Oh whatta difference a week makes! If NAB’s open letters to the FCC were accompanied by background music, yesterday’s 350-word note titled simply “It Begins” from EVP/Legal and Regulatory Affairs Rick Kaplan to all at the FCC celebrates the start of the FCC Reverse spectrum auction and would be read with the gentle harp sounds of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” Contrast that with NAB Associate General Counsel Patrick McFadden’s March 23, bombastic missive of 1,012 words headlined “Time to Stick to the Facts and Find the Right Answer,” a response to what NAB characterized as “repeated disingenuous comments” by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that NAB initially supported a 30-month “repacking” timeframe for TV stations to relocate to another channel after the incentive auction. That letter’s soundtrack might have easily been Steppenwolf’s thunderous and raucous 1968 counter-culture hit, “Born To Be Wild.”
Kaplan said,“(M)uch is at stake – a successful auction means that spectrum will be repurposed, a huge amount of money will change hands and technology and spectrum policy will be shaped for the future. All of these things hang on the outcome of a brave and untested idea dreamed up by economists and enabled by engineers,” in the upbeat, even hopeful tome. He continued, “The FCC staff deserves considerable credit for getting us to this point. As the idea of an incentive auction was explored in detail, challenges arose and the Commission’s staff grappled with them in earnest. To be sure, not every solution can be elegant and there remains disagreement about whether each one will prove successful, but the FCC staff is now able to push the “start” button and the initial spectrum clearing target will be revealed.”
Kaplan also tipped the proverbial rabbit ears to “former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who first presented the incentive auction concept as part of the National Broadband Plan, to Chairman Tom Wheeler, who has led the charge to dot the auction’s i’s and cross its t’s, and to all of the commissioners who have engaged in a difficult process to bring to light the key policy decisions at stake along the way.” He called this time a “momentous occasion” and that the work “is only partially complete.” Kaplan concluded, “Broadcasters will continue to work with the Commission to ensure that damage to (low-power broadcasters) and other critical broadcasting operations is minimized. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but the FCC staff can certainly be proud that they worked incredibly hard under tight timelines to bring us to the doorstep of this exciting auction.”
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