Andy Tullis/The BulletinCommunications towers rise atop Awbrey Butte last summer. Low-powered television stations, including three in Bend, worry they will be pushed off the airwaves after FCC’s spectrum auction.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers reminded the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday to consider small, low-powered television stations when it reallocates broadband spectrum after conducting its spectrum auction next year.

Last month, the FCC released its first written order describing its framework for conducting a congressionally mandated spectrum auction, which seeks to relocate television broadcasters to another band of spectrum to create more space for the rapidly increasing demand for wireless broadband for smartphones and tablets. To provide incentive for television broadcasters to move to a different part of the spectrum, they will receive a share of the proceeds from the auctions.

Low-powered television stations, or LPTVs, emit much weaker signals than full-powered stations and do not have an exclusive claim to a portion of the broadband spectrum the way bigger stations do. The FCC made no mention of how it intends to treat the country’s roughly 2,500 LPTV stations, many of which operate in rural areas, during the postauction shuffle, raising concerns that there would be no space allocated to them and threatening their viability.

In Bend, KBNZ, a CBS affiliate, KABH, affiliated with Univision, and KXFO, affiliated with Fox, are low-powered stations, as are KDOV and KFBI in Medford.

Although they operate using a different technology, translators — relay stations that bring the broadcasts of full-powered television stations to remote areas, particularly in the mountain west — share the same concern of being pushed out after the FCC auction.

In response to the FCC’s lack of discussion of how it would treat low-power stations and translators, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, drafted legislation that would require the FCC to consider them as it plans the spectrum auction.

“While low-power stations and translators are not eligible to participate in the auction, this draft (legislation) urges the FCC to account for the value of LPTV and translators to communities all across this country,” Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, said on Thursday during a hearing on several bills, including Barton’s, before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which Walden chairs. “I have long urged the Commission to keep this value in mind when conducting the repacking analysis.”

The bill would formalize that sentiment in law, as well as allow LPTV and translator licensees additional opportunities to petition the FCC to stay on the air after the incentive auction process is complete, Walden said.

Barton said his bill would give LPTV license holders increased moral standing when they petition the FCC.

“If this bill does become law, they will still have a secondary license; they will not have any guarantee, but they will have the strength, that legislatively, the House and the Senate, as signed by the president wants the FCC to work with low-power TV license holders to give them the best chance possible to maintain their viability in the marketplace,” Barton said.

Louis Libin, the executive director of the Advance Television Broadcasting Alliance, an industry group, said up to one-third of low-powered television stations and translators could be shut down under the FCC’s current plans.

“Under the FCC’s auction rules, the FCC could cancel hundreds or even thousands of LPTV and translator licenses even if doing so would not generate a single dollar in additional revenue for the auction,” Libin said.

The FCC could eliminate LPTV and translator stations just for the sake of running the auction faster or with less precise calculations, he said.

“And that is what the FCC is doing. It has adopted rules that run the auction at a breakneck speed with, literally, no consideration at all of the impact on citizens served by LPTV and translator services. The rules reallocate LPTV spectrum to wireless carriers without assigning any value at all to the LPTV and translator services that would be eliminated.”

Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, an advocacy organization that supports equal access to technology, warned that new legislation would add delays and confusion to the spectrum auction.

“For example, does the passage of a new law mean that Congress rejects the calculus the FCC made to minimize the cost of repacking, and that the FCC should therefore rewrite the repacking software to maximize availability of space for LPTV and translator licensees regardless of the cost to the auction or to full power broadcasters?” he said. “Nothing in the statute officially requires such an outcome, but the fact that Congress passed a new law drawing attention to the importance of LPTV and translator services will give rise to such arguments.”

— Reporter: 202-662-7456, aclevenger@bendbulletin.com