 I think we can get started, all of our speakers and I think most folks are settled and there's more scattered seats up here including in the front row if anybody in the back needs one. So welcome to New America. I am Michael Calabrese, director of the wireless feature project here which is part of our Open Technology Institute. Our topic of course is the next generation TV transition. Can the FCC protect consumers and promote innovation? So yes you may have thought we just went through a DTV transition fairly recently but we're doing it again. And it was eight years ago that we completed the last analog to DTV transition which was a fairly prolonged but successful process I think in retrospect. And so next week Thursday the FCC is scheduled to vote on rules to authorize a transition to next gen TV which is a new standard you hear the term ATSC 3.0 which will replace 1.0. I didn't notice 2.0 go by but I think they skipped over that one. The proposed order would authorize what they're calling a voluntary and market driven transition that would not immediately force consumers to buy a new TV. Also I think as you'll hear today some contentious issues remain including some that may you know that are still in play in terms of any changes to the order concerning whether well really not whether but how many viewers will lose access to their local channels over the air and whether pay TV providers or consumers will ultimately bear other costs related to the transition. At its November meeting the FCC will also vote in an order that would drastically roll back media ownership limits on consolidation in the broadcasting sector and I don't know how much we may get into that a little bit but we're really probably focused primarily here on the next gen TV transition which is a big enough issue in and of itself. I'm going to introduce Commissioner Jessica Rosenwurzel in a second and then that she'll be followed by a panel representing various stakeholders that are impacted by the transition just just to set set the record clear or straight. We did invite broadcasters the National Association of Broadcasters most specifically and we thought they had accepted but then declined to participate so so and and Mike Gravino is here from from the low power television side and we'll hope to yeah and we'll hope to hear some questions and comments in in the audience discussion part which reminds me that when that comes around please do tell us you know who you who you are who you represent that'll probably you know help help everyone love a microphone to to go around but I know the commissioner is is really slammed today because it's as darkness falls sunshine dawns on our one week quiet period before the meeting next week so she has meetings just all the rest of the day squeezed in so this is really for Commissioner Rosenwurzel her welcome back appearance welcome back to the FCC appearance here at New America and we hope one of many to come over the next five years of course Commissioner Rosenwurzel has already served one complete term in the FCC that ended in January and after a brief vacation and tortuous uncertainty thankfully was reconfirmed by the Senate appointed by President Trump no less to serve another five-year term and she has some quite a lot of very direct experience with the TV transitions having been the the senior council to the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee at the time of the last transition and also you know served and also has experienced being in the minority at the FCC learn some valuable lessons as senior advisor to Michael cops prior to that and then I can't help mentioning although it's not directly related that we are always very thankful we have Commissioner Rosenwurzel as the champion for for unlicensed spectrum and for progressive wireless broadband policy in in general because she's one of the few in government who really get it who really looks looks forward to see how the wireless ecosystem is evolving and is not the same as it was five years ago ten years ago fifteen years ago and so we really rely on her for those issues as much as we do for this one so commissioner all right thank you Michael thank you to OTI in New America for having me here this afternoon and so let's talk about next-generation television but to get started I'm not going to talk about television at all I'm going to talk about something more old-fashioned I'm going to talk about a book so earlier this year Thomas Friedman published thank you for being late and in it he makes the case that 2007 was the year that technology took over his evidence is pretty good after all it was in 2007 that we were first introduced to the iPhone to Android and to Kindle it was the year that IBM started Watson bringing cognitive computing into a popular culture and Hadoop launched helping usher in the era of big data it was also the year that software began as the founder of Netscape once said to eat the world so if we look back on 2007 a decade ago we see a clear inflection point in history but I'm going to argue now that two years earlier in 2005 well that deserves a second look 2005 may not have been a hinge moment for technological change but I think it made its mark because it gave us an early glimpse of some forces that would come to define the future so YouTube began in 2005 bringing with it the then novel concept of user generated content and right now of course that's just what we create and what we watch gaming got a boost in 2005 with the introduction of the Xbox 360 and today interactive gaming is a $109 billion industry worldwide that is bigger than the gross domestic product of Latvia and Luxembourg combined also in 2005 Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness and I think it's fair to say that that has some relevance in our discourse now but I'm just going to leave it at that one more point in 2005 it's when Congress passed the digital television transition and public safety act you may not remember it but this law set up the future of television the digital television and public safety act laid out a framework for the transition from analog to digital broadcasting but it did more than introduce a new standard with improved sound and picture quality what we call ATSC 1.0 it created a schedule as part of the schedule it featured an end date for a nationwide transition in addition it put in place a program to help ensure that viewers could make sure that their existing television sets would continue to work after this technology change in other words Congress took the lead and this law laid out the path now in response the FCC took its cues from Congress the agency made a series of policy choices under this law including the auction of spectrum recovered from analog service then it decided to do something really smart it decided to test the transition itself the agency selected Wilmington North Carolina as a test market it worked with community leaders broadcasters cable and satellite providers to ensure its residents were ready to go a full nine months before the deadline in the law and there were plenty of public service announcements and town hall meetings there were also more FCC visits to coastal Carolina you or I could count but the end result was good and helpful because the agency was able to work with local officials review what happened and then use what happened to inform its efforts going forward next the FCC took the lessons it learned from Wilmington and did a test statewide as a result Hawaii the last state to join the union became the first state to fully transition to digital television again the FCC took notes and learned from the experience to help facilitate the nationwide rollout so if you look back now at what was put in place in 2005 it clearly laid the groundwork for the future of television there were adjustments made along the way but what stands out are three fundamental things first the transition was a backing was an effort with the full backing of Congress second it featured a program to prevent viewers from bearing the full cost of losing service on their existing television sets and third the FCC explored the transition and test markets before unleashing the change nationwide consequently up and down the television ecosystem stations distributors and manufacturers were prepared more over and more critically consumers were not saddled with big bills for new television sets or new equipment like I said at the start we could learn a lot from 2005 of course that was then and this is now next week the agency plans to vote on an order clearing the way for next-generation television this means the agency is set to vote on the introduction of ATSC 3.0 in other words we are set to change the television standard again to be clear there is a lot to be excited about with this new standard ultra high definition picture quality and immersive audio advanced emergency alerts and interactive new innovative services that's good stuff it could mean real innovation for broadcasting on par with new services that have already emerged on so many of the screens all around us but I think the agency is about to rush the standard to market with an ugly disregard for the consequences for consumers the FCC has released its draft decision proposing the changeover and as you might expect it's riddled with the wonkish language of standards and lawyerly details of licensing so it's right up my alley and maybe yours but if you stand back and you take a look a clear-eyed look you get a feel for what it really means for consumers if you do here's what you'll see this new standard may be glorious but it is not backwards compatible with current television devices that means every one of us will need to replace existing television sets or buy new equipment the FCC calls this approach market-driven that's true because we will all be forced into the market for new television sets and devices to be clear this isn't going to happen immediately because for the time being the FCC calls the new standard voluntary while it's voluntary however stations will have the right to negotiate with cable and satellite companies for simultaneous carriage of ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 that means consumers could find their bills going up because they will be stuck paying for two signals even though