With the deadline for auction participation applications behind them, the National Association of Broadcasters looked forward on Tuesday to a hearty reverse auction in March.
“The FCC’s staff has done a remarkable amount of work to get us to this point,” NAB Executive Vice President of Communications Dennis Wharton said in a statement. “NAB expects robust broadcaster participation in the reverse auction, and we hope to see similarly robust participation from wireless bidders in the forward auction. While we’ve expressed our concerns, we hope that the rules and systems the FCC has in place will ensure that this voluntary auction goes off without a hitch, and we look forward to the close of a successful auction.”
Wharton’s statement echoed sentiments expressed by FCC chairman Tom Wheeler at CES last week. Under questioning from Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro, Wheeler said the FCC has seen a lot of interest from broadcasters looking to participate.
“This is going to be a really exciting auction,” Wheeler said. “The interest that we have seen from broadcasters to participate – and I mean the name brand folks, the big networks, the big groups as well as…small broadcasters…there is great interest in this reverse auction.”
The passage of the Jan. 12 deadline means that broadcasters have now entered the “quiet period” in which communications about “bids or bidding strategy” related to licenses at issue in the auction are prohibited. The anti-collusion rules will remain in effect until the assignment of licenses from the auction.
The FCC has issued guidance noting that there are a handful of exceptions to the communications ban, including instances where licensees “share a common controlling interest, director, officer, or governing board member as of the deadline for submitting applications to participate in the reverse auction”; where the controlling interest, director, officer or governing board member of the broadcast licensee is also a controlling interest, director, officer, or holder of any 10 percent or greater ownership interest in the forward auction applicant as of the deadline for submitting application; and where broadcast licensees are parties to a channel sharing agreement that was executed prior to the application deadline and that was disclosed in the application to participate in the reverse auction.
