The Chief Legal Officer and EVP of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at the NAB has made it clear that the FCC should reject a proposal that would require multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to notify the Commission when a broadcast signal is “blacked out” for 24 hours or more due to a retransmission consent impasse.
In an ex parte filing, Rick Kaplan and his legal team at the association representing America’s broadcast television stations rejected the plan, which would see notifications made using a FCC-hosted database.
As the NAB sees it, the proposal “exceeds the FCC’s very limited authority relating to retransmission consent” under the Commission’s rules, while the proposed requirements “also do not fit within the FCC’s authority to regulate the customer service or public interest obligations of certain MVPDs.”
Moreover, Kaplan adds, “because the proposed requirements do not appear to serve any discernible purpose, they would violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.”
Lastly, the NAB contends that “given that much of the pay TV industry’s advocacy before
Congress and the Commission is entirely dependent upon highlighting (i.e., generating)
disputes with broadcasters, NAB anticipates that the creation of this database will, if anything, incentivize more retransmission consent impasses, rather than reducing them.”
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