The transition to digital TV comes with a feature more enticing to some than sharper pictures and smarter commercials: It opens up vacancies in an otherwise crowded broadcast hotel.
Digital can squeeze four channels into the same space that analog requires for a single channel of programming. Moreover, broadcast channels that today must go unused because they are susceptible to interference with other television channels can carry digital programming.
Not surprisingly, a battle over these newly available channels is already brewing. Activist groups want to reserve the space to ensure civic, political, and educational entities a louder voice on the airwaves. But their efforts are up against a Congress that has decided to sell the extra bandwidth -- and has already earmarked proceeds from the sale -- and by an industry that isn't eager to let newcomers infringe on its turf.
"This is a golden opportunity to invite a common-carrier model of some sort into the broadcast model," said Gigi Sohn, executive director of the Media Access Project. Common-carrier status for the airwaves would require broadcasters to give the public a right of way to their frequencies, just as a local phone companies give access to their network to emergency services and other parties in the public interest.
"It's an opportunity we're not going to get again -- certainly not in our lifetimes anyway," Sohn said.
Sohn is a member of the Gore Commission, a presidential advisory committee on public interest considerations in the digital-broadcasting age. Her Media Access Project and other groups, including the Alliance for Community Media and the Benton Foundation, have laid out a menu of local and noncommercial programming they believe new bandwidth opportunities will afford.
"The idea is to promote more local civic discourse, because right now in that area the broadcast industry is doing a really crummy job," Sohn said.
The Media Access Project and other groups want to see things like free time for political candidates and elected officials, as well as noncommercial public access, children's educational programming, more local news and information, and adult education.
To achieve this, these groups hope to tap two primary sources for space on the broadcast spectrum. One comes in the form of the channels that will, if all goes according to plan, become available after the digital transition, when analog is extinct. To let broadcasters make the switch gradually, the FCC has assigned them each a second channel for digital broadcast. The majority of these channels are not available for analog use today because they are susceptible to interference from other analog channels.
After the transition, broadcasters are supposed to return to using a single, digital-only channel, putting the other one back in the hands of the FCC once the transition is complete, scheduled for 2006. That channel then becomes open to new use.
This One Goes to Eleven
The second source of additional space on the spectrum comes from digital broadcasting's ability to split a single channel into smaller subchannels. While an analog-broadcast signal alone consumes the entire width of the channel, digital allows more room for play.
Each available TV channel -- now and after the transition -- is an equal-sized slice of spectrum. In bandwidth terms, each of these slices is 6 MHz wide. The FCC's plan allows broadcasters to divide these six units of space as much as they like. Doing so, they could offer a lesser quality digital picture in, say, 4 MHz, while leaving room in the other 2 MHz for a second stream of programming. Broadcasters call this multicasting.
Public interest advocates say the extra space, or a portion of it, could be turned over to local, noncommercial programming. But the actual availability of both newly open sources of spectrum space is far from assured.
Right now, the FCC is planning to auction the aforementioned surrendered channels in 2002. And Congress is already counting on big-dollar winnings from the auction as companies of all kinds seek precious bandwidth for broadcasting and more -- paging services, wireless data, and cellular communication.
But to give the small broadcasters a chance against the hungry and moneyed corporate big boys, Sohn proposes limiting the participants to exclude current broadcasters. Sohn believes that the FCC has the flexibility, if it chooses to exercise it, to structure an auction that would allow for new entrants and include those who have previously been disenfranchised.
"The law does not require the FCC to permit broadcasters to bid for that spectrum," Sohn said. "You can limit it to certain entities [such as those with two media properties or fewer], if you do it in ... an acceptable way. But that will be tough because the broadcasters will have a cow."
But the transition is unlikely to be complete in 2006. The FCC has allowed that broadcasters may keep their analog channels until 85 percent of American televisions are digital-ready. So, Sohn has greater hopes of extracting bandwidth from the existing digital channels already assigned to broadcasters.
Broadcasters are not warming to this idea. Many believe it will be enough of a burden to fit HDTV into a single 6 MHz channel; trying to do it in less, as they would have to do if they surrendered a slice of their channel, would be even more difficult.
John Earnhardt, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, thinks proposals to force broadcasters to share their space on the airwaves may fail if challenged in court. "Broadcasters are protected by the First Amendment. So to say 'here's what you have to carry' is not likely to be protected."
But at least one broadcasting company disagrees. John Greene, vice president for special projects at Capitol Broadcasting in Raleigh, North Carolina -- the first broadcaster in the country to send out a digital-broadcast feed -- says private broadcasters have an obligation to support public broadcasting.
"The conduit for what [broadcasters] do is owned by the public," Greene said. "And along with that comes a responsibility for carrying out public interest obligations. Most [broadcasters] say, 'We'll be a good steward, we'll do a good job, just trust us.' But there should be a minimum standard that we agree to in order to qualify for the use of the spectrum." ____
Bumped by Digital
A group of stations made up of independent providers already deliver locally originated, community-based programming. Approximately 7,000 low-power stations nationwide are using leftover bandwidth with low reach. They serve cities and communities with specialized programming, such as ethnic-oriented shows and local interest news and coverage. Such programming, say advocates, is typically found exclusively on local low-power stations. Yet the advent of digital makes them a casualty of change.
KBI, a low-power station in San Francisco, provides local minority communities with Spanish and Korean programming on Channel 30. Because the PBS affiliate in the city, KQED, was assigned Channel 30 as its transition channel, KBI got bumped from its analog spot.
It is in the process of filing for a license on Channel 28, which KBI general manager and founder Warren Trumbly says it was lucky to find at all. And making the switch isn't easy, he said. "We're waiting for the FCC to come up to speed on [helping bumped low-power broadcasters find and license alternative channels], and I'm sure a lot of other stations are experiencing the same thing."
"Low-power stations are, for lack of a better term, second-class citizens," Earnhardt said. Following an initiative by the Carter administration in the late '70s, "they basically came on with the knowledge that if they interfere with [high-powered] broadcasters that they would be bumped.... When making transitions, then obviously they fall into trouble."
But Trumbly thinks it should have been avoided, and that in the haste to force digital onto the market, the FCC didn't use enough foresight. "You can't blame the commission or the Congress wholly, but they didn't get all the information," Trumbly said. "You shouldn't make a rule or law without understanding the consequences."
Sohn sees a need to embrace digital as a new opportunity for broadcasters currently left out in the cold. "I'm enthusiastically embracing its coming if it's put to use to promote democracy," she said. "If they want to show the same old sitcoms and soap operas that's fine. But I'd like to see at least a part of it used for something different.
"You have a chance for far greater capacity and therefore you have a chance that the public gets a voice over its airwaves."
