DBS Sales Firm Denies it Needs to Pay in Retrans Row
Campus Televideo and licensees of two Pennsylvania TV stations are battling over whether CTV owes retransmission fees for broadcast signals being transmitted to a nearby college campus. CTV is only a sales representative of DirecTV, not a reseller or subdistributor,…
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and thus isn't on the hook for retrans fees, the company said in a filing Monday in FCC docket 16-246. The WSEE-TV Erie, Pennsylvania, and WICU-TV Erie signals being retransmitted to Edinboro University are being done by DirecTV, and DirecTV is solely responsible for getting retrans consent from WSEE licensee Lilly Broadcasting of Pennsylvania License Subsidiary and WICU licensee SJL of Pennsylvania License Subsidiary, CTV said. It also said SJL/Lilly -- which filed a complaint with the FCC in August -- didn't cite any legal basis why CTV owes retrans fees atop what DirecTV already is paying. SJL/Lilly's "real complaint appears to be that it is not satisfied by the amount of the retransmission consent fee it receives from DirecTV," CTV said. The SJL/Lilly complaint claimed CTV was receiving WSEE and WICU signals from DirecTV and redistributing them to Edinboro, which was in turn redistributing them, even though CTV wasn't authorized to retransmit and Edinboro wasn't given subdistribution rights. In a filing in September, SJL/Lilly said CTV inconsistently described its role and that its signals were being retransmitted without consent or compensation, something the FCC needs to investigate.