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Bua!Jington, lIot 20515
December 21, 2012
The Honorable Julius Genachowski
Chainnan
The Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW
Washington DC 20554
Dear Mr. Chainnan:
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Received & Inspected
JAN 072013
FCC Mall Room
1am writing to you with respect to the broadcast incentive auction that Congress authorized as
part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of2012. In particular, 1am concerned about the
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking you just announced that will establish procedures to repack broadcast
television bands of frequencies and effective relocate existing TV channels in Washington State to
different channels. As you develop the rules for this process, we want to ensure that residents of
Washington State will continue to receive their free local over the air broadcast television signals.
Channel assignments of television stations in markets across the northern border of the United
States must be carefully coordinated with Canadian stations to ensure that the public can view these
signals without interference. The United Stlltes and Canada are boun4 by treaty obligations to coordinate
with each other with respect to channel assignment$,toprotect the television viewillg putilic in each
country. This means that when TV channels in Washington State are moved to clear a speCtrum band for
auction tocell phone companies,: there will beJeweJ;places tO,relocate them because the Canadians have
riglrts to ,a number of the border,ch!UIDels.
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There are 37 full power TV stations in ,Washington' state. As htanyas 14 ofthese cOl!ld have no
place to be rel(lCated when repacking ocpurs, m~ing that they could be forced to cut power and lose
viewers. Oftbe 17 full power stations i1JtheS~a¢IcfI'\Icoma marke~ as many 11,510 could haveno place
to go. In Spokane, of the ten stations ,in that,mar.k,et, ~our ofthem could b~ fOl'l(ed to.move and cut their
power and their vi~we"hip. This could be harmful for the stations and the p~ople ~ho invest in them, but
devastating to the hundreds of thousands ofpeople that rely on free, over ti)e ,air television. '
• - >' ,,' " • ,'I.; .
We cannot ignore our treaty obligations; however, it w~uld be patently unf~r t~ force residents of
Washington State - including our constituents - to lose access to the local broadcast television signals
they currently flIIlllive for free. .i<,
In order to protect our constituents, it is incumbent upon the Federal Communications
Commission to keep:the·public infonned ofits plans and activities as openly ll1ld transparently as
possible. We therefore request that the commis~~n cQ1l1mit itselfto a trR1\sp8re,n,t Process, promptly
disclosing, 'on an on-going "asis, all the infonnatiOl1 it ,has available with respe~ to any llew b~dplan it
may adopt. Stakeholdl?s need the opportunity to:revi!il~ ,and comment Oil tliis ban4plan before it is
finalized. Further, we also \'Cquest that the commission promptly disclose, also ,on an on-going pasis, the
nature of contacts it o,r its staff may havewith Canadian authorities in regar4s to repackll)g the broadcast
television band in northern border markets, including the disclosure of a summary of the matters' , .
discussed. Lastly, we> ask that you work closely with the Washington State Broadcasters Association and
the National Assoc.iation9fI~roadcasters as this process unfolds., .
Freeing ~p frequencies fo~ wireless broadb~d $~~icesls an i",portaptpolicy \?bJe>ctive, which
we supported. But that objective cannot - and sh9Uld not..., be achieved by depriving ~sidents of
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television markets along the northern U.S. border of access to the television signals that they have
enjoyed for years for free, Depriving these citizens of access to local television programming would do
them an enormous disservice and undermine the trust that Congress placed in the commission when it
passed the statute earlier this year.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to hearing from you before the
Commission votes on this NPRM.
~JYf~J McDERMOTTmber of Congress ?J...J'fI.~ADAM SMITHMember of Congress -r1~~NORM DICKSMember of Congress