FCC Proposes Email for Various MVPD Notifications

The FCC will vote July 10 on a proposal by small and midsized cable operators that it allow for email delivery of various required notices to broadcasters, including beginning service in a market, deleting or repositioning a TV station, and facilities changes--like moving a head-end.

Related: ACA Seeks Email Delivery of TV Station Notifications

ACA Connects argued last fall that if the FCC was going to allow broadcasters to use email to make carriage elections, as the FCC plans to vote to do at the same meeting, it should allow some turnabout as fair play.

According to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the July meeting, the FCC will propose doing just that.

Specifically the NPRM would propose that 1) "cable operators be required to distribute these written notices to broadcast television stations electronically via email to an address designated by the station in the [FCC's]online public inspection file (OPIF)."

The item also seeks comment on extending that to satellite, as the FCC is asking about carriage election notifications. It also wants to know whether and how to apply the new regime to low power TVs and translators, who are not required to maintain those online inspection files.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.