Cable System Requests Must Carry for TV Station
In one of those "man bites dog" situations, the FCC yesterday decided a case where a cable television system asked that the FCC add the communities that it serves to a nearby television market so that it could carry a television station from that nearby market. This is in contrast to the usual market modification cases where a cable system will ask for relief from its television carriage obligations by suggesting that the FCC delete a community from a station's DMA, or where a television station will attempt to add communities to its market to get must-carry rights on a cable system in communities where the station would otherwise not be carried.
This case arose when a cable system located in Oklahoma wanted to carry a television station from Oklahoma City, even though the system served areas of Oklahoma technically in the Shreveport, Louisiana market. Because a network affiliation agreement did not allow the Oklahoma City station to give retransmission consent to a cable system outside its market, the cable system decided to change the market so that the system would be considered to be in the station's DMA. A creative though somewhat unorthodox solution to an unusual problem
