PMCM Request Should Be Denied, Meredith, CBS Say

No other separately owned TV station operates on a sub-channel that corresponds to the major channel of a competing TV station, Meredith and CBS said in an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-150 on PMCM's channel request. The Media Bureau assigned PMCM's WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, to virtual channel 33, though PMCM is seeking to be assigned virtual channel 3.10. PMCM has said it needs 3.10 because viewers’ TVs don’t tune to the Media Bureau-assigned channel when “33” is entered on a remote. That’s “a problem that does not exist for these viewers if they tune ‘33.1,’” CBS and Meredith said. “Of all the [program and system information protocol] channels potentially available for WJLP, PMCM still insists on the one channel that the Media Bureau expressly has determined it cannot have.”