NCTA attorneys met with FCC Media Bureau and Office of...
NCTA attorneys met with FCC Media Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning officials to push for allowing the exclusivity ban on vertically integrated pay-TV programming to expire under the commission’s program access rules, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnmxcp). “The…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
exclusivity prohibition should be allowed to sunset in its entirety,” the notice said. “Congress intended that once sufficiently sturdy competition took hold in the marketplace, the prohibition was to ‘cease to be effective.'” Separately in the same docket 12-68, seven broadcast and cable TV programmers opposed a request by the American Cable Association for the agency to expand the scope of discovery in cases brought by multichannel video programming distributors of alleged price discrimination. That association wanted access to, in such instances, “the contracts that other programmers offer the same MVPD and other MVPDs for similar programming,” said CBS, Disney, News Corp., Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Univision and Viacom (http://xrl.us/bnmxh8). “The Commission has no authority to accede to ACA’s proposal, and it would be extraordinarily inequitable to permit MVPDs to engage in a broad exploration for confidential information under the auspices of the program access rules. This is especially so when disclosure would implicate the rights of innocent bystanders like the Content Companies, who are not parties to program access disputes and who have not placed their private business dealings at issue before the Commission."