FCC Media Bureau’s decision last week to reject EchoStar 2-dish p...
FCC Media Bureau’s decision last week to reject EchoStar 2-dish plan for meeting local-into-local broadcast carriage requirements fails adequately to protect consumers from discriminatory conduct by company, Comrs. Martin and Copps said in statement Wed. Martin said decision gave…
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EchoStar “easy loophole” to continue its 2-dish policy and made it “needlessly burdensome” for consumers to get all of their available local broadcast channels. By merely providing consumers with notice that they will not receive local channels without 2nd dish, EchoStar can easily continue its two-dish policy and make some local broadcast channels inaccessible to consumers as practical matter, they said: “The Bureau’s decision is inconsistent with the [Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act], the Commission’s implementing rule and even the Bureau order’s own findings that such steps impose a discriminatory cost on certain local broadcast channels,” Martin and Copps said. They also questioned whether Bureau had authority to make such decision. “We believe that the Bureau -- on its own -- cannot propose an escape hatch that would essentially permit conduct that violates our congressional directive, violates FCC rules and is inconsistent with the language adopted in a Commission decision.”