Company: GHC
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000104889-25-000022
Chunk: 158

Company: Graham Holdings Co
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 158
---
 urge the FCC to ensure that broadcast operations are protected against interference from unlicensed devices operating in those bands. In November 2023, GMG timely filed a certification identifying all of its current, active authorizations in the 12.7-13.25 GHz band of spectrum, as required by the FCC as it considers whether to allow unlicensed devices to operate in that band. The extent to which GMG’s broadcast business will be affected by FCC action allowing unlicensed devices to operate in bands of spectrum used by broadcasters is not yet known.

Carriage of Local Broadcast Signals.  Congress has established, and periodically extended or otherwise modified, various statutory copyright licensing regimes governing the local and distant carriage of broadcast television signals on traditional cable and satellite systems. At present, the statutory copyright license does not extend to so-called “virtual” MVPDs (vMVPDs) that distribute programming via the internet. GMG cannot predict whether or how Congress may maintain or modify these regimes in the future, or what effect such decisions would have on its broadcast operations.

The Communications Act and FCC rules allow a commercial television broadcast station, under certain circumstances, to insist on mandatory carriage of its signal on cable systems serving the station’s market area (referred to as “must carry”). Alternatively, stations may elect, at three-year intervals, to forgo must-carry rights and allow their signals to be carried by cable systems only pursuant to a “retransmission consent” agreement negotiated by the broadcaster and the cable provider. A station that fails to make a timely carriage election is presumed to have elected “must carry.” 

Commercial television stations may also elect either mandatory carriage or retransmission consent with respect to the carriage of their signals on direct broadcast satellite (DBS) systems that provide “local-into-local” service (i.e., systems that distribute the signals of local television stations to viewers in the local market area). A station that fails to make a timely carriage election on a DBS system has no mandatory carriage right and retains only its retransmission consent rights.

10

Stations that elect retransmission consent may negotiate for compensation from cable and DBS systems in exchange for the right to carry their signals. Retransmission consent elections must be made every three years. The most recent election deadline was October 1, 2023. Each of GMG’s television stations has elected retransmission consent for both cable and DBS operators, and each is carried on all of the major cable and DBS systems serving each station’s respective local market