NAB To FCC: Summarily Dismiss Mediacom Petition

The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Federal Communications Commission to dismiss cable operator Mediacom's petition to the FCC to open a rulemaking on retransmission consent. Among other things, Mediacom wants the commission to limit blackouts during negotiation impasses and scrap broadcast exclusivity rules that prevent the importation of comparable TV station programming into a local market. In its petition, filed in July, Mediacom also asked the FCC to limit blackouts, as well as claiming broadcasters had not done anything to expand the availability of their stations to viewers in their markets.

In its opposition to the Mediacom petition, NAB called Mediacom's proposals an "illegal and ill-advised interjection into the free marketplace between broadcasters and pay TV operators." NAB took particular umbrage at the suggestion it was not serving its viewers. "Mediacom's bald assertion that “the broadcast industry has not sought in any material way to expand the free availability of local television stations to in-market viewers” is perhaps the most egregious claim in a petition filled with them." NAB said broadcasters have invested in expanding over-the-air service to fill in areas lost in the last DTV transition, but also said that future efforts to expand service areas are effectively frozen until for the next few years until the FCC completes the next digital transition, the repack after the broadcast incentive auction. "So even broadcasters that want to expand their OTA service areas cannot do so until long after the incentive auction is completed." Then there was NAB's lawsuit challenging the way the FCC would calculate coverage areas in the auction, which broadcasters argued failed to preserve those coverage areas.