Alert
Alert
08.06.10
The Federal Communications Commission has released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking comment on the method it uses to predict whether a satellite television subscriber can receive the over the air signal of its local network affiliate. This predictive model determines in the first instance whether the subscriber is eligible to receive the imported signal of a distant network affiliate. The FCC is also inquiring into the appropriate methodology for making actual on-site measurements at the subscriber's location, which can be used to challenge the results of the predictive model. In enacting the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act of 2010 (STELA), Congress directed the Commission to undertake this rulemaking inquiry and to complete it by November 2010. Accordingly, the comment timeframe is very brief.
Background
Beginning with the Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1998 (SHVA), and continuing in each new piece of legislation that extended and modified the original SHVA, Congress granted satellite carriers the right to import the signals of distant network-affiliated television stations into the local markets of affiliates of the same network. To be eligible to receive the signal of a distant network affiliate, the subscriber must generally live in an “unserved household,” that is, a household that is unable to receive an over the air signal from its local network-affiliated station. Congress directed the FCC to establish a predictive method of determining in the first instance whether a household should be deemed unserved. The FCC developed the Individual Location Longley-Rice (ILLR) model, a computer program that predicts the strength of an analog over the air signal at a specific location, and accounts for the effects that terrain and certain other factors might have on the signal.
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