The Third Periodic Review of the digital television transition is making the rounds at the FCC. The review will outline the steps necessary for TV stations to make the final conversion to digital broadcasting and meet the Feb. 17, 2009 deadline for shutting down analog transmitters.
"The principal issues to be addressed by this order are the mechanics of the final stages of the transition," said David Oxenford, a media specialist with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, a law firm with offices Washington, D.C. "There are many stations that will be changing channels to their ultimate DTV channel."
There are 600 such stations, according to David Donovan, the head of the Association for Maximum Service Television, aka MSTV. Some broadcasters will move their digital signal into their analog channel allotment, a complicated process referred to as "flash cutting" that could involve swapping out transmission antennas. Even stations not flash cutting to their analog allotments face a complicated transition.
KATV in Little Rock, Ark., filed comments in the Third Periodic proceeding illustrating the difficulty of launching and maintaining two full-power broadcast TV signals. The station transmits in analog on Channel 7 and in digital on Channel 22, but it cannot achieve full coverage of the market with its digital signal because of the antenna configuration on the 1,859-foot tower it uses.
"Aside from supporting KATV's top-mounted analog and side-mounted DTV antenna along with the transmission lines for both, the tower also supports the public television analog antenna of KETS that places maximum wind loads on this 43-year-old structure," KATV's filing states.
KATV can't achieve full DTV coverage with the side-mount, but neither can it remove the 36,000 top-mounted analog stick without violating FCC coverage requirements. Even with FCC approval, the top-mounted stick can't come down until KETS takes down its analog stick, which sits right below KATV's. The station initially planned to replace the top-mounted analog antenna with one that would transmit both signals, but it proved too complicated.
"KATV ultimately learned that its giant analog antenna could only be safely removed from the tower without interfering with the operation of KETS Channel 2 by use of a custom-designed, special-purpose helicopter, and that there was just one such helicopter in the entire country capable of handling the enormous 36,000-pount antenna. The cost to use this helicopter for the removal/installation was approximately $1 million," the filing stated.
Oxenford said the Third Periodic, which was put into circulation at the FCC on Tuesday, is expected to clarify the transition process for stations like KATV that may need to end analog operations early.
There's "lots of choreographing to be done before 2009," he said.
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