Wave Joins Mediacom Bandwagon in Decrying 'Additional Station' Retrans Provision
Mediacom is "spot on" in its raising of red flags about "additional station" language in retransmission consent talks with broadcasters, and the "vigor" with which broadcasters are resisting any attempts at limiting these provisions "is a cause for concern," Wave…
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.
said. Mediacom pushed for inclusion of the provision -- which would allow a broadcast group owner to bring in other stations that either were bought or ceded their retrans negotiation rights to that agreement -- as a sign of bad-faith negotiating (see 1602160054). Wave in a filing Thursday in docket 15-216 said in the past year that it has seen a number of such provisions in its own retrans talks with broadcast groups. The end result is two stations not in common ownership in a market can do an end run around the prohibition against them jointly negotiating retrans consent by including the provision in each of their contracts, and whichever one gets the better retrans consent rate "merely provides a de minimis service to the other broadcaster's stations and brings all of them into its retransmission consent agreement," Wave said. More consolidation of retrans consent rights is almost assured, Wave said, "given the creativity that broadcast station owners have shown in the past to structure ways to avoid the Commission's duopoly rules and broaden the reach of retransmission agreements." NAB, in its own filing Wednesday in the docket, shot back at Mediacom in their ongoing wrangle over "additional station" language, calling Mediacom's latest filing (see 1603090049) a "bizarre outburst" that shows an industry "simply so angry about mildly increased competition among pay TV providers that it no longer bothers to offer substantive arguments to support its positions." NAB also likened Mediacom's resistance to multichannel video programming distributors being "livid over the FCC's attempt to inject competition" into the set-top box market. Instead, NAB said, the FCC "should see pay TV providers' advocacy for what it is: a collective tantrum from an industry that abhors, and is simply not used to, the results of fair competition." Mediacom didn't comment.