With FCC Order Possible, Nexstar Seeks No National TV Ownership Limit; ACA Fears Retrans Harms
Broadcasters seeking a 50 percent national ownership cap are correct about why relief is needed, but their arguments also demonstrate why the limit should be eliminated entirely, Nexstar wrote the FCC, posted Monday in docket 17-318. Commissioners may soon vote…
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.
on altering the cap now at 39 percent (see 1806180055). “The 50 Percent Proponents appropriately rest their position on the types of 'tectonic changes' in the communications marketplace” but “ignore the reality that such changes do not justify a national television ownership cap set at 50 percent, but instead a complete repeal of the cap,” Nexstar said. CEO Perry Sook has predicted predicts a raise to 65 percent, saying broadcasters must “ask for a pony to get a puppy” (see 1806140055). The Nexstar letter cited AT&T having bought Time Warner and prospects for Fox's takeover by Disney or Comcast as evidence broadcasters are dwarfed by competition. “These companies are already behemoths when compared to the nation’s largest local broadcasters before any of these market-altering transactions,” Nexstar said. The scale efficiencies created for broadcasters by a 50 percent cap would be increased if the cap were eliminated, Nexstar said. “Plucking a number out of thin air” would be arbitrary and capricious, Nexstar said. Ion said the cap should be removed, in meetings last week with Chairman Ajit Pai, Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Brendan Carr, Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey and an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a filing said. If the FCC doesn’t eliminate the cap, it should adopt permanent grandfathering for “companies like ION that have built new competitive networks based on the traditional discount to the national audience reach of UHF stations,” the company said. Raising or eliminating the cap will lead to higher retransmission consent prices for consumers, said the American Cable Association in a meeting last week with Carey. The FCC should “confirm and quantify this harm through its own econometric analysis” and consider it in any plans to alter the cap, ACA said. The FCC can’t “transmogrify” the UHF discount into one based on ratings, the association said. Using ratings as a basis for calculating reach was suggested by NAB in the form of a discount for all broadcasters and by Covington Burling attorney Mace Rosenstein as a rejiggering of how reach is determined (see 1806050040). The FCC “has always defined ‘reach’ in terms of whether a viewer can physically access broadcast signals,” ACA said. “Ratings have nothing to do with a station’s ‘reach,’ at least as the Commission has always understood that term.”