The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition has revealed that its stations include eight apiece in the top two markets, stations which likely won't be giving up spectrum in the auction if the FCC tries to engineer it to reduce payments to TV station owners.
In a slide presentation on the upcoming broadcast incentive auctions for a communications policy event Tuesday in Washington, EOBC executive director Preston Padden pointed out that EOBC represents 48 MHz of spectrum in the highly congested New York and L.A. markets (each station has 6 MHz).
In the presentation in advance of the FCC's auction comment public notice—the notice was outlined to reporters last month—Padden warned that the FCC needs to improve on the calculations of starting prices for TV station spectrum.
The FCC signaled that it would include population served as a factor in the calculation, but Padden says that if the idea is to reduce potential payments to broadcasters, that should not be the FCC's focus. Instead it should focus on attracting broadcasters. And, at any rate, he says, the success of the AWS-3 auction demonstrates that the broadcast incentive auction, potentially much more than the 65 MHz up for bid in AWS-3, will generate "an abundance of revenue" to pay broadcasters.
Read more at B&C here.
