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Issue: May. 09, 2008
FCC Shutting Off Analog TV Early in Wilmington, N.C.Is it a Valid Test?
By now you’ve probably heard about the FCC plan to complete the DTV transition early in Wilmington, N.C. All commercial full power analog stations, WWAY (ABC), WSFX-TV (FOX), and WECT (NBC) will cease analog broadcasting on Sept. 8, 2008.
The FCC news release indicated low-power stations WILM-LP (CBS) and W51CW (Trinity) would also broadcast only digital signals. While it took a little searching, using the FCC’s TVQuery Web page, I found WILM has a CP for a 7.5 kW ERP DTV on Channel 40. W51CW has a CP for a maximum power 15 kW DTV on Channel 51, the same channel it is using for analog. Given that WILM-LP has only 7.5 W on Channel 10, I suspect viewers are having a lot better luck with their DTV signal. WILM has its HDTV program guide posted on its Web site, which proudly proclaims “First in Flight, First in Digital”
The public broadcasting station, WUNJ, will not be turning off its DTV signal. The reason—September is near the peak of hurricane season in North Carolina. This makes sense—there are very few portable TV sets available able to receive DTV and the one I tried didn’t work that well. USB tuners work very well with battery powered laptops, but even with the wide assortment of inexpensive USB tuners available today it is unlikely a significant number of viewers have laptops with one of them installed.
I used www.antennaweb.org to see what other TV stations may be available in Wilmington, NC using the UNC campus as the address. It appears that the only other analog stations that might be receivable are WCTI, Channel 12, the ABC affiliate in New Bern, N.C. and WUNM, the North Carolina Public Broadcasting station in Chapel Hill, N.C. According to AntennaWeb, WPXU in Jacksonville, N.C., is available, but only on its digital Channel 34.
Because all the full power stations and WILM-LP will already be broadcasting a digital signal, they won’t provide any insight on potential problems with digital converter boxes that lack the ability to receive or pass analog TV signals. Depending on when the Trinity station W51CW decides to flash-cut to digital, it may provide some insight on how serious a problem this is, especially with the extensive DTV education effort in Wilmington prior to the September analog turn-off.
Over all, I think this is a good idea. While research tells us how many households rely on over-the-air TV reception, the number of extra TV sets in households with cable or satellite that are being used for over-the-air reception isn’t as clear. Another potential problem involves master antenna systems in hotels, hospitals and apartment houses. If they are processing analog over-the-air TV signals and putting them on different channels for display on analog TV sets or converter boxes, broadcast TV will disappear from these systems when analog is shut off. Wilmington’s early transition should give us an idea if these systems will be a major problem. The FCC news release didn’t indicate the market would turn analog back on if there was a major problem, but I think most readers who have worked with transmitters, especially tube transmitters, know that if they are turned off for an extended period of time they many not turn back on without some problems!
FCC Opens Docket on Tower Registration in Response to Bird Case
Effective May 1, the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) opened WT Docket 08-61 in response to the decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the case filed against the FCC by the American Bird Conservancy, the Forest Conservation Council and Friends of the Earth. As outlined in the Public Notice (DA 08-1040), presentations relating to this docket will be subject to “permit-but-disclose” requirements.
This week the WTB sought comment on a petition for expedited rulemaking regarding public notice procedures for processing antenna structure registration applications. NAB, CTIA-The Wireless Association, the National Association of Tower Erectors, and PCIA-The Wireless Infrastructure Association, collectively the Infrastructure Coalition, filed a petition for expedited rulemaking in response to the court’s finding that the commission failed to comply with its own requirements for public involvement in implementing NEPA (National Environmental Protection Act) procedures.
The Infrastructure Coalition specifically proposed the FCC commence a rulemaking based on two tentative conclusions: “(1) the Commission’s rules should be revised to incorporate a notice, comment and approval process for antenna structure registration (‘ASR’) applications modeled after the process for transfer and assignment applications; and (2) the Commission’s rules should be revised to clarify that any objection on environmental ground filed against an ASR application must be filed as a Petition to Deny.”
The deadline for comments in May 27, 2008. Procedures for filing comments are outlined in Public Notice DA 08-1078.