their current television sets and devices can only receive one that sounds like paying more and getting less I think the way that the FCC plans to proceed right now is no great boon for consumers I think it's a tax on every household with the television it's time for the agency to go back to the drawing board and find a less disruptive way to facilitate broadcast innovation I think there's a way to do it and I think it's right there in the 2005 playbook because what's missing here are those three critical features of the approach from 2005 first there is no congressional mandate what we have instead is a few unelected FCC officials making decisions about when you need to buy new televisions acquire new equipment and locate the HDMI port on the back of your set second there is no program to defray the cost of new devices equipment or television sets that consumers will need to purchase third there's no test market or sandbox to experiment or understand our policies before unleashing them nationwide so where do we go next I think the responsible thing for the agency to do is to work with Congress to set a new framework in the law I also think we need to find a way to reduce the costs this transition clearly imposes on consumers but because innovation should proceed in the interim I think the FCC should immediately find a new Wilmington in other words it's time to test the ATSC 3.0 experience in a single market and commit to learning from the experience before giving the green light for a rollout nationwide if we do this there will be plenty to study because there are still big questions about this new standard for starters I think we better need to better understand those consumers who are most at risk of being left behind I also think we need to better understand targeted advertising on televisions and the implications for consumer privacy we need to better understand the use of encrypted signals the collection of audience data and the susceptibility to hacking and malware in addition the FCC needs to better understand the patent issues involved when the agency adopted the ATSC 1.0 standard it made clear that reasonable and non-discriminatory terms were part of the package in the current proposal this issue is addressed in no more than a footnote moreover we know that Sinclair broadcasting which holds key essential patents for ATSC 3.0 has been one of the biggest champions of this new standard we also know they have pending before the agency the biggest broadcasting transaction in our nation's history before we authorize billions for patent holders and saddle consumers with the bills we better understand how these rights holders will not take advantage of the special status conferred upon them by the FCC and thank you for being late Thomas Friedman writes about more than just what happened in 2007 he writes about the pace at which we adopt to change he makes the point that technological change is coming at all of us faster than ever before I'm sure everyone here would agree and I think like everyone else broadcasting can and should be part of this innovative rush but I think what the FCC has before it now is imprecise and cavalier in its disregard for consumers I believe the transition should leave no viewer worse off and leave us all better off I think that kind of future is possible for next generation television but we're gonna have to take a cue from 2005 if we want to get there in a way that works for everyone thank you thank you commissioner that was an excellent history lesson among other things and it nicely sets up our panel which well should come up right now so that we can keep rolling forward all right so without I think what I'll do is to spare the audience a string of talking heads let how about if I think I'll introduce you folks you know one at a time and give you a chance to sort of tee up a few of your main points or at least at least based on what I have in mind for you so let's start with with John Schwantis who's the senior policy council for consumers union here in their DC office and John also was eight years for working for this the antitrust subcommittee on Senate judiciary so has lots of experience and and actually I won't give a long-form bios for anyone since you all have the hopefully have the biohand out so John the broadcast industry maintains that the next gen TV transition is is voluntary will it be truly voluntary and does it impact different categories of consumers such as over-the-air and pay TV subscribers differently great thank you Michael thanks for having me here today in preparing for today's panel I was reminded of an experience I had early in my career on the hill I was in the Senate we were negotiating a satellite home viewer act which I think some of the folks here in the room and on the panel know all about and it was very contentious there were potentials for consumers to lose their television signals and I remember during the debate and the negotiations the senator took me aside and said you would think Jonathan that America he was joking American consumers have a constitutional right to TV and of course that's a joke but it underscores how important these issues are to consumers and when the government or regulatory agencies tinkers with their ability to receive TV they get pretty fired up to your question Michael and I agree with much of what commissioner Rosenworst will laid out in her keynote but I like to think a bit about three different classes of consumers and I'll take the easy one first sort of the high-end early adopter consumer they know all about this standard they're they're excited they want the 4k signal high dynamic resolution wide gamut color all the wonky things they're ready they just can't wait to buy the new TV so that's voluntary for them they just have to wait for the broadcast just to actually deliver that content over the air which maybe a year maybe a two we'll see because it's voluntary for the broadcasters as well let's move to the harder category over the air it's anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of the American consumers we say 17 percent in our comments the point is this is a significant portion of folks still receive their television signals over the air whether they're cord cutters or whether they're just playing frugal that's how they receive their TV signals and the way you you parse through the devils in the details in the order there's a real chance as this transition moves forward and how it works it involves moving that channel that current signal the 1.0 signal to another station within the local market but when that happens some people could lose their signal we can get into the details of that today another problem with those over the air consumers is as broadcasters may have to degrade the current high definition signal to standard definition so I think that's not voluntary at all you're not volunteering to lose your over the air signal and you're not volunteering for a nostalgic experience to watch TV for 30 years ago and finally is the the rest of us who get our local broadcast channels through a pay TV provider Ross and Mike can probably speak more of these issues in detail but and the commissioner pointed it out if broadcasters there's a real chance they could squeeze these pay TV providers to carry the 3.0 signal and that's irrespective of whether the consumers have the ability to even see the signal or even if the cable company is able to transmit the signal but we at consumers union see that those consumers ultimately or the excuse me those costs ultimately get passed on to consumers and again that would not be voluntary but we can get into it thanks Michael okay thanks John next we'll go to the to the middle here and hear about consumers from a different angle Ross Marshawn this the is the director of policy for the taxpayers protection alliance based here in DC as well and Ross I guess like to ask you how how does next gen TV and the proposed transition to this ATSC 3.0 standard how do you see it impacting taxpayers well I would say that first of all the majority of the analysis about these standards deal exclusively with the impact on consumers and households and I think that that's definitely a very important angle to look at but something that's being neglected is the impact on taxpayers across the country at all levels of government federal cost state cost and local cost there was a report that came out recently by the corporation for public broadcasting and they said that there's a shortfall of around a hundred and forty five million dollars that public broadcasters and locally provided television stations across the country are going to face in terms of transition and implementation of these ATSC standards and I think it's important to note when you're talking about these public costs they're not evenly distributed the most cash-strapped localities and municipalities are going to have to bear the brunt of these transition costs and I think that ultimately that's going to have to be borne by taxpayers in these very poor areas I'm thinking especially of Guam PBS Guam reported recently that they would face millions of dollars in transition costs and massive implementation hurdles in order to bring ATSC to their airwaves and Guam is one of the poorest areas of the country so when you're talking about the cost of bringing those ATSC standards to Guam you're facing really grave trade-offs in terms of health care and education expenditures and that's not to mention all of the the rural locally provided stations across the country that just transitioned to DTV in the late 2000s and they were promised Mike let's let's finish okay all right thanks but I'll definitely give you a chance when we get to the audience absolutely well thank you so much but so the DTV transition I mean you had these locally broad stations across the country doling out all these expenditures for this transmitter equipment and the promise life expectancy of this equipment was something like 20 years and now eight years later they have to dole out additional expenditures to finances transition and I think the second major cost category for taxpayers is in terms of all the TV equipment owned by local governments across the country and you're thinking the average school has something like 10 to 15 television sets and that's not