Translators Complicating Significantly Viewed Petiton, Says United Communications
Translators carrying distant signal stations are complicating United Communications' petition for waiver of the significantly viewed exception to network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules for KEYC-TV Mankato, Minnesota, the company said in an supplemental filing posted in docket 16-54 Monday.…
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Though Nielsen ratings show viewership of several stations located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, this is because the stations are carried by translators rather than because of their own signal strength, United said. The translators make it “impossible” to determine the viewability of those stations for the purposes of the waiver, the filing said: “Executing the Waiver Procedure requires working around this obstacle.” The FCC shouldn’t worry about creating an unwanted precedent by granting a waiver under these circumstances, because “the confluence of conditions giving rise to this case is virtually unique industrywide,” the filing said.