TV station ownership attribution was the subject of FCC lobbying, docket 09-182 shows. ...
TV station ownership attribution was the subject of FCC lobbying, docket 09-182 shows. Broadcasters opposed the forthcoming media ownership order considering a TV station with more than about 15 percent of ads brokered by another outlet to be held by…
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.
that second company. But cable operators want the rules to attribute more arrangements beyond just those joint services agreements. Companies with the JSAs asked they not be attributed, unlike what a draft Media Bureau order would require (CD Nov 29 p5). The agency should “rethink its intention to adopt a policy of JSA attribution,” or “at most” apply “such attribution only in the top 25 television markets and, in those markets, where the brokering station is an affiliate of the top-four television networks,” Entravision said (http://xrl.us/bn679j). With “an economic gulf between major network affiliates and major market stations, on the one hand, and non-major network affiliates and smaller market stations, on the other,” the latter group need JSAs “to secure the operating efficiencies and cost-saving benefits,” said Entravision, with stations in such deals. If there’s attribution, existing deals should be grandfathered, wrote Chena Broadcasting President Michael Young (http://xrl.us/bn679q). This spring “I signed my life away to buy” KTVF Fairbanks, Alaska, which he said has a JSA “shaped with specific oversight of the FCC staff.” Mid-West Family Stations said it doesn’t want “grandfathered combinations of radio stations” to be “broken up when there is a transfer event” when closely held companies like it pass on stakes when individual owners die or leave the company. Lawyers for the company spoke with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bn68aa). The American Cable Association (http://xrl.us/bn68ae) and NCTA, meanwhile, continued asking the agency to deem attributable separately owned stations in a market that coordinate retransmission consent talks. That should be “whether such arrangements are formal or informal,” NCTA executives told an aide to Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bn68an). Attributing JSAs would harm stations and viewers and “undermine the Commission’s longstanding goals of competition, diversity and localism,” and isn’t supported by the record, NAB executives told an aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell (http://xrl.us/bn68az).