According to various sources, a number of interested
broadcasters who logged into the FCC's live stream of its online political file
posting web tool walk-through Tuesday were met with delayed or frozen video and
difficult-to-follow visual aids.
The commission is requiring all TV stations to start posting their public files Aug. 2, and 200 top-market stations also have to
start posting their political files at that time. The rest of the TV stations have a couple more years to post online political files.
Brroadcasters are concerned that those online streaming issues did not bode well
for ease of online access to the FCC generally.
One TV station general manager who tried to log into the
FCC's stream of the event said they were met with stuttering video and audio
and a screen -- the FCC was projecting a we site on a screen at the front of
the room -- that was too small to read.
An FCC spokesman was still looking into the issue at press
time, but website guru Greg Elin responded to a similar complaint about
readability during the seminar by saying that there would be shorter, how-to
videos available and the stream was being recorded and would be posted online.
He also said during the event that, in terms of broadcaster access to the FCC
site, TV stations would on a separate track from any surge in public traffic
site to view the postings.
"We did get calls this morning from broadcasters
commenting about the problems they had accessing the FCC website for the online
political file webinar," said NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton. "There
are obviously some major challenges going forward with this initiative, as was
in evidence this morning."
B&C/Multichannel News also had issues with
delay and jitter and timing out of the video early in the process.
