NAB Testing New Multicast Legal Theory

A federal mandate requiring digital-only broadcasting in 2009 is a new and important governmental interest that justifies the need to broaden the digital-TV-carriage obligations of cable operators, the National Association of Broadcasters argued in a legal analysis recently submitted to the Federal Communications Commission. The NAB’s reliance on the 2009 “hard date” bringing analog TV to an abrupt halt represented a novel legal argument in the trade group’s eight-year quest to require cable operators to carry a requesting digital-TV station’s entire signal, whether that’s one HD service or 6-12 multicast services. Today, cable is required to carry one program service of each station that elects mandatory carriage. The NAB’s introduction of the hard date as new and important development ordered by Congress could give the FCC the necessary legal support to explain convincingly the need to impose multicast must carry after refusing twice to do so. “Extending must-carry rules to multicasting advances both of these clearly established interests [free TV and access to multiple sources of information], as well as interest in fair competition in the video-programming market,” the NAB said. “In addition, carriage rights for multistream broadcasting further the more recent government interest in transitioning from analog to digital delivery of programming.”
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