The FCC Small Entity Compliance Guide offers guidance to...

The FCC Small Entity Compliance Guide offers guidance to small businesses, organizations and governmental jurisdictions for complying with the recently adopted rule that prohibits competing top-four TV stations from jointly negotiating retransmission consent agreements. The guide, released Monday, isn’t intended to replace the rules and, “therefore, final authority rests solely with the rules,” the guide said (http://bit.ly/1fKsJDO). Stations subject to the rule are prohibited from engaging in joint negotiation 30 days after the publication date of the order in the Federal Register, it said. A multichannel video programming distributor filing a complaint must do so by demonstrating that the alleged good-faith violation occurred after the effective date of the rule, it said.