5-0 FCC OK Expected on All-Digital AM, Video Description
FCC draft orders on expanding video description and allowing voluntary all-digital AM service are expected to be approved unanimously at Tuesday’s open meeting, said FCC and industry officials in interviews. Neither item has substantively changed from the draft versions released earlier this month (see 2010050056), FCC officials said. Ben Downs, vice president for early all-digital AM supporter Bryan Broadcasting, said he’s not surprised by the broad support for the AM radio order: “This is the right thing for everyone.” Items with unanimous support are sometimes voted ahead of open meetings, but that’s unlikely to happen with these, FCC officials said.
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The draft order on all-digital AM will allow AM broadcasters to voluntarily transition to the technology, which allows better audio fidelity and features such as metadata, but it can be received only on HD radios. The draft doesn’t codify a specific technical standard or create new interference rules for the service. Switching to all-digital “won’t be the right thing for everyone” in AM radio, Downs said, but for some stations, it could allow competition with FM stations. Growing interference from household electronic devices has made the AM band “a hostile environment for a long time,” Downs said. Some opponents of all-digital AM raised interference concerns, but the FCC said testing by NAB and an experimental license run by Hubbard demonstrated all-digital AM won't unduly interfere with other signals.
Bryan, which was behind the initial petition seeking FCC approval for all-digital AM, will likely convert only two of its four AM stations, Downs said. Since listeners without HD radios won’t be able to receive the AM signal of a converted station, it mostly makes sense for stations with FM translators, in markets with many HD radios or that don’t currently have a large dedicated audience to be disrupted by the shift, he said. Most of the AM band is talk radio because of the band’s poor audio quality, and switching could allow AM stations to change to a music format that could be more competitive in their market, he said. Downs said he isn't sure when Bryan will convert, due to funding concerns exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: “If you were asking back in January, I would probably say it would happen quicker than I would now.”
The draft order on described video would increase the number of markets where stations are required to provide video description, adding 10 markets annually for the next four years. It's important for described video “to become more of a universal service,” said Alison McCabe, education advocacy coordinator of Access to Independence of Cortland County, New York. “People tend to gravitate toward services that are accessible to them.” Under the draft order, the process would end once the rules apply to the top 100 markets -- they currently apply in the top 60 -- and require the FCC to consider expanding the scope further in 2024. The draft sets the deadline for the first tranche of expanded markets in January, over NAB objections (see 2007070051). The draft order would also formally replace the term “video description” in FCC rules with “Audio Description,” the industry and federal standard usage, the draft said.