FCC Announces Relocation Reimbursement Workshop Agenda

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission announced the agenda and panelists for its Sept. 30, 2013, workshop on reimbursing TV stations displaced by next year’s spectrum incentive auction.

The workshop will consist of two panels of experts. The first will focus on the costs associated with channel reassignment following the incentive auction. It will include the FCC Media Bureau’s senior advisor on broadcast spectrum, Rebecca Hanson, as moderator. Joe Davis, president of Chesapeake RF Consultants; Jane Mago, executive vice president and general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters; Peter Starke, vice president of broadcast for American Tower; and Joe Zuba, national sales manager for Dielectric are the panelists.

The second will discuss strategies to promote coordination during the transition, and potential ways to reduce the costs broadcasters may incur as a result of channel reassignment. The FCC issued a Public Notice summarizing some of its reimbursement fund proposals on Tuesday. (See “FCC Proposes Volume Discounts for TVMoving Fund.”) Panel No. 2 will be moderated by FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, with Mark Aitken, vice president of Advanced Technology for Sinclair; David Donovan, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, Erin Dozier, senior vice president and deputy counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters, Robert Kelly, partner with Squire Sanders and Lonna Thompson, executive vice president of the Association of Public Television Stations as panelists.

The workshop will be held from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EST in the Commission Meeting Room at FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C.It is free and open to the public, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis. The session will be broadcast live over the Internet at http://www.fcc.gov/live.Questions from the Internet audience can be submitted anonymously via email tolearn@fcc.gov. and via Twitter using the hashtag, “#fcclive.”

For further information, contact:Kim Matthews at (202) 418-2154 or Kim.Matthews@fcc.gov; Mary Margaret Jackson at 202.418.3641 or MaryMargaret-dot-Jackson-at-fcc-dot-gov; or Pamela Gallant at 202.418.0614 or Pamela-dot-Gallant-at-fcc-dot-gov Pamela.Gallant@fcc.gov.