to mention community centers even DMV and all sorts of transportation centers across the country that own television equipment and they're going to have to bear the brunt of that of those upgrade costs and I think that before we move forward with this transition it's important to have a report detailing the cost to taxpayers I agree that the DTV transition a few years ago provides a very good model for this transition and we should follow the footsteps that Congress took in 2005 in setting the stage for DTV and even with that transition there were still some issues in terms of last minute education and outreach that had to be doled out to consumers and local governments that were still unprepared on the eve of that transition and I think that even the best laid plans will have to run into those costs and those costs in terms of last minute education and outreach will inevitably be borne by federal taxpayers so I think that we cannot walk into the situation blindfolded and we need to have an adequate accounting of the costs that will be borne by federal state and local taxpayers in seeing through this ATSC transition all right thanks Ross like so now like to bring in Jill Canfield who is vice president and assistant general counsel of NTCA the wireless broadband association NTCA represents 850 small and rural telecom providers and although we're usually working with them on on wireless competition issues they obviously have a stake in this too so Jill you know NTCA is you know obviously is focused on you know on rural telecom provision and not not you know not video per se but so why is this issue important to your members how did they come in thank you Michael I'm first I do want to correct you we are we have many wireless members but we're actually the rural broadband association all of our members are wired companies we represent more than 850 small rural telcos all of them are small businesses all of them provide service to rural areas the average density of our members territory is seven subscribers per square mile it's very rural all of our members provide broadband service and probably 80 to 90 percent offer some sort of video product also and they offer video for two reasons one of them is that with video comes broadband both deployment and adoption they're they're they're linked together when you offer video service through an IPTV you're automatically bringing broadband to the home and it drives that broadband adoption and that broadband deployment so that's one reason the other reason is that our members are community-based and community focused and what we found is that at least a quarter of our members report that 90 percent of it 90 percent or more of the service territory or the subscribers in the service territory cannot receive an over-the-air broadcast signal they cannot receive broadcast television through broadcast means so they the the telco offers the video service so that the the subscribers have access to local news weather sports etc. now of course some some can receive a signal through satellite but if you look at where our members are mountainous areas very heavily treat that satellite is for a lot of the rural areas not the best options so they rely on the MVPD so those are the two reasons our members are there but you notice one of the reasons I did not say is that they're making money on the service they are not making money on providing video service in fact it's a lost leader for our small businesses they're just are not enough subscribers there to to drive the profits so like I said they're doing it for the broadband and the doing is a community service and one of the reasons though that it is not a profitable business for them is the cost of content consistently that is the the thing we hear from our members that is driving them out of business we've had some members drop their video product recently we have many many more that are right on that edge and that edge the thing that's going to push them over the edges the cost their subscribers cannot afford to pay more for video service and they cannot afford to give it for any any less right so when we're talking about this transition it's going to increase costs for our members you're talking about new equipment you're talking about potentially carrying more than one signal both the 1.0 and 3.0 now the the draft order talks about purely voluntary transition to 3.0 but our members experience in negotiating with broadcasters there is nothing voluntary about it the broadcaster dictates the terms of all of the agreements take it or leave it this is what you're often you've got 250 subs I don't care if you drop my signal it's not going to matter to me so our members are given these agreements they have to sign them if they're going to provide any product and they're paying for each signal that they're carrying and if they're increasing their costs by adding new equipment to upgrade as well the cost just becomes unbearable we're going to see more and more members drop offering video service to these areas yeah thanks Joe that's that's interested in even realize it's sort of a take it or leave it proposition on the on the content okay so now moving to Michael Nielsen who is council to the American television associate alliance American television alliance ATBA and a partner in the law firm of Harris Wilshire and Grannis and Mike you know I know you're also concerned about the impact on pay TV but let me ask you first what are the biggest concerns about the draft from the over-the-air viewers perspective so thanks again and thanks for having me let me just talk in a little bit more detail about the simulcast because the simulcast was really the key to the original proposal for all this in terms of protecting viewers because again we all as Commissioner Rosenrohr also pointed out that the new standards not backwards compatible and so your existing equipment won't get it so how are we gonna protect people who don't have new equipment we were gonna simulcast namely a station will enter it into an arrangement with some other station in the market to transmit the current standard from the other stations lighthouse facilities and so if this is going to really work you know everybody or just about everybody needs to get the simulcast the simulcast needs to be in HD if the original signal is in HD the simulcast needs to be the same programming and and so the real question now with the draft order is sort of are all of these things happening right and so let's just take them in order does everybody does everybody actually get the simulcast well one thing that the draft order seems to say is that low power television stations who are not class A stations don't have the simulcast they can keep forgetting the phrase it's a I'm not allowed to say flash cut anymore that's not in the draft it's a it's direct some directly transition thank you right so and the draft order acknowledges I believe the number is that there are 42 low power affiliates of the big four networks there are additional affiliates of Univision and Telemundo and religious broadcasters and again if you think that simulcasting is important generally you probably think that simulcasting is important for those kinds of stations then the question is is where does the simulcast signal reach right is the simulcast signal you know because again if you can get your signal today but you can't get the simulcast signal that is problematic and the draft order has some standards about where the simulcast signal ought to be located and the point of contention now seems to be the question of who gets expedited processing and the draft says you should get expedited processing if you lose up to 5% of your population coverage with your simulcast and is that the right number and what should expedited processing kind of look like so those are the two questions about who gets it in terms of the in terms of the format the draft says that there are no requirements if you transmit today in high def you get to transmit tomorrow in standard or you get to otherwise degrade the picture and and again we think that if you are used to watching the football game in high def you are not going to be happy if if tomorrow or next week or next year you get standard so that remains an issue to be discussed and then the final issue is is it the same program and here I think that the task for the commission was how do you make how do you have a simulcast rule that that that both permits the innovation you have interactive programming that literally can't be transmitted in the 1.0 but but you avoid the circumstances where the football game is on the new signal and the home shopping channel is on the old signal and the FCC has a draft standard but proposes that the the this standard the substantial similarity standard disappeared and so the question is is should it disappear while simulcasting is still a requirement and if it should is is five years the right number or not so that's sort of the lay of the land in terms of simulcasting as we see it right yeah thanks Mike yeah and I definitely want to come back during the discussion to the simulcasting because although it was certainly a relief for I think the consumer advocates at least that there is a simulcasting requirement you know that that there's not just a blank check for a flash cut permanent transition some of these what you might call loopholes in terms of whether it's actually the same content and and the signal quality you know are things that I probably are most in play right now at the commission but I want to make sure we introduce first Ross Lieberman who is senior vice president of government affairs for the American Cable Association which represents the interests of small and medium sized cable companies so Ross what are the biggest concerns about the draft from the small cable system operators perspective sure thanks it's nice to be here so maybe I'll just start by saying cable operators really have no problems with the broadcasters transitioning to ETSC if they want to make investments take their own private capital to improve their service and offer that to consumers over the air customers that's okay doesn't doesn't impact cable operators directly that aspect of it and broadcasters are not even saying that we're all going to do it they get the choice and