An hour before curtain at “Mamma Mia!” at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, Craig Cassidy, the head sound man, starts his nightly ritual of testing the wireless microphones that the performers wear hidden in their white spandex bell bottoms.
The run-throughs by Mr. Cassidy ensure that the microphones are transmitting on their assigned frequencies, a narrow sliver of the nation’s airwaves. The same process takes place every night at nearly four dozen other Broadway theaters, where an inadvertent twist of a dial can put a cordless microphone on the wrong frequency — wreaking havoc if it should send the harmonies of Abba in “Mamma Mia!” into the speakers of a performance of “Wicked” across the street.
“It’s quite a juggling act we have to perform in this area to coordinate the use of all of those microphones,” Mr. Cassidy said.
But Broadway producers are alarmed that this carefully balanced system is about to crumble. The Federal Communications Commission is considering plans to force the users of cordless microphones — not only Broadway producers but an unlikely alliance of megachurches and the National Football League — to move to a less desirable spot on the nation’s airwaves. The F.C.C., backed by Congress, hopes to auction off those prime airwaves now used by singers, preachers and coaches to data-gobbling smartphone companies, potentially for billions of dollars.
“We’ve been doing this for years,” said Colin Ahearn, a sound assistant on “Mamma Mia!”
“We found out how to make it work. Then the government comes along and says, ‘Hey, we can make some money from it.’ That’s not right.”
The F.C.C. counters that the airwaves are public property and that theater owners and other unlicensed users have long gotten free access to the frequencies. The commission also points out that the first $7 billion raised by the auction is to build a nationwide public safety communications network, and that many members of Congress have urged the commission to sell everything it can to raise money to reduce the nation’s deficit.
Still, Broadway producers say that moving to a new spot on the airwaves, or spectrum, will compromise the sound quality of “Mamma Mia!” hits like “Dancing Queen,’’ and “The Name of the Game,’’ making the melodies less full and rich. They say a failure of a wireless intercom could endanger a performer or crew member and that they will be forced to buy expensive new equipment or risk having their transmissions overwhelmed by smartphones that use the same airwaves.
“It is easy for other users of the same spectrum to overpower wireless microphones,” the Broadway League said in comments filed at the F.C.C. That interference “could devastate the sound and stagecraft at major productions, potentially causing physical harm to actors and production workers, serious artistic and cultural losses and — considering the importance of live entertainment to the American economy — significant financial damage.”
The N.F.L. has also told the F.C.C. to back off, citing the need for the use of hundreds of wireless microphones at its games. “Despite N.F.L.’s best efforts to manage its wireless microphones on its increasingly scarce spectrum,” the football league wrote in a letter to the F.C.C., “N.F.L. has received numerous recent reports of wireless microphone interference during games, rendering coaches unable to communicate plays to their quarterbacks and referees unable to consult one another on calls.”
Wireless microphones are one of a number of consumer gadgets — including baby monitors, Wi-Fi routers, garage door openers, television remote controls and electronic car key fobs — that enjoy unlicensed access to the airwaves and which have contributed billions of dollars to the economy. The gadgets can operate without an F.C.C. license, unlike a cellphone company, which must buy a license to operate on a certain segment of the airwaves, or television broadcasters, which operate free on assigned public airwaves.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/business/fcc-has-yen-for-broadways-wireless-spectrum.html?partner=rss&emc=rss