Dear Expert

Saving Trees, Reducing Stress

There’s a new system in place for stations to declare their carriage elections. Regulatory maven SCOTT PIPPIN explains.

Dear Expert, I keep hearing about sending our station’s retransmission consent and must- carry elections electronically this year. Do we still have to mail out stacks of election letters? —Muddled in Mississippi

Dear Mississippi,

Worry not! Yes, there are changes in how you’ll make your station’s carriage elections this fall, but they are all for the better. Retransmission consent and must-carry elections will now be handled electronically. This will require a few initial adjustments, but after that, it should be smooth sailing.

First, a little background: every three years, commercial broadcast TV stations are required to tell the multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) in their markets whether they want to “elect” retransmission consent (which requires negotiation of a carriage fee) or must-carry (forcing distributors to carry a given station whether they want to or not, but with no compensation to the station). We are now in a carriage election year, and the next three-year cycle is 2021-2023.

In the past, making this election involved an exercise in labor-intensive, time-consuming and sometimes-expensive paperwork. First, stations had to identify all the MVPDs in their markets, making sure that they didn’t miss any changes in ownership or operations that occurred since the last three-year election. Next, they had to make sure they sent the information to the right contacts at those MVPDs. This was not always a simple task, due to turnovers in personnel, corporate reorganizations, acquisitions or relocations.

Next, stations prepared individual election letters for each MVPD, which they were required to send by certified mail. If a letter came back from the post office unclaimed, stations tried to figure out what went wrong and sent out a replacement letter. This lengthy, slow-moving process sometimes resulted in a last-minute mad dash to the post office to try to beat the Oct. 1 deadline.

Missed deadlines meant that stations were stuck with the default status: must-carry for cable, and retransmission consent for satellite carriage. This could be an expensive consequence if a station had to forego retransmission fees.

Beginning this fall, the process will be significantly streamlined. Election notifications will be handled electronically. Stations will upload their choices to their online public inspection files, and in some instances, send emails to MVPDs. They will not have to send individual election letters by postal mail.

A nice feature of the new system is that if a station chooses the same election for all MVPDs in its market, it can upload a single “blanket” statement to that effect. The statement can be something short and simple like, “[Station call sign] elects [must-carry/ retransmission consent] on all MVPDs in the [XX] Designated Market Area for the 2021-2023 carriage cycle.”

The new electronic system allows stations to send election notices via email, rather than certified mail, to the affected MVPDs. But stations only need to email cable systems and satellite providers if they are changing

their election from the previous cycle. For example, if a station elected must-carry in the 2018-2020 cycle, but it wants retransmission consent for the upcoming cycle, it should inform the affected MVPDs by email, and also upload the election notice to its public inspection file. “Carbon copies” of these emails must be sent to the Federal Communications Commission at ElectionNotices@fcc.gov, and copies of the emails must be placed in the station’s public inspection file. Program distributors are supposed to acknowledge receipt of the emails. If they don’t, stations must call the MVPD. Even if a given MVPD doesn’t respond, a station’s choice is deemed effective when it uploads its election notice to its online public inspection file. Stations are required to upload to their online public inspection files the contact information of the employee who handles carriage inquiries. The information goes in a new section of the files called Carriage Election Contact Information. The deadline to upload this contact information was July 31, 2020, but if your station has not done so yet, upload it as soon as possible. MVPDs were required to upload their contact information to a separate database called the Cable Operations and Licensing System (COALS), also by July 31. One final note: there are slightly different procedures for noncommercial, low power TV, and translator stations. Be sure to check with a broadcast attorney if you operate one of them. Now you’re ready to make your electronic 2020 election notices. And you can save postage and trees in Do you have a professional puzzle that MFM and BCCA experts might be able to the process.

answer? We’ll mine the contact base and find the right person to answer your question. Just contact TFM editor Janet Stilson at TFMeditor@mediafinance.org. Stations only need to email cable systems and satellite providers if they are changing their election from the previous cycle.

Scott Pippin is senior counsel at Lerman Senter PLLC. He can be reached at spippin@lermansenter.com or (202) 416-1081.