broadcaster can voluntarily choose to move to ETSC and make that investment and another broadcaster can say I'm not interested I don't think this is going to be popular and I'm gonna wait for it to fail it's strictly voluntary it's not the case when it comes to cable operators because if a broadcaster is going to move to 3.0 they are going to want cable operators to carry that signal they're going to want to maximize their investment and the facts are the mechanism in which they're going to do that is through the retransmission consent process I'm not sure about looking around this crowd I'm sure everybody is familiar with retransmission consent but maybe not all the gruesome details of what actually is occurring in those agreements not only between the broadcasters and large mvpd's but between broadcasters and very small cable operators who represent my membership half of my members have a thousand subscribers or less and they're put in a position to negotiate for retransmission consent for a valuable asset which is the broadcast station and so they have every reason to believe that broadcasters are going to in those negotiations force carriage and why do they think that well they look at how negotiations go on today in the instance 2010 retransmission consent rates have increased six thousand four hundred and eighty three percent year over year over year over year the broadcasters say this is what you're going to pay and if you don't pay it we're going to withhold the signal and they're able to get it the signal is considered must have they have a local monopoly in their marketplace to be able to operate and cable operators have no choice but to do it but it's not only about just being able to raise rates because they can raise rates but they also force carriage and they force carriage you know stations like ESPN owned by ABC USA Network owned by NBC FX station owned by Fox these all have been made available on cable networks by the leverage of retransmission consent and when we look at a TSC 3.0 we say this is just going to be another station that they force carriage and it's even more recently Sinclair forces carriage of the tennis channel the increased distribution is directly attributable to the fact that they want it to be carried and they use the retransmission and sent process to do it and when they don't do it they blackout stations and just this year alone there's been a hundred and seventy nine blackouts across the country to do so but so with regards to TSC the questions okay well that's great theory but is it actually happening in the marketplace and I can tell you the answer is yes in every single one of the negotiations that my members are facing there is a discussion of carriage of 3.0 and there's been examples already of my members having to be forced into carrying the station I think the broadcasters are a little bit cautious a little bit cautious while the rulemaking is proceeding because you know they know that if they're kind of too aggressive what's going to happen is the FCC is going to turn around and try to stop them from forcing it but what we fully expect based on past history based on recent current exist they're going to force carriage of this 3.0 signal and for my members there's costs that are involved and we heard some of them there's a cost to receive it there's a cost to transmit it there's the opportunity costs they've limited bandwidth so in order to carry the ATSC signal which is twice as much bandwidth to carry an HD signal they have to either use bandwidth that they otherwise would use to offer higher speeds in their communities or drop existing channels these are real costs and for a business model that's really untested how many people you know we they go out to their customers that's how many care about ATSC 3.0 people don't even know what it is and so they're a little bit they feel like they're going to be incurring all these costs and not be able to you know on this on this something that the broadcasters believe to be to be beneficial so you know that that's our concern in addition to the simulcasting concerns that that we've heard as well. Alright thanks Ross so I have some questions to try to you know bring everybody into to a discussion here and then we can open it to the audience as well so first off I mean some of some what you're saying may be surprising to some some of the audience because you know I think broadcasters have been saying that there's no need for the FCC to adopt rules to protect consumers because the broadcasters have strong incentives not to harm their viewers so this should take care of itself they have you know market-based incentives to make sure this all goes really smoothly for everybody is that true or is there any any reason that's there might be a few exceptions to that idea. I assume that broadcasters try to maximize profits just like other economic actors right and and and so if they could maximize profits by by doing things that may not be in the best interest of all of their viewers I think that they will have incentives to do so so what might some of those incentives be some of those incentives might involve if you're able to get and force cable and satellite carriage of the ATSE 3.0 systems you might make some decisions and be willing to leave behind the off folks if you have some part of your ATSE 3.0 business perhaps part of that business that is not broadcast related that is profitable that that requires you to be an ATSE 3.0 you may that may weigh against your other incentives to to fully serve all of your customers if you have patents in the new standard and you don't have patents in the old standard that may also weigh you know and I think you know frankly it is the broadcasters who have advocated very fiercely for rules that would allow them to not serve their viewers you know and so so you know I sort of you know we have proposed some rules that we think would protect viewers and the broadcasters have objected to those rules with with with some force and so that suggests to me where some of the incentives may lie one of the Rosses or anyone have anything to add I just agreed you know I mean they care they they they talk a lot about making sure that all consumers end up being able to receive service and important news and whether that they provide but there's plenty of examples of them just not actually you know living up to their to their words and we've had examples of retransmission consent blackouts during emergency weather situations and so so that's a concern for my members who often live at the edge probably the 5% that might be affected by a simulcast having to move from the current location to another broadcasters don't really care of the carriage continued carriage on the cable operator of a thousand subscribers the amount of money that they make from that small cable operator is peanuts compared with the total market entire marketplace and in terms of advertising the car dealership is pretty far away from where the rural customers are residing and so the advertising rates that they get for those kind of customers it's not really the same and so if it's not carried it doesn't even impact their advertising rate so I think if they figure out that there's a better business opportunity to reuse the spectrum for some other purpose whether or not they lease it out to some other use or or they they offer some new service on it I I wouldn't be surprised if they would would abandon some of the commitments that that the public has come to rest upon the broadcasters do when it's a good what you mentioned it you know reminds me that not everyone maybe everyone in this audience but perhaps not on our webcast since we can't see them right now but you know may not know exactly what what ATSC 3.0 services are so I think you know we all have because we live through it we have in our minds you know what happened eight years ago and it really was just strictly about the quality of the signal we went from an analog which was a little you know fuzzy often to a DTV signal which is crisp and HD most of the time but is that all ATSC 3.0 is is it just a question of going from an HD to a 4k or an 8k resolution or are there are there other commercial aspects you know to you know to what they'll do with with 3.0 that because that you know and maybe this part it'll be helpful to explain the channel sharing because in fact we're now having a you know at least one of the chat you know when stations get together at least one of the channels dedicated to this new this new standard even during the simulcast transition right I mean it is more than just a crisp picture but just keep in mind there's nothing in the draft order saying the broadcasters have to do any of this in the 3.0 they don't necessarily have to broadcast a higher resolution signal and you can get into the wonky the wonkiness of that but um if you believe the broadcasters and let's say on first base value what do you have with this new signal you have the ability to transmit it over in the air signal in theory to a mobile device that could be really cool it also has the ability to have because it has an IP internet protocol backbone it's a two-way data stream so the broadcasters get excited about targeted advertising well in our comments we say that could be great but what about the privacy implications of that now if Sinclair or another broadcaster knows everything I'm viewing what about Ross there they have section 631 of the communications act they have to protect that data make sure it's secure you don't need to get in the data breaches today but that's another question 3.0 raises but yeah there are a lot of great things from a consumer's perspective if it works that 3.0 could provide but remember the broadcasters are under no obligation to even offer any of those services so we can come back to the privacy a little later but what you're suggesting for example this idea of broadcasting to mobile devices which you know person actually think that's that's a pretty cool thing and I think iPhones are capable now but you know the mobile carriers have kind of insisted that that be turned that capability be turned off but on the other hand this isn't necessarily a free TV service is it I mean won't these be in some cases the streaming streaming a video to mobile devices could be a