UHF discount gets its day in court

Today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will hear a case about the UHF discount. The case is brought by petitioners – public interest groups Free Press, Common Cause, and the United Church of Christ’s communications policy arm – against the FCC. At the center of the case is whether Trump’s FCC acted arbitrarily when it reversed an Obama FCC decision to eliminate the UHF discount.

The UHF discount is a method of measuring audience reach. After the broadcast industry’s transition to digital, the discount is technically obsolete. The only purpose it serves – and the reason Trump’s FCC reversed the Obama FCC’s decision – is to allow broadcast companies to skirt FCC rules and consolidate.

Late last year, FCC Chairman Pai gutted the country’s media ownership rules, a gift to corporate media. The UHF discount reversal was part of the hack-and-slash campaign. Pai also opened an FCC proceeding into the national audience reach limits, which the Commission lacks the authority to change, according to Pai’s fellow Republican on the Commission.

The outcome of the case has far-reaching consequences. Most immediately, the Sinclair-Tribune merger relies on the outdated UHF discount to avoid congressional mandated audience reach limits – the merged company would reach 72 percent of US television households, an unprecedented scale. No UHF discount, no merger. More broadly, the UHF discount remaining in effect would facilitate massive consolidation across the broadcast industry in the coming years. This, in turn, would kill jobs, reduce viewpoint diversity, and hurt the localism our communities rely on.

Last month, attorneys general in eight states – Illinois, California, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia – called on the FCC to maintain strict national audience reach limits. In a filing to the FCC, the AGs argued that maintaining the UHF discount is “unjustified and arbitrary.”

Links:

Pai’s FCC continues policy approach: giveaways for Sinclair, attacks on the poor (Speed Matters, Oct. 27, 2017)

Eight state AGs call for strict national audience reach limits (Speed Matters, Feb. 28, 2018)