Broadcasters still waiting on FCC spectrum model

Until the Federal Communications Commission releases its Allotment Optimization Model (AOM) for upcoming spectrum auctions, "broadcasters should remain skeptical — and wary — of the anything having to do with incentive auctions," writes broadcast media analyst Harry Jessell of  TVNewsCheck."Broadcasters have been eager to get their hands on the model so that they can test (and possibly question) some of its assumptions and simply see how they would do under various scenarios," Jessell writes. "But the FCC won't give anybody a peek. It won't let broadcasters or the public see what it is seeing when it runs the numbers."

In its original National Broadband Plan in March 2010, the FCC said modeling would be "forthcoming."

Jessell reports that FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in April that the modeling should be released in the "next few months."

"Well, by my calendar, a few months have come and gone," Jessell writes. "You ask the FCC now about when the modeling might be forthcoming and you don't even get an answer."