subscription or pay for pay-per-view service as well yeah I mean look the broadcasters use like this amount of spectrum today to offer largely a primary signal and a few other multicast signals the ATSC 3.0 technology and the compression will allow them to use this much for broadcasting leaving this much a left for any other uses that the broadcasters really want and and the broadcasters are excited about these other uses and the ways they could monetize these other uses and they've spoken about offering you know broadband service or some sort of pay services sending updates to autonomous vehicles other things like that that they can use for and they can lease it out to other parties that want to that are in need of spectrum so there's a lot of financial incentive for them to use it and largely that use won't be governed by existing rules that are are supposed to cover you know for you know using it for the for the public good so that's the attractiveness and so to the extent that you know in order to get that they have to disenfranchise some customers out there that may be a trade that they're willing to make and that's what I think a lot of people want to make sure is if we're going to give you this you have to make sure that you abide by some protections not to disenfranchise existing customers or cable operators or others that are part of this ecosystem yeah it's always a disenfranchisement that's the most concerning and the effects are not evenly distributed and the people who get left behind are predominantly low-income households people who sell the wire and tennis TV sets and I think that it's easy to underestimate the percentage or number of households that have those outdated TV sets that will have to be replaced I think it's something like one to the households have at least one TV that will have to be replaced as a part of this proposed transition and I think it's important to think through those costs and to make sure that a huge segment of the population is not left behind and there are means to accommodate those predominantly lower-income households and as I mentioned before some of these cash trap localities and municipalities I think it's also worth noting that we're talking about broadcasters who traditionally had sort of a public interest obligation at the spectrum for free or so you have all these rules that you have to abide by you know in exchange for that and we're taking broadcasters and we're introducing them to new markets so the competent competing in markets where they traditionally have not been and with that comes every incentive to to harm their competitors truthfully by driving up the cost of their there must have broadcast content to those that are competing them perhaps on a mobile platform or some other platform that we have yet that has yet to be determined and with the the public interest obligation of getting that spectrum for free I think that it's it's worth having a discussion about how that spectrum is used and what are the conditions that surround it yeah that's that's a good point you know I when you know as I'm hearing about these you know new fee-based services over the television airwaves which is you know fine I may I may actually you know buy some of those sports highlight clips from CBS or or someone but but then it raises you know this this other question so you know this debate around a next-gen TV transition has focused mostly on innovation on the one hand you know product innovation versus costs and you know who who bears the cost on what schedule but what about the public interest obligations which are many are those still relevant and will they apply to next-gen TV as they do to today to DTV I mean John you consumers union has right historically been an advocate for right public interest yes we have and we made it very clear in our comments that those public interest obligations should apply to the 3.0 signal and the draft order appears to say that and do that we will hope that remains to be the case come next Thursday but yeah children educational programming emergency alerts local local programming local news those basic public interest obligations that Joe pointed out they got the spectrum for free sometimes they don't like to be reminded of that but that's the trade-off that's the compact and so we think 1.0 3.0 it should apply moving forward to both signals anything else on that okay all right so like to hit these were drill sounds a little dental but drill down a little bit on the simulcasting which came up at the beginning because I think particularly for over-the-air viewers and and actually you know Jill and Mike and Ross in particular should remind us if this has collateral impact on pay TV viewers who are as John said in the beginning you know we got about 15% watching over the air and 85% still paying for TV roughly so with simulcasting it's a relief that local stations cannot pull the plug on their DTV on their current DTV signal for at least five years but the draft order also has I guess what I earlier called some potential loopholes that Mike this you know mentioned at the outset so the first one I just want to ask about is watching kind of as a clarification first is the simulcast requirement itself is five years that's the headline number no no but is it's a five-year simulcast requirement yes so this the simulcast requirement lasts until the FCC as a further proceeding to determine that it's no longer required the the substantial similarity requirement which is what gives meaning to a simulcast requirement goes away in five years and if okay and if you ask me to explain why that might be I cannot offer you an explanation so yeah okay okay so we don't know why it is so what's the implication of that there's a real danger of it I mean we talk about market incentives and flexibility to the broadcasters that cuts both ways you have a market incentive to shift consumers from 1.0 to 3.0 after five years as Mike points out you don't have to it doesn't have to be substantially similar so what do you start moving over to 3.0 NFL football boy oh boy oh well yeah I'm sorry that's on the 3.0 signal Oscars that's on the 3.0 signal what happens that we don't know remains to be determined but there's a market incentive to drive consumers 3.0 and that that right there I mean you're sit there like well I can buy a new TV cables getting put over a barrel but I guess I could get a cable subscription that's gonna cost me money but that's the real pick with some consumers I find themselves in so that would be almost in effect the flash cut moment at the end of the five years depending on what the broadcasters pull off the primary stream but I like how Mike described it I mean you can have the simulcast requirement indefinite and there's a new rulemaking to see when you cut off the 1.0 signal like the analog to digital transition without a substantial similar test in there has no teeth and is that so for five years the content on the current DTV channel has to be substantially similar but is that five years from when a TSC 3.0 is available to everybody or is it five years from now the effective date because when is a TSC 3.0 going to be deployed when's it going to be available on most network affiliates they're doing a pilot project I think North Carolina and Cleveland off the top of my head whether or not they do it some people say 2019 some broadcasters are going to be more aggressive than others I mean Sinclair next star Univision seem to be very much pro ATSC so they own a whole lot of stations so we might see at least one test sooner rather than later in each of these markets on each of their stations there may be other broadcasters like I said that that don't believe in ATSC at all ATSC 3.0 may never want to launch it or maybe the last to launch it and and they're under no obligation to actually make that transition it could be three to five years okay and I should mention that when our groups OTI with consumers union and public knowledge when we you know we've been going into the Commission the last few days and we've been telling the media advisors that we would like to see you know no sunset on the substantially similar but simply the FCC to promise that within five years they'll do another rulemaking because by then they'll have experience you know we'll see what what are these services what is the consumer demand what is the take up and they can just decide at that point but who knows and in coverage it was mentioned that you know if a if a station the stations when part of channel sharing is they may be moving their 1.0 their current DTV transmission from one tower to another which may cause losing some of the viewers in a in a local market to lose access to that local station they you know they simply would become too far away to see potentially the Commission seems to be allowing them to to sort of lose up to five percent of the viewers and above that level they'll lose the expedited processing but I mean should that be is that the right the right way to handle this I mean and our John are you like my concern or any of you concerned we've said that and again we understand that the five percent number came from some that happened in the past under some different circumstances we think in light of the the efforts that the broadcasters have been making in terms of you know being reimbursed for the auction related repack expenses and and you know five percent is a pretty big number to get expedited processing particularly if the expedited processing is 15 days after public notice goes on I mean I think that the important thing here is that a expedited processing should be limited to some smaller subset of circumstances that are truly not problematic and be that whether expedited expedited or not that the processing ought to allow folks to understand what's happening to them right there ought to be you know maps for example so everybody can know I got a signal today I don't get a signal tomorrow without hiring a spectrum engineer and ought to have some opportunity to comment I mean I think that you know look ATVA has said that if if shot cut clocks are appropriate such that that the app non expedited applications don't get lost in the media bureau you know we have no real objection to that the point is is there enough in the application that everybody knows