FCC Sets Conditions for Stations that still want to give up analog service on Feb 17

[onenote]

Despite the enactment of legislation extending the date on which broadcast stations have to terminate their analog service from Feb 17 to June 12, many stations have been publicly declaring their intent to go ahead and stop analog broadcasts on the 17th anyway. THe FCC this afternoon issued a nine page, single spaced public notice setting forth the procedures and conditions for stations that want to shut down their analog service on Feb 17. The conditions themselves aren't really that burdensome, but if people here were annoyed by the number of ads about the transition deadline before, they're going to be flipping out over the next two weeks. That's because any station that wants to turn off its analog signal on Feb 17 as originally planned must not only give notice of that intent to the FCC before midnight on Feb 9, it also must run 120 public service announcements or crawls regarding its decision (including 30 in prime time) betwen now and Feb 17. If a station starts giving those notices on Monday, it would have to run the spots 15 times a day, including four times a day in primetime. And between Feb 10 and Feb 15, stations if possible have to run a five minute crawl every hour of the day and on the 16 and 17th, they have to run a 10 minute crawl every hour.

And the FCC does reserve the right to tell a station it can't stop its analog broadcasting on Feb 17, although it is believed to be unlikely that the FCC will exercise this authority.

[slipslidingaway]

1. Thanks for the heads up n/t

[Pab Sungenis]

2. Please note that these crawls

ONLY need to be done on the ANALOG feed of the channel, not the DIGITAL feed.

In other words, if you're seeing that crawl, then you need to switch over to the digital feed fast. If you see it on cable, the cable company needs to change THEIR feed immediately.

It won't affect the people who are ready for the change.

[onenote]

3. correct. Thanks for adding that.

[wtbymark]

4. not true

most stations have their logo inserter at the station which is upstream from both transmitters - both transmitters get the same feed from the station. The "tests" that you've seen are only done when an engineer actually takes a logo inserter up on the mountain to carry out the test. That inserter comes down the mountain with the engineer 99.99% of the time. This delay is a large waste of money and will mean the end of some TV stations.

on edit:
-Senior Broadcast Engineer

[onenote]

5. its true that the crawls have to be on the analog feed

But as I read the notice, there is no requirement that they can't also be on the digital feed, so you are right -- it may be possible that the crawl will be inserted in a way that it appears on both the analog and digital streams.

[Still Sensible]

6. This isn't too onerous

especially if they can meet the criteria with crawler messages... no big deal.