GIOVE-B on the Air
The European Space Agency announced Wednesday that its GIOVE-B satellite had begun transmitting navigation signals. This satellite will be used to test equipment and technology for use in the Galileo satellite navigation system, which is designed to complement and compete with with U.S. GPS system.
“Now with GIOVE-B broadcasting its highly accurate signal in space we have a true representation of what Galileo will offer to provide the most advanced satellite positioning services, while ensuring compatibility and interoperability with GPS,” said Galileo Project Manager Javier Benedicto.
More work and more satellites are needed before Galileo will be usable for navigation. GIOVE-B gives engineers an opportunity to determine the quality of the signal, observe the effect of the path from space to Earth on the signal and verify the satellite’s signal will not interfere with services operating in adjacent frequency bands. Researchers are using the 25 meter antenna at Chilbolton Observatory in the United Kingdom to analyze the signals. The GIOVE-B control center in Telespazio’s facilities in Fucino, Italy, the Galileo Processing Centre at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), in the Netherlands, and the ESA ground station at Redu, Belgium are also involved with the testing.
Technical details on the satellite are available in the ESA publication The First Galileo Satellites = Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element GIOVE.
Numbers Indicate Close to a Third of U.S. TV Stations Modifying Final DTV Facilities
This week I’ve added a new field to the spreadsheets I extract from the FCC Media Bureau’s CDBS database and post at www.xmtr.com/fcc.
The field, “dtv_type” is in the “applications.dat” table. Database entries before the field are added are blank, but newer applications indicate if the application is “POSTTRAN”, or post-DTV-transition only; “BOTH” meaning the change applies to facility before and after the Feb. 17, 2009 transition date; or “PRETRAN”, meaning it applies to facilities operational before the transition date and not after it.
Using the menu item under “Data” labeled “AutoFilter” in Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc you can filter results to include only pre-transition applications or applications affecting post-transition facilities. I know in the past at least one company used my spreadsheets to generate channel listings. If anyone is still using them for that purpose, excluding “POSTTRAN” entries should eliminate any references to channels that won’t be on the air until Feb. 18, 2009.
I used the “dtv_type” field to see how many applications and construction permits the FCC had processed for final DTV facilities where either “POSTTRAN” or “BOTH” was indicated in the field. It’s obvious the FCC has been very busy. A total of 404 new construction permits affecting post-transition facilities have been approved and an additional 56 construction permits have been granted for modifications. Only 145 applications remain to be processed. Combined, the number of construction permits, modified construction permits and applications represents approximately a third of all U.S. TV licensees! For details, see the DTV Station Status per FCC CDBS May 7, 2008 table.
Harris Ponders Sale
Harris Corp., a 113-year old company with extensive roots in defense, telecommunications and the broadcast industry, is considering selling the company, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to sources familiar with the process, the Melbourne-Fla.-based company, which has a market capitalization of $7.3 billion, is only in the exploratory stages and that the company could still decide not to sell. Potential suitors listed in the Journal article include Raytheon, BAE Systems and Northrup Grumman.
The article speculates that the company thinks its growth potential in the defense industry is “less attractive” than anytime since Sept. 11, 2001. Harris has about 16,000 employees and reported $5.1 billion in revenues and net income of $410 million over the last 12 months, ending March 28, 2008.
The Broadcast Communications segment of Harris Corp. posted revenue of $159 million in the third quarter of its 2008 fiscal year (ending March 28), an increase of 14 percent compared to the prior-year quarter.
Orlando Stations to Test Analog Shutoff
About the same time that the FCC announced its trial analog shutoff experiment in the Wilmington, N.C. market, an alliance of 11 Orlando, Fla. stations announced that they too will do their own analog shutoff test this summer.
Starting in June and lasting through the end of the year, 11 participating stations will be involved in three separate tests. The first one is scheduled for June 25, 2008 at 7:59 p.m.; each test will last approximately one minute and all broadcast stations will participate simultaneously. The tests will be promoted on air prior to the test, and during each test, and, in the tradition of emergency alert system tests, the stations will first alert viewers and explain the test. The screens will then go dark for several seconds, as each station simulates the termination of the analog broadcast by removing the video signal that feeds the analog transmitter.