what's happening and for the public to comment and and and and again if you're going to have five percent of the population losing service that seems like something that merits more than 15 days consideration yeah because well I should have just said as more bluntly is what if 20% of the community is is losing their signal does that just mean they have to wait an extra few weeks for yeah that's that's the kind of obvious point I wanted to make first of all just acknowledging five sorry I missed the obvious no that's okay but no the fact that there is even five percent requirement acknowledges some consumers might lose their over there a signal that's the obvious like it's right there like you might lose your signal above and beyond that there's nothing preventing you from applying it could be 20% you can still apply for a simulcast arrangement but you have to sweeten the pot like I think in the draft order to say well do you are you going to offer consumers dongles which is like the HDMI fixed and how you can magically get the 3.0 signal set top boxes some kind of fix and if you do that then we might might approve your application so when we went into the commission we said well why don't you if you're already suggesting that you can make you can perhaps make that a requirement and above five percent we're gonna get the legal weeds here make it a rebuttable presumption that you don't get it approved you can come back and give us a note good argument is why you should get approved but I'll let until you do that you will not be a point out remember in rural areas our members report that are 23% of our members say 90% or more of their subscribers cannot currently receive it over-the-air broadcast signal and two-thirds at 66% I think say at least 10% of their subscribers cannot receive it over-the-air broadcast signal today so we take another 5% 12% 50% whatever it is you're really dramatically impacting yeah the 5% of right no and that could be the that might maybe that will end up being the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but I think the 5% refers to the current DTV so I'm okay yeah so I'm okay the current dTV that that's that's not what the broadcasters have asked for they've asked for the flexibility to be able to well that's what we're concerned about and we'll come five percent is millions of people I mean there's a hundred million plus homes five percent across the board is millions and millions of people that will no longer be able to that may have that that this Christmas may buy an HDTV one ATSC 1.0 television may find themselves three months later unable to receive anything over that television and the only signal they may end up getting is a 3.0 signal and so what do they do oh great let me go out and buy some 3.0 equipment well guess what there's not even a standard available in order to buy an equipment to try to down convert a 3.0 signal to a 1.0 signal the equipment's not even available on the marketplace yet the broadcasters a few months are going after this order is approved we're going to be able to transition to the 3.0 disenfranchise a whole bunch you know in about five or five or so minutes well the bottom line is the is that the order could do a better job protecting consumers the fact that there's only a 15-day proofs a window for people to comment on millions of people potentially losing the services just too short if that's not a opportunity for people to weigh in and comment on and so so look if you're going to have an expedite process let's not make it a joke let's make it actually something that people can come in make it 45 days make it something that's actually reasonable it doesn't have to stand in the way of broadcasters doing what they want to do but let's give the opportunity if there's going to be a cable operator that's going to lose the over there service and it's going to impact people if they're consumers they're going to lose service impact them let them have a say and I don't think I think it's important to remember that nobody's opposed to the new standard for the broadcaster nobody is saying it should not happen I think it's about doing it in a way that makes sense in a reasonable process that protects both the consumers and those parties that have to work with the broadcasters and to be frank have not had a good experience in working with the broadcasters in the past so none of us are here saying this should not happen it's just doing it in a way in a process that makes more sense that's protecting the people that need to be protected so speaking of process I'd like to return to at least one more issue you know before we open it up which is retransmission consent so I think you know Ross mentioned which was a number staggering number 179 blackouts already this year so these retransmission consent negotiations today concern the current TV DTV 1.0 so what's the connection I don't know if anybody's yet really made it clear what is the connection between 3.0 between next gen TV and these recent transmission consent fees because they seem to be to I thought retransmission 3.0 is voluntary and something that's going to be running in parallel at least for five years separately from from 1.0 look I think the as Ross pointed out I'll just you know repeat what he said the concern is that that the broadcaster goes to the MVPD and says I will not talk to you about renewing your 1.0 agreement unless you agree to carry that that a that doesn't sound terribly voluntary right and B look the right way to sort of figure out if there's a market for 3.0 is to have separate negotiations for first-time characters that way abroad hey I've got this great thing and it's got great picture let me tell you about it got great sound let me tell you about it and and the MVPD can think to itself boy that sounds pretty good and that's probably worth buying the equipment because maybe I can distinguish myself from other MVPD's or I could retain subs or I can get new subs and then we can kind of agree on the appropriate compensation for that right that is a very different set of circumstances than the broadcaster saying you know hey the NFL playoffs start tomorrow if you would like to carry them here's what you're going to do right and and and you know the market experience has been closer to the ladder than the floor so I think that that is why MVPD's are concerned and you know the I will say that ATVA suggested a structural again which is you know separate negotiations for the first-time carriage precisely to avoid having the Commission be the referee between between MVPD's and broadcasters but so that's what that's the way we think that that that these negotiations ought to work and that's the it's both the most both the most voluntary and the closest to an actual marketplace negotiation should be separate when you're you have to carry broadcast content to have a viable MVPD product you just do you're not going to be able to sell the service to subscribers unless you're offering the local news weather and the broadcast entertainment content and sports but the broadcasters know this and it's been most at least the small carriers experience that in order to obtain that must have content there are all these other things you have to have and here's the price by the way which will pay for it so the there's a very real fear and I think it's a very realistic fear that the broadcasters have every incentive and will force the MVPD's to carry 3.0 to get the 1.0 so it makes sense to separate them and let's really let the market forces determine whether or not the 3.0 is carried and let me just add I think I said it but I want to make sure that I said it that our proposal at least would require separate negotiations for the first time you know once it's sort of carried then then people can kind of talk about whatever they want it's really meant to govern only first time for folks who haven't carried it yet yeah yeah and this is I assume in policy speak right this is we were really talking about the good faith bargaining rule that the Commission already is supposed to be enforcing and you're talking about this being a per se violation I if we if they try to do this with that without unless it's separated I mean the lawyers can kind of argue about it but we think that the Commission has authority to do this either under 3.25 or simply under it's more broadly authority to adopt the standard in the first place you can adopt the standard condition on the condition it how you want so it doesn't have to show up in section 3.25 okay so one last question for me which probably doesn't concern many of you but it is definitely an axe to grind for us I know in our comments with again as I mentioned with with consumers union and you know in public knowledge we you know we had flagged the in fact I guess initially in our comments and reply comments on the rug on the nab's petition and so on that we were certainly happy to see that that this could be an on channel transition you may recall the last trend the last the DTV transition from analog the digital Congress gave broadcasters the use of a second channel of spectrum for 10 years what senator mccain called the great airwaves robbery but that was just alone and and and at that time there was actually not much else going you know happening on those on those channels except wireless microphones in some in some areas so you know when the petition came out a year ago we were certainly happy to see that they they said categorically that this was an on-channel transition and just on October 27 just two weeks ago the nab put out a statement that says notably a transition to next gen TV requires broadcasters to use no additional spectrum and yet in filings you know we've noted that some broadcasters are saying that they'd like to use the vacant TV channels which are now allocated for unlicensed use the so-called TV white spaces because that would supposedly you know facilitate this it would actually just give them more space for 3.0 but I don't know I guess I was John because he's the one who's had a horse and you're more the spectrum expert than I am I just think in that case I can see why they would why not ask for it right even though they've made the claims that they can do this on channel they don't need additional spectrum I think correct me if I'm wrong they'd