On June 27, while attending the Florida Association of Broadcasters’ inaugural Hall of Fame reception at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., the head of the NAB hinted that his legal team could be moving forward in the coming days on a court fight against the FCC with respect to its local ownership rules.
One day later came the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright ruling, which ends “Chevron deference.” On July 16, the NAB indeed moved ahead with a federal court battle against the Commission. It is one that sees Curtis LeGeyt speaking out against the current broadcast ownership rules.
“It is long past time for the FCC to modernize its broadcast ownership rules,” LeGeyt said in prepared comments released Tuesday, along with word that an 80+-plus page filing has been made in a St. Louis federal appeals court intended to force the FCC to loosen its ownership rules for broadcast radio and TV.
While there are arguments from both sides of the fence with respect to the current rules, LeGeyt made it clear that, in the NAB’s view, they need a major overhaul now.
“These are relics from a bygone era, created before the internet, smartphones, social media and streaming,” he said. “[The] NAB’s brief succinctly demonstrates to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that the FCC has failed to justify that these rules remain necessary to serve the public in light of the immense competition broadcasters face in today’s media marketplace.”
In the brief, the NAB, along with Beasley Media Group, Zimmer Radio, Tri-State Communications, ABC network affiliates association member stations and Nexstar Media Group (the NCTA-The Internet & Television Association is an intervenor), state, “[B]roadcasters today struggle to keep pace with rapidly proliferating audio and video platforms that are steadily taking audience share and advertising dollars. Instead of making it harder for broadcasters to compete, the Commission should have modernized its outdated rules because they are no longer justified.”
It continues, “The Commission has stubbornly refused to admit the world has changed.
Instead of modifying ownership rules to enable broadcasters to successfully compete
as the media landscape evolves, the Commission has gone in the opposite direction
by retaining its decades-old Local Radio and Television Rules—and even tightening
the Local Television Rule. The Commission could only reach that outcome by
twisting the statute and burying its head in the sand.”
The key goal of the petition: To convince the Eighth Circuit U.S. Appeals Court that the FCC’s action, seen with the Order putting its 2018 Quadrennial review into effect, violates Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.
As such, they ask the court, the Local Radio and Television Rules should be set aside.
