FCC Asked to Force Comcast to Again Carry DTV-Only Station

The complaint and an emergency petition for declaratory ruling seem unique, given that they involve one of the few stations of its type in the U.S. and mention a controversial 2006 FCC carriage decision (CD Aug 4/06 p5) and the digital transition. In 2001 the station persuaded commissioners to vote unanimously for an order granting it carriage by cable operators. The station has relied on cable carriage because satellite companies need not show it and WHDT isn’t affiliated with any national broadcast network. That means the station’s programming -- focused on local issues -- is less popular than local network affiliates carrying popular national shows, broadcast attorneys have said.

Comcast pulled WHDT because it couldn’t get the signal over the air, Regional Director of Video Engineering Barry Rhodes said in an Oct. 12 letter to station owner Guenter Marksteiner. Comcast didn’t have to air the station because Marksteiner redirected WHDT’s antenna at Comcast’s headend away from WHDT’s transmitter operating on channel 59 and toward the tower of a low-power Miami station on channel 44 that lacks must-carry rights, wrote Rhodes. Comcast “attempted without success to have the station identify the location of its channel 59 transmitter among other issues,” said the spokeswoman. “We will shortly be filing our response to the complaint with the FCC.”

WHDT says that under FCC rules and the Communications Act Comcast had to give the station 30 days’ notice before pulling it. FCC rules require a cable operator refusing to carry a broadcaster for having a weak or nonexistent signal give the station a slew of information on how it measured for signal availability and quality, said WHDT. Comcast did none of that, WHDT said. The station claimed it “provides a good quality signal to Comcast’s headend via WHDT-LD, an FCC authorized digital translator.” The Comcast headend picking up WHDT signals is about 50 miles from the station’s transmitter, said the broadcaster. Given the distance of that location, “Comcast does not take over-the-air feeds of at least five local television stations. Yet Comcast flatly refuses to accept signal delivery of WHDT-DT via a translator.”

Without regulatory intervention, the station may fail before the DTV transition because Comcast subscribers were 98 percent of its audience, WHDT said. Most advertisers canceled their contracts after Comcast kicked WHDT off its systems in the West Palm Beach and Ft. Pierce market, the station said. “As a digital-only station, WHDT-DT today relies disproportionately on cable retransmission. Few households today are equipped to receive digital broadcasts over the air.” Sales only began recently of DTV converter boxes covered by coupons the NTIA will start issuing Feb. 17, said WHDT. “The station’s ability to provide its unique local high definition service to the public through the digital transition is in jeopardy.”

In far less dire circumstances the FCC quickly forced another operator to restore carriage of a cable channel, said WHDT. It cited a two-day Media Bureau turnaround in August 2006 granting a petition for emergency intervention. In that episode, the NFL Network alleged Time Warner Cable removed the channel with insufficient notice. “That has big implications for must-carry, since a station can be kept off the air for months even if the FCC ultimately rules against the cable system,” John Hane, WHDT’s lawyer, said in an interview. “The big question is whether the FCC will move as quickly to restore a broadcast station as it did to restore the NFL Network under the same circumstances.”