punt that to a future rulemaking or a future NPRM to see whether or not these vacant channels can be used for the transition but I think you might be better answer that than I would be Michael. Yeah well we just we decided the worst case it can be part of the next rulemaking about the actual transition since this is supposed to be just a voluntary component but of course we'd prefer that they would just deny that for now because unfortunately one of the things that's hobbled the use of vacant TV channels for rural broadband and we still have you know over 30 million people in the country without broadband mostly in rural areas 23 million in rural areas one of the things that hobbles that is there's been tremendous uncertainty about whether there'll be a sufficient number of TV channels available for unlicensed use nationwide which has the ripple effect of making of causing the chip makers broadcom media tech for example to go into the FCC and say we won't we can't invest to integrate this into a Wi-Fi chip set unless we know it's going to work everywhere and so equipment for broadband is much more expensive so there's just been five years of uncertainty about unlicensed access to vacant TV channels due to the incentive option and this would just even even kicking this to the FNPRM would just extend that uncertainty that dampens the ability of you know rural rural wireless providers and others to adopt white space technology and drive the cost of equipment down the cost curve so I'll make myself a panelist for that one issue you want this chair and I won't rant on but you know Jim here and others know that it's a you know that's been an important issue you know here at New America so actually Jim Snyder and my question is seems like everybody gives lip service to preserving free TV but as I read the important order or the rulemaking and the FCC's enforcement history it creates perverse incentives to hinder free TV to severely damage it now give you just two sort of examples one was with the first transition it costs a lot of money to broadcast over the air and the stations cut corners so maybe it cost a hundred thousand I didn't think it was that much at the time to cover an area but when nobody has the receivers the broadcasters thought it was too much so they didn't actually do what they were required to do and the FCC is terrible in forcing laws when it comes to broadcasters so if they don't want to cover all of them because the energy bill is higher than the usage they don't do it so that's one type of issue an enforcement issue where I think they might under provide over the air coverage because with must carry they're getting huge coverage and that's where the money is so they're gonna focus on the must carry the retransmission and underplay and then the second element is just to share marketplace incentives where you have this mixed good where they can charge and not charge they're naturally talking about you know incentives in the consumers interest they're gonna figure out a way to put more and more of the valuable services on the pay side and this really accelerates the built broadcast ability to charge for for information and screw the free TV viewers and I just haven't seen that all these perverse incentives built into it has not been part of the discussion and to what extent do you agree that part of it is an enforcement problem so you get the lip service to these things then we don't enforce them and the second is the marketplace incentives they created are so overwhelming to screw over time the free TV viewers how do you see that playing out well I will agree at the outside yeah there are some when I when I see market incentives and flexibility both in the broadcasters comments and then in the draft order what exactly does that mean and is it to migrate from 1.0 to 3.0 I share your concern about over-the-air I think just by as I mentioned earlier just by the very admission in the draft order you can lose up to 5% and even if you was up to you know more than that you can still apply to simulcast so we are concerned about that moving forward but to someone else's point yeah 3.0 is out there and developed it does it is a better signal it does go into buildings better it goes further so we want to hope for the best on that front but I agree on the enforcement yes anyone else on that one yeah I just agree I mean I mean that there are their their rational business right they're going to go where the money is and and and to the extent that they are given the the FCC in the order seems to recognize oh well the contour may not be exactly the same as before oh you know let's not require them to go continue offering their signal in HD let's give them the flexibility to also down convert into SD let's allow them to do flash cuts in certain circumstances let's sunset the simulcasting obligations and so you know those are all areas where there can be consumer harm where broadcasters have flexibility to maximize other types of business revenue but the advent of ATSC 3.0 and I think at the end of the day that's where we're the concern is the broadcast the FCC I will say hasn't completely ignored many of these issues but what they have done is they just haven't done enough to ensure that consumers are not going to be disenfranchised as a result of this transition yeah and and there's clearly this this trade-off between public and you know the traditional public interest obligations starting with offering a free over-the-air signal versus you know this kind of idea of innovation and new services whether they're fee-based or not and Commissioner Rosenberg still said gee ideally that's a question for Congress you know do we care less about those traditional public interest obligations but unfortunately Congress doesn't seem to move fast enough to you know to handle a question like this or at least hasn't yet on this one but who knows maybe as this starts to become a reality for consumers Congress will become aware other questions yes tell us who you are here's a microphone I'm a lawyer I'm a lifelong broadcaster okay I started when I was 15 okay Michael you're one of the smartest people in the room and I think most people in the room know that so I really respect what you say and think and one thing and I made so many notes here but what the one thing that really popped out in this panel is your observation or I believe what you suggested was that broadcasters should not be given a transition channel or relief when transition channels may be available to ease the deployment of ATSC 3.0 and that that just that that sends my brain into a pretzel of trying to figure out how you square how you rationalize everything that's going on and what I really what I really draw out of that I mean right because most of the problems that have been discussed on this panel what do you believe they're valid or not and I was very involved in trying to figure out how you do this how you transition and I promise because I was in the room none of the none of the sort of consumer harm those were nobody talked about that stuff is like let's do it this way so we can do that to consumers it all comes out of the fact there's no transition channel how many people on the panel opposed the incentive auction on the grounds that there would no longer be possible to allow broadcasters to innovate while spending their own money to broadcast in two standards at the same time without diminishing coverage right that's the trade-off we don't have transition channels anymore Michael you don't even like transition channels but you don't like the compromises that are made to get from point A to point B to allow innovation to go out to the people that don't want to sign up for pay TV so this is a serious question because what we're balancing here is some people advocate more spectrum for unlicensed I like I like unlicensed a lot I think it's important a lot of people want more spectrum for to be auctioned for a variety of reasons and other people want free TV I suspect that what's going on in the background here is a lot of people really don't like free TV or they don't think it's very important anymore or if they could make a choice they would take the broadcast spectrum and allocate it to unlicensed I'm not saying you look this is this is an opinion everybody's entitled to one but I might take Michael is that you're that you would advocate diminishing broadcast and and accepting some of these compromises in the transition in order to provide more more spectrum for unlicensed I also take it that most people on the panel see it the same way and if and if and if that's the analysis you know I think the honest policy path is to step out front and say that and if it's not then I think we need to go back and I wonder if anybody on the panel would support if spectrum were available granting every broadcast for a second channel and requiring them to broadcast on it spending twice the cost for this period of time during the transition in order to address these issues would you guys make spectrum available so that the transition could be more orderly as the last one that's my and and and would anybody actually think it'd be a better use of public resources to push broadcasting away eliminate the access to free over the air TV in favor of unlicensed so just a question make sure you understand you're doing this making stations work together and doing this by channel sharing in other words where say two stations combine their 1.0 here and the 3.0 there that it would just be much more be much more efficient if each station had two channels right I mean I worked on this I sat in the room how do you do this you look at single station markets right look at two station markets how do you take all those channels and squeeze them down you can't do them in HD right you you can't broadcast it it's not taking away HD Ross there's no requirement for HD today and broadcasters do it anyway well let's do let's get the because I know let's get the let's I'm just interested what would everybody here agree that broadcast should be given a second channel in order to eliminate a lot of these problems yeah so John we've known each other and you're very bright lawyer but I you're wrong on so many points I would just they're just questions the one point that you're right is yes there is no