American Television Alliance Presents FCC With Good Faith Wish List

The American Television Alliance has told the Federal Communications Commission that, as part of its review of good faith retransmission consent negotiations, it should prohibit blocking of Internet content, forced bundling and blackouts of "marquee" events. That came in comments filed at the FCC on Dec 1 on its congressionally mandated review of the factors it should consider in its "totality of circumstances" test for determining whether the negotiations are being conducted in good faith.

In addition to reviewing those, ATVA says the FCC is empowered to adopt new rules that restrict practices that it concludes fail that "totality of circumstances" good faith test. ATVA, whose members include cable operators, satellite operators, and others, say the FCC should also rely on labor laws when a multichannel video programming distributor has offered to "true up" payments when negotiations are concluded, and should use the public interest standard so that it takes into account the impact on viewers, not just parties to the negotiation. ATVA points out that the good faith standard is only found in labor law and retransmission negotiations rules, so that is the obvious place for the FCC to go for guidance.