Class A’s Fight to Keep Status: 17 Oppose Interference-Protection Loss
Low-power TV stations with full-service protections are challenging FCC orders saying the LPTVs face loss of the Class A status keeping frequencies safe from interference. In responses this month and last to Media Bureau orders to show cause why they shouldn’t become regular LPTVs, at least 17 stations have said the commission would violate the Administrative Procedure Act, the 1999 Community Broadcasters Protection Act and/or the Telecom Act by yanking the protection. Another four have said they plan to oppose the status loss, seeking more time to reply. The bureau in the last two weeks issued orders revoking the Class A status of eight stations that didn’t respond to the show-cause demands (CD April 30 p16).
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Show-cause orders have gone to 44 of the 479 licensed U.S. Class A’s. A list of recipients is at http://www.warren-news.com/showcause.htm. The oppositions from L4 Media, which covered 13 Class A’s, Casa for two, and one each from Digital TV of Orlando and ZGS Communications, raised similar objections. Lawyers for Class A’s had planned their response to the spate of orders they called unprecedented because the commission has never revoked en masse Class A protection for stations being off-air and missing documents like kids’ programming reports (CD April 2 p3). “Downgrade of a Class A license to LPTV status is akin to a revocation of license,” L4 said.
The commission changed course without giving notice by considering Class A’s noncompliant for not broadcasting at least 18 hours daily, including three hours weekly of locally produced shows, the oppositions said. The stations said they sought, and in some instances received, special temporary authority (STA) to go off-air for financial and other non-technical circumstances and in other cases the bureau didn’t object to STAs. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
Lack of ability to get FCC-guaranteed carriage on subscription-video providers, which full-power broadcasters have, and a wait of a few years for the commission to set an LPTV digital transition, made it hard to have the money to stay on-air, the filings said. The “plight” of all Class A’s “was seriously aggravated by the Commission’s own regulatory policies over the past decade,” L4 said. They were “omitted” from the full-power broadcast transition, “left to navigate an essentially ad hoc system,” the company said. It also cited the agency’s decision not to require digital converter boxes to pass through analog signals. The stations said they now have plans to go all-digital, which a 2011 order required LPTVs do by 2015.
Casa got “repeated” STA okays, the company said. It had “no reason to believe that, by availing itself of the well-established opportunity to take its stations off-air to conserve resources,” the company was “in any way jeopardizing” Class A status, the broadcaster said. “The Video Division is proposing a drastic sanction against CASA for availing itself of a mechanism established by longstanding Commission precedent.” The division attempts to “lard up” an order “with a litany of supposed rule violations” that “dramatically overstates the true situation,” said L4’s opposition by the Fletcher Heald law firm, which represented Casa and some others.
The commission is making Class A’s follow different rules than full-powers, some oppositions said. Section 403 of the Telecom Act lets any station get an STA to go off-air, they said. The FCC “substituted its own interpretation of the penalties for station silence where Congress has occupied the field,” L4 said. “Congress intended that the FCC treat Class A’s as equivalent to full-power” for enforcement, the company said. “Full-power stations are not subject to ‘downgrade’ of license for rule violations; they are subject to forfeitures and, in extreme circumstances, revocation hearings.” The agency gave “no guidance, no precedent and no notice that simply the failure to operate for a period of time would subject a station to the loss of its Class A license,” ZGS said. “It does not appear the Commission has ever leveled the sanction it seeks to impose here” for “any reason,” the company said. The change “sub silentio” is “based on a previously unarticulated policy,” the filing said: It “goes without saying that licensees must know what the rules are and be given a chance to comply before they can be penalized for having violated the rules.”