Coupon-eligible Converter Box - Low-power Television Concerns

Low-power Television Concerns

A year before the transition, Ron Bruno, president of the Community Broadcasters Association (CBA), said only four of 37 NTIA-certified converter boxes had analog passthrough, and none had analog tuners.

In late March 2008, the CBA filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia seeking an injunction to halt the sale and distribution of CECBs. According to the CBA, the converters' lack of support for analog transmissions would harm its member stations, which include low-power and class A television stations, as it was cost-prohibitive for many of them to convert to digital transmission. The CBA claimed that the new boxes would prevent viewers from being able to watch these analog-only stations; viewers might not even be aware such stations still existed, because the boxes would not list them. At the time of the digital transition, the FCC did not set a deadline for existing LPTV stations to convert to digital service; however, it announced that no new analog LPTV stations would be authorized.

Responding to the CBA, the FCC and NTIA urged manufacturers to include analog support voluntarily in all converter boxes. Manufacturers responded by releasing a new generation of models with the feature. Some new DVD recorders and personal video recorders also provide both analog and digital tuners, and therefore could perform the basic functions of a set-top box in both modes.

In early May 2008, the D.C. district court denied the CBA petition without comment. The CBA felt that the court wanted them to continue working with the FCC. The association said it would continue to pressure the FCC to support analog functionality as a requirement of the All-Channel Receiver Act, urge more government funding for low power and Class A broadcasters to transition to digital, and ask Congress to increase the number of such stations eligible for funds.

On August 13, 2009, the CBA announced that it would cease operations. One reason given was the cost required to fight "restrictive regulations that kept the Class A and LPTV industry from realizing its potential", including the campaign to require analog passthrough. Amy Brown, former CBA executive director, said "some 40 percent of Class A and LPTV station operators believe they will have to shut down in the next year if they are not helped through the digital transition."

In June 2010, the FCC stopped accepting new applications for digital LPTV stations while it considered the spectrum needs of the National Broadband Plan. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published in September 2010, the FCC suggested setting a shutoff date for all analog TV transmissions, including LPTV stations, in 2012. It also proposed moving all low-power stations on channels 52–69 to new frequencies, to free the 700 MHz band for other uses. In April 2011, the NTIA announced that it would stop accepting applications for grants toward upgrading LPTV stations to digital transmission as of July 2, 2012. The grant program was initially funded with $44 million; as of June 2011, over $30 million in grant funding remained available.

The final deadline for LPTV Shutdown is 1 September, 2015. The last NTIA grants offered to LPTV Broadcasters/Repeaters to convert their systems to digital ended in July 2012. The September 2015 deadline is to allow for possible new construction to accommodate digital equipment. Unlike the TV Full-Power Transmitter Digital Conversion in 2009, there will be no consumer subsidy program for the final LPTV digital conversion deadline since it is anticipated that without DTV Set-Top Converter Boxes, the majority of remaining SDTV/EDTV models in use should have left the consumer market by then.