NCTA, Affiliates: FCC Should Close Loopholes on Top-Four Rules
The prevalence of broadcasters using multicast channels and low-power TV stations to get around the FCC’s top-four prohibition isn’t evidence that such “loopholes” serve the public interest, NCTA said in an ex parte letter to the FCC posted Friday in…
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docket 18-349. “Rather, it is evidence that the loopholes need to be closed for the Top-Four Prohibition to fulfill its purpose.” NAB has argued that broadcasters need such combinations to provide service in markets where there aren’t enough full-power stations, but the broadcasters haven’t shown why markets need multiple top-four stations to have common ownership, NCTA said. When determining how an extension of the top-four prohibition to multicast channels and LPTV stations would influence existing combinations, the agency should scrutinize triopolies and quadropolies, which "present a particularly significant risk of undermining the purposes of the rule," said NCTA. Constraints on a single broadcaster airing multiple network-affiliated streams with LPTV and multicast streams would “disincentivize investment, hamper growth, and limit broadcasters’ ability to sell their business and exit the industry,” representatives of the four broadcast network affiliate associations said in an ex parte filing Friday, documenting a Tuesday call with an aide to FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez. “The efficiencies generated by dual affiliations” enable “the production of more and more varied locally-focused news, weather, emergency and other programming, often in otherwise underserved markets,” the affiliate groups said.