Must Carry Statute Doesn't Refer to Virtual Channels, PMCM Says

Time Warner Cable offers no statutory support for its opposition to PMCM’s must-carry complaint, said PMCM in an FCC reply filing Wednesday. Though TWC argued that a congressional requirement that a station be carried on the channel on which it is broadcast refers to the virtual channel encoded into a station’s program and system information protocol (PSIP) (see 1602100060), PMCM said that’s not the case. The statute’s language is “unmistakably clear on its face and not validly open to other interpretations more convenient to TWC," PMCM said. The statute "refers to the channel on which the station’s signal is in fact broadcast," rather than a virtual channel, PMCM said. Virtual channels are a “wholly Imaginary” concept, PMCM said. “Unlike a station’s RF channel, which is a matter of technical fact corresponding to the particular frequency on which the station actually transmits, ‘virtual channels’ are simply made-up fictions not necessarily having any relationship to reality.”