In her first NAB Show appearance since her designation as FCC Chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel acknowledged that gaining a third Democratic Commissioner on the dais would solve the agency’s current two-to-two gridlock, but she’s not focused on that. “We’ve got to figure out how to work together, or we don’t get anything done,” she told NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt during a Monday morning keynote discussion.
Whereas members of previous FCC administrations fought amongst themselves, Rosenworcel said that five months into her administration as the FCC’s first permanent female chair in its 87-year history, the group has been given too much to do by Congress to waste time on that, according to NextTV. “We’ve turned down the volume and ramped up the activity,” Rosenworcel said, citing initiatives ranging from the CARES Act to the Infrastructure Law. “But yes,” she said, “I’m looking forward to the day when we have five commissioners.”
LeGeyt and Rosenworcel grew up just 20 minutes down the road from one another in Connecticut. Sharing her connection to and affinity for local media, Rosenworcel said when she was a teenager, she listened to WTIC-FM in Hartford and enjoyed its “Prize Patrol” promotion. That called for hopeful winners to place a bumper sticker on their cars, which Rosenworcel’s parents wouldn’t let her do.
Concerning policy, LeGeyt mentioned the deployment of the next-gen television transmission technology ATSC 3.0. Rosenworcel works to position the FCC as a facilitator and partner to station operators, she said. The agency wants to enable stations to use ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 simultaneously, so they can experiment with the latter, reports NextTV.
“The framework the FCC has for ATSC 3.0 is the right framework,” she said. “It gives broadcasters a chance to experience, develop use cases and find out what works at scale. “We want stations to come to us and tell us what they’re seeing,” Rosenworcel added. “If there’s a hurdle in our rules, maybe we can fix that.”
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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