[opendtv] Public Law 107-195: “The Law” Isn’t Always “The Law”
- From: Mark Aitken <maitken@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:17:51 -0500
If only...
http://televisionbroadcast.com/articles/printer_1176.shtml
From DigitalTelevision.com
Final Thought
Public Law 107-195: ?The Law? Isn?t Always ?The Law?
By Mark Schubin
Jan 25, 2006, 11:46
Last year, before leaving on their Thanksgiving breaks, both houses of
Congress passed bills calling for the cessation of analog television
broadcasting in the United States. The House version allowed NTSC
transmissions to continue until the end of 2008; the Senate version
offered a little more time?to cover the 2009 ?March Madness? tournament.
By year-end, there was agreement on February 17, 2009.
Is it time, therefore, to start panicking about millions of viewers (a
quantity on which everyone seems to agree) losing broadcast television
service? History provides a guide.
Do you have cable-TV service? If so, do you have a set-top cable box?
Did it come from the cable company? How strange.
On June 11, 1998, in Report & Order 98-116, the FCC outlawed such boxes.
The ban, in theory, went into effect on July 1 of last year.
The same order required PODs, point-of-deployment security modules (what
we now call CableCARDs), to be provided by cable operators no later than
July 1, 2000. Not one POD was deployed as of July 1, 2004, and, as
current cable boxes illustrate, last year?s deadline fell by the
wayside, too. Shocking though it may be, the FCC actually changed its mind.
It certainly wasn?t the first time. It?s extremely unlikely that your TV
has a large wheel of colored filters spinning in front of its screen.
Nevertheless, after holding extensive hearings, the FCC adopted that
type of color-television on October 11, 1950. It was developed by CBS,
had 24 frames per second instead of 30 and six fields and 405 lines per
frame instead of two fields and 525 lines. As you can imagine from those
figures, it was essentially incompatible with existing black-&-white
receivers.
RCA fought the FCC order all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled
in favor of the government. So, why don?t we have spinning filter disks
on our color TV sets? The commission changed course and adopted
compatible NTSC color on December 17, 1953.
So the FCC has been known to reverse its decisions regarding television
technology. But the new analog cut-off date is not an FCC decision.
After a conference committee works out differences between the House and
Senate versions and the bill is signed into law (both of which are
expected to happen eventually), the date on which analog broadcasts are
to cease will be an act of Congress.
Actually, it will be the second act of Congress calling for the
cessation of over-the-air analog television transmissions. The first was
the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. It called for analog television to be
shut off by the end of this year, not two years (or more) later.
Some of you may want to point out that December 31, 2006 wasn?t a ?hard?
date. There were exceptions in the law that could have allowed NTSC
broadcasts to continue past the end of this year on a market-by-market
basis.
That?s true. But there was a totally hard date in that 1997 law. The FCC
was ordered to auction off spectrum to be vacated after the transition
to digital-television broadcasting was completed, and that auctioning
was to take place more than four years earlier than the cut off. ?The
Commission shall complete the assignment of such licenses, and report to
the Congress the total revenues from such competitive bidding, by
September 30, 2002.?
It was the law of the land. But the auctions weren?t completed by
September 30, 2002.
For that, we may thank another act of Congress. It didn?t have a fancy
name like the ?Balanced Budget Act of 1997? or the ?SAVE LIVES?
(Spectrum AVailability for Emergency-response and Law-enforcement to
Improve Vital Emergency Services) Act, proposed by Senators John McCain
and Joseph Lieberman to cut off analog television for the benefit of
first-responder communications.
No, the act that stopped the auctions was simply called ?Public Law
107-195,? although, in the grand government tradition of not admitting
mistakes, it was also known as the ?Auction Reform Act of 2002.? The act
began by saying that ?Circumstances in the telecommunications market
have changed dramatically since the auctioning of spectrum in the 700
megahertz band was originally mandated by Congress in 1997, raising
serious questions as to whether the original deadlines, or the
subsequent revision of the deadlines, are consistent with sound
telecommunications policy and spectrum management principles.?
In other words, Congress can change its mind, too.
Mark Schubin is an engineering consultant with a diverse range of
clients, from the Metropolitan Opera to Sesame Workshop.
--
><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><>
Regards,
Mark A. Aitken
Director, Advanced Technology
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