additional channel and they have and there are some things that there are some compromises that have to be made under the circumstances to allow for channel sharing fine the question then becomes where you make those cuts in terms of balancing consumer harm with allowing the transition and the decisions that the order has made it said 5% of consumers can get harmed and there's expedited processing we can go from HD to SD we can allow for flash cuts and we could allow for no longer simulcasting at the end for after five years every one of those decisions could be made reversed ensure better protection from consumers and if the situations that arise that impact the ability of a broadcaster to transition seek a waiver and then you can get your nobody's out to stop the broadcasters from making their transition to ATSE this is the paranoia that the broadcasters have that everybody's against them it's not the case do your transition let's just have rules that protect consumers I'm not gonna so I'm wondering if anybody else thanks broadcasters should be given a second channel that's actually the question if it's not available but wouldn't that solve a lot of these problems and then the converse of that is aren't a lot of these problems the fallout of they're not being a second channel which is a fallout of the incentive auction and I didn't remember anybody popping up and saying well we shouldn't have this incentive auction because then broadcasters stuck with impact to and a PSP perhaps Mike let me call on you next okay so I'm not although I should just mention yeah right and in our in the expert aid for example we you know we just found we also mentioned that you know consumers benefit from unlicensed so there there's a trade-off there even in terms of the consumer scale on either side and also that you know the simple fact that it came up earlier at some point that a big part of the purpose of 3.0 is to compete with the mobile industry on sending video to you know mobile devices that the cellular industry is doing it with spectrum on spectrum they paid about 50 billion dollars for and the broadcasters have paid nothing so so it's a question of whether you deserve free spectrum to compete with an industry that bought spectrum and I think you'll find disagreement on that perhaps even you know at the FCC so so it is a lot of trade-offs I understand but let's get microveno in you need a microphone though but maybe you don't need one but for the webcast over the last 14 years my partners and I have dumped millions of dollars into the licenses and low power that we have we got it for free but we served the public we've invested into services for the public and it's just like somebody homesteading land years ago we have the right the expectation of renewal on our licenses as long as we fulfill our EAS obligations and programming obligations to the government and keep broadcasting to our contours so while we may have obtained it for free and filing fees we've certainly invested into it for the public service I think you misspoke when you talked about white space there is no allocation for TV white space you are an opportunistic service oh yeah of course okay right so whether a temp channel is used or not too bad you're down and you're unlicensed the license providers license service providers have an obligation to keep providing that service and if the FCC says you've got to do this you got to do this I have an actual question you want to comment Monty Taylor calm daily I at the beginning of this thing Mr. Calabrese said that there was some play in issues involving retrans and I think simulcasting at the FCC felt and I was wondering if you guys all agree with that do you think the FCC majority is open to listening to some of what you're saying here you know you've got the minority seems to be behind you but do you think Chairman Pike or that this order is going to change at all to incorporate any of these policies you're suggesting between now and next week I hope so right we said you've been in there I mean have you gotten any kind of sense from them or anything I think that they're they are considering I think I think people are listening I think they are taking the arguments that we've made seriously and we'll just have to see I don't know what I could say beyond that and then I would say that once something is drafted it's much harder to get it changed that's a good point and then a quick follow-up you guys sound like you agree with a lot of what Commissioner Rosenmorsel said but she also said that Congress should be taking this thing up I don't think any of you mentioned that do you agree with her three-point plan for reforming this thing the question is as you watch the transition move forward over the next let's say five years with this simulcasting will Congress need to get involved how will it go I mean looking at it with the most positive lens I wanted to work out until your earlier question I think in our in our meetings with the Commission I thought I'm in the John's point as well there is a sensitivity at least I sense it maybe I'm being too positive to consumers losing their signals I felt there was some thinking going on like well yeah maybe maybe that five percent number maybe we should have a rebuttable presumption maybe we should require broadcasters to allow a fix in the form of a dongle when that when that if and when they become the middle and it works maybe that's cheaper than broadcasting on two channels but I did I did sense there to your point there wasn't an active malicious feeling to really stick it to consumers I didn't sense that and I don't get it and in our comments we very I think we tried to take a balanced tone of saying we admit or we can see that there are a lot of great things that this 3.0 single can do we don't oppose the broadcasters from moving to 3.0 it's just how do you mitigate it how do you how do you balance it so you mitigate harm to consumers where you identify real harm to consumers it's hard because it's not it's not deployed yet so a lot of it is we are engaging in hypotheticals and let's be honest and the FCC has a difficult job you've got different competing interests here and we're all representing someone who has a particular goal in a particular position and it's the FCC that has to weigh it all out and figure out where we're going to end up hi Todd Shields with Bloomberg news what what should we think about privacy implications of this proposed new service I will just say to my immediate response to the question is I'm surprised the draft order didn't even address it at all I think if you even word search at privacy doesn't even come up and it's dismaying to Michael and I in particular because in our reply comments we put it in there it's like the Commission should look at this maybe they need more information maybe we need more facts but if everything we're believing from Gordon Smith at the NAB show and I'm again not opposed to it but they're saying directed advertising and Sinclair talks about being able to have to see what their consumers are watching and being able to target advertising that's all well and good but the Commission should look at what are the privacy implications of that when broadcasters have the ability to have a richer picture of what their consumers are viewing and watching much in the same way that cables regulated by 631 we simply ask the questions should 631 apply to broadcasters if and when 3.0 is being delivered and they're engaging in this sort of targeted advertising and creating consumer profiles that is that's in the act yeah which the portion that regulates it regulates cable with regards to protection of our consumer data and you probably I'm John it may have this may have prompted the question but just to make sure we know or for the audience that Congresswoman Debbie Dingell yesterday sent a letter to Chairman Pi saying why does this order why does it sort of not even mention privacy that targeted advertising is is one of the you know incentives for 3.0 which obviously is going to involve you know collecting data on on viewers and it's all part of the interactive nature of it Jim we're gonna have to wrap up in a minute three to four channels as part of the transition and what he's proposing would be to give them as many as eight channels to manage this transition so how do I come to that conclusion we originally thought of a channel in a different way in the NTSC world we thought of it as providing common sense definition of a channel and then we segued into this notion of a channel is a certain amount of spectrum that can provide many of the old-fashioned channels so in England they took the old-fashioned one they did their digital transition and they said okay we have so many new channels we can find the old channel we're gonna take half of it for a digital dividend and auction it that was taboo in the United States we had to give them all those new channels to the incumbent broadcasters but the question here so they did it we couldn't even have that discussion is most interesting questions are always the ones that aren't asked because they're off the table for taboo political reasons why were you unable because you're you know going from ultra high to high definition ultra high definition TV requires at least four times the number of bits it's more than four times a resolution plus a lot of other things why could we had this discussion why isn't so much off the table what they were able to discuss in Britain why couldn't we do that in the United States I think it's clear the politics are impossible United States to raise that question but I'm still gonna ask you it's a common sense thing we're giving them four channels for the existing one why couldn't we just double their number of channels and taken two back for ourselves why is that impossible to have that discussion the United States you just laughed so any any last because over time and I'm sure the pan individual panellists will be going to have a side bar but any last comment or we covered an awful lot of ground which we could have gone into the privacy more in any event all right well join me in thanking the panel thank you all for coming please be sure if you're not if you don't normally get our event invitations you know sign up over there thank you or on our home page