stakeholders, but apparently not all stakeholders will agree. Cable, in particular, has concerns with the bill’s effective dual must-carry provision.

Despite a “myth” that broadcasters seek a “prompt end” to analog broadcasting, broadcasters really “have deployed their immense lobbying resources against every attempt to regain the analog spectrum.” That was the broadside from CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro in a new letter to House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.). CEA’s latest salvo continues an increasingly nasty war of words with the NAB over a hard DTV transition deadline.

Enormous growth in shipments of DTV sets with integrated ATSC tuning will occur through 2008 if Congress acts this year to set a hard DTV transition deadline, CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro told House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.).

CEA “has yet to develop a position” on legislation the MPAA is expected to support that would give the FCC the broadcast flag authority that the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., decided the agency lacks (CD May 9 p3), Pres. Gary Shapiro told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily.

With FCC broadcast flag rules invalidated by a sweeping decision of the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. (CD May 9 p1), the unanswered question at our Mon. deadline was whether the debate would shift to Congress and affect a DTV transition bill to establish a hard deadline for return of the analog spectrum.

Heartened when the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., Fri. threw out the FCC broadcast flag order, consumer groups said they expect the MPAA to back a bill to supply the Commission the authority the court said it lacked to issue the regulations. Public Knowledge and other groups that persuaded the court to eliminate the flag warned lawmakers against attaching such legislation to any coming DTV bill imposing a hard deadline for the analog shutoff.

Accelerating to late 2005 the date when 100% of 25- 36” TV sets must have built-in ATSC tuners isn’t achievable on such short notice, CE makers told the FCC in reply comments in the Commission’s rulemaking (05-24) on whether the DTV tuner mandate schedule should be revised. But broadcasters, who had urged the earlier compliance date on 100% of the sets if the FCC granted CE’s petition to scrap the July 2006 deadline for 50% of such sets to be ATSC-equipped, shot back that CE makers’ references to their 18-month production cycles as precluding a late 2005 deadline “are a red herring.”