Support Grows for TV License Giveaway

Seeking to move the nation toward the digital television age, several congressional leaders have endorsed broadcasters’ efforts to get lucrative digital TV licenses for free.

But in turning their backs on Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole, who has opposed giving away digital TV licenses as “corporate welfare,” the bipartisan group, which includes House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), has apparently stirred the anger of powerful Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee and its communications subcommittee.

Pressler, who recently held hearings on whether to auction digital TV licenses to raise billions of dollars for the federal treasury, withheld his backing from the letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission, telling aides the proposal to give away TV licenses for free would only happen “over my dead body.”

The renewed fighting over digital television--which has been a controversial industrial policy issue for nearly a decade--could portend further delay in efforts to deploy the technology, which can transmit high-quality video and compact disc quality sound, observers say. It has been an eagerly awaited advance over current television, which utilizes an analog transmission system that is subject to distortion as well as low picture resolution.

The dispute over digital television centers on whether the federal government, which has freely allocated licenses to broadcasters to use the airwaves as long as they operate in the public interest, should be required to pay for an additional portion of the spectrum reserved for digital TV.

Broadcasters contend that since they cannot directly charge for their services, they should not be required to buy digital TV licenses. In addition, they contend they will have to pay as much as $1.5 million per station in order to convert their equipment to transmit digital pictures.

But the government’s recent success in raising billions of dollars by auctioning licenses for various wireless communications technologies has put pressure on federal regulators to charge broadcasters to pay for the airwaves.

The FCC has focused on developing a general plan for making the migration to digital TV without directly addressing the issue of auctions.

The agency plans to assign each of the nation’s 1,600 TV stations an additional channel on which they could provide advanced digital TV, with the promise that the existing channel for analog TV would be returned later.

The idea was to enable broadcasts to send regular and digital signals in tandem while consumers gradually equipped themselves with the new TV sets needed to view digital TV.

Eddie Fritz, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, said in an interview that he thinks the letter from congressional leaders will put more heat on the FCC to move quickly to resolve outstanding digital TV licensing issues.