Ending Top-4 Ownership Rule Requires Also Addressing Retrans Harms, ATVA Says
The FCC would face "substantial legal hurdles" if it ended or lessened the top-four prong of the local ownership rule without getting input on the resulting impact on retransmission consent prices and addressing the harms that would arise, American TV…
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Alliance (ATVA) told Office of General Counsel representatives, according to a docket 15-216 filing posted Thursday. Pointing to the 2014 order banning joint retrans negotiations among non-commonly owned top-four broadcasters that concluded harms from joint negotiations hurt consumers, ATVA said issues raised by joint ownership of top-four stations are the same. It said the agency wouldn't have any basis for concluding those earlier findings about the effect of top-four concentration on retrans prices aren't valid now. It said any "procedural efficiency" argument for case-by-case resolution of transfer or assignment applications couldn't be used under the quadrennial review statute, which requires periodic looking at media ownership rules to see whether they're in the public interest as the result of competition. ATVA also has lobbied the Media Bureau and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's office on top-four prong changes affecting retrans issues (see 1707140029).