4 Affiliates Associations Seek to Intervene to Back Petitions Challenging FCC’s QR Order

The ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates associations seek leave to intervene in support of the four petitions for review consolidated in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that challenge the FCC’s Dec. 26 quadrennial review order for allegedly violating Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act (see 2403050075), said their unopposed joint motion Friday.

The consolidated petitions pending in the 8th Circuit are from Zimmer Radio (docket 24-1380), Beasley Media Group (docket 24-1480), NAB (docket 24-1493) and Nexstar Media Group (docket 24-1516).

The affiliates associations seek to intervene in support of the petitioners because the FCC’s order “is arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by record evidence, and otherwise unlawful,” said their motion. Despite acknowledging that far more sources of video programming are available today than when the local television ownership rule was first adopted, the commission “refused to loosen its decades-old regulation of local television ownership to reflect today’s increasingly competitive media landscape, as mandated by Section 202(h),” it said.

The FCC instead changed its rules in a manner “that further expands those regulations,” said the motion. The order “thus turns Section 202(h) on its head,” relying on a “facially deregulatory provision to increase regulatory burdens on television stations,” it said. To reach that “counterintuitive and unlawful result,” the commission violated the statute and “engaged in patently arbitrary reasoning that ran counter to -- and failed to meaningfully engage with -- record evidence,” it said.

“Worse still,” the order is unconstitutional, said the motion. It imposes a content-based speech restriction on multicasting, “openly flouting and failing to meaningfully analyze the First Amendment and statutory issues raised by commenters in the record,” it said.

The order directly regulates the affiliates associations and their members, said the motion. And It harms them “by not only retaining but significantly expanding outdated television ownership regulations” that severely hinder the ability of television broadcast station owners to participate “in the modern media marketplace,” it said.