WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Saturday, August 1, viewers of CBS Television Network programming in seven cities will face a sudden change in how they access this content. On September 1, St. Louis will see a shift for the ABC Television Network, resulting in a channel change for the first time in three decades.
This is disconcerting to the Chairman of the FCC, who spoke with a former cable television industry PR chief turned Capitol Hill Wonk on Thursday. “We are taking investigatory action right now on at least one, if not more, of these affiliation transactions,” Brendan Carr said.
Just how the FCC can regulate a private business transaction, one in which discussions started in May ahead of an August 1 deadline, is unclear. What is clear is that, in Carr’s view, the unintentional act of giving a “Big Four” network more power and influence could run afoul of a licensee’s public interest obligations.
He’s also made it clear that a digital multicast channel is “problematic” for a network affiliation — even though such shifts in a ATSC 1.0 world aren’t as rare as one thinks.