Viewers watching the signal on each station’s digital broadcasts and on cable and satellite systems, will be notified onscreen that they have successfully passed the test. At the test’s conclusion, viewers who were greeted with a blank screen will be notified that they need to take corrective action and try again during the next scheduled test. In addition, during the tests, each station will provide information to help viewers who need to take corrective action and resources for additional DTV transition assistance.
Stations participating in the tests include:
- WESH-TV, Channel 2 (Hearst-Argyle Television)
- WKMG-TV, Channel 6 (Post Newsweek)
- WFTV-TV, Channel 9 (Cox Enterprises)
- WCEU-TV, Channel 15 (Daytona Beach Community College District)
- WKCF-TV, Channel 18 (Hearst-Argyle Television)
- WMFE-TV, Channel 24 (Community Communications, Inc.)
- WVEN-TV, Channel 26, Entravision Communications Corp.)
- WRDQ-TV, Channel 27 (Cox Enterprises)
- WOTF-TV, Channel 43 (Univision)
- WTGL-TV, Channel 45 (Good Life Broadcasting)
- WBCC-TV, Channel 68 (Brevard Community College)
Richard Mann, consortium spokesperson and chief engineer with WESH/WKCF-TV, said the test will provide members with the information needed to assess the potential success of the February 2009 scheduled shutoff.
“One of the biggest questions viewers have is ‘will this affect me?’” Mann said. “This test will answer that. To the best of our knowledge, the market-wide test we’re proposing has not been utilized or attempted by any other alliance of broadcasters in the country.”
Satellite Update
The FCC granted Sirius Satellite Radio’s request for special temporary authority (STA) to increase the power of 15 existing terrestrial repeaters to 2 kW equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) from their current power between 150 W and 800 W EIRP.
Mobile Satellite Ventures Subsidiary LLC was granted STA to continue telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) functions and to continue to operate its MSAT-2 satellite at 101.3 degrees west longitude in the 1530-1559 MHz and 10.75-10.95 GHz bands (space-to-Earth) and 1631.5-1660.5 MHz. 13;0-13.15 GHz and 13.2-13.25 GHz (Earth-to-space) frequency bands. From FCC Report SAT-00519.
Note the FCC Report lists the last Earth-to-space frequency band for MSAT-2 as 13.2-12.25 GHz, which appears to be a typographic error.
DTV Station Status
DTV Station Status per FCC CDBS May 7, 2008:
LICENSED (LIC) 1231 (-0-)
CONSTRUCTION PERMIT:(CP) 627 (+41)
CP Modification (CP MOD) 279 (+1)
STA (All variations - authorized) 1018 (-0-)
STA (Modifications) 161 (-0-)
APPLICATIONS (minus rule making and channel/service elections) 376 (-33)
Rule making - Digital channel changes
PENDING APPLICATIONS 17 (-0-)
GRANTS 156 (-0-)
(Change from April 23, 2008 listing)
Final DTV Facilities Only (dtv_type = “posttran” or “both”)
CONSTRUCTION PERMIT:(CP) 404
CP Modification (CP MOD) 56
APPLICATIONS 145
Note: These totals do not include digital class A TV, low power TV or TV translator entries. The total will be greater than the number of DTV stations as some stations have licenses, construction permits and applications on file. Some stations also have licenses, construction permits or applications for backup facilities (auxiliary broadcast). Subtracting the STA Modification number from the number in STA (All variations) will give a more accurate indication of the number of DTV stations operating under STA, although STA records sometimes remain in the CDBS long after the licensed facility is operational. Entries with the call sign “TEST” are not included.
A spreadsheet (dtvdb.zip) showing all DTV entries (including digital LPTV and translator) in the FCC CDBS TV engineering database files as well as a spreadsheet (tvdb.zip) showing the entire TV engineering database (large file - over 2 MB) extracted from the CDBS will be available at www.xmtr.com/fcc/. The May 7, 2008 spreadsheets are available for download now.
Your comments and story leads are always appreciated! Drop me a note at dlung@transmitter.com.
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