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Parties Involved:
Federal Communications Commission
Appellee
New Jersey Television Corporation
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2004 Decided December 28, 2004

NO. 03-1444

NEW JERSEY TELEVISION CORPORATION,

APPELLANT

V.

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION,

APPELLEE

Appeal of an Order of the

Federal Communications Commission

Stuart W. Nolan, Jr. argued the cause for appellant. With

him on the briefs was Barry D. Wood.

Stanley R. Scheiner, Counsel, Federal Communications

Commission, argued the cause for appellee. On the brief were

John A. Rogovin, General Counsel, Daniel M. Armstrong,

Associate General Counsel, and C. Grey Pash, Jr., Counsel.

Before: HENDERSON and ROGERS, Circuit Judges, and

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: New Jersey Television

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Corporation (“NJTV”) appeals from a Federal Communications

Commission order dismissing its application to build a lowpower television broadcast station. The FCC ordered dismissal,

seventeen years after NJTV filed, because the station would

unduly interfere with a full service television station on the same

channel. New Jersey Television Corporation (NJTC), 18 FCC

Rcd 24409, 24409 (2003) (citing 47 C.F.R. § 74.706). NJTV

now requests us to order the FCC to keep the application on file

and give it preferential consideration if the channel becomes

available again. Alternatively, NJTV requests an order of

“displacement relief”—permission that the Commission in some

cases grants licensees and permittees to modify their

broadcasting to reduce interference and thus preserve their

broadcast entitlement—for which it would have been eligible

had the FCC granted the application promptly. NJTV lacks

standing to make the first request and failed to assert the second

before the Commission clearly enough to meet the requirements

of 47 U.S.C. § 405(a). Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal. 

* * *

NJTV applied in 1981 to build a low-power station on

Channel 42 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In 1983, pursuant to

§ 309(i) of the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 309(i), the

FCC established lotteries—in lieu of comparative hearings—to

grant such licenses when mutually exclusive applicants filed.

Three years later, the FCC accepted NJTV’s application for

filing and held a lottery. NJTV lost, but the lottery became moot

in 1998. That year, the FCC granted Channel 42 to WTXF for

use in that station’s transition from analog to digital

broadcasting; it then dismissed both the lottery winner’s and

NJTV’s applications. WTXF may operate one analog and one

digital channel until the digital transition concludes, at which

point WTXF will return one channel to the FCC. See 47 U.S.C.

§ 309(j)(14). NJTV petitioned for reconsideration, which the

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FCC staff denied. The FCC affirmed the dismissal in 2003, and

NJTV now appeals.

Our analysis begins with “[t]he requirement that jurisdiction

be established as a threshold matter.” Steel Co. v. Citizens for

a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 94 (1998). The priority for

jurisdictional issues, however, doesn’t control the sequence in

which we resolve non-merits issues that prevent us from

reaching the merits. Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S.

574, 584-85 (1999); see also Grand Council of the Crees v.

FERC, 198 F.3d 950, 954 (D.C. Cir. 2000). One such issue is

Article III standing, the familiar elements of which are (1) injury

in fact, (2) causation, and (3) redressability. Lujan v. Defenders

of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). Apropos injury in fact,

the harm must be “concrete and particularized . . . and actual or

imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Id. (citations and

internal quotation marks omitted). Loss of an opportunity to

compete for a benefit may be an injury in fact if it is not merely

“illusory.” Ranger Cellular v. FCC, 348 F.3d 1044, 1050 (D.C.

Cir. 2003).

NJTV here asserts “an interest in not being exposed to

competing proposals in a prohibitive auction scenario.” App.

Br. at 17. In other words, if WTXF returns Channel 42 to the

FCC and the FCC makes Channel 42 available again, NJTV

hopes that the Commission will assign the channel to one of the

undismissed applicants from the 1986 lottery. With NJTV being

evidently the only such applicant (if it prevails here), its

prospects of securing the channel would be superb. 

This claim is something of an upgrade from what NJTV

sought explicitly from the Commission, which was merely that

its application be kept on file. But that deficiency doesn’t in

itself undermine NJTV’s assertion of standing here, as the

Article III requirement “kicks in” only “[w]hen the petitioner

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later seeks judicial review.” See Sierra Club v. EPA, 292 F.3d

895, 899 (D.C. Cir. 2002). The question remains whether any

combination of fact or doctrine, presented in the administrative

record or before the court, puts flesh on NJTV’s notion that

being kept on file would have had a real prospect of leading to

preferential treatment. Id. at 899-901. No such combination

appears.

The digital transition may not end at a precisely foreseeable

time, but it will end. An interest in the enforcement of cut-off

rules, which is what NJTV is really asserting, nevertheless “is

just that—an interest, not a vested right.” Bachow

Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 237 F.3d 683, 688 (D.C. Cir.

2001). Even so, if the FCC had a policy of protecting the

interests of parties who prevailed under ancient cut-off rules and

competitions, NJTV’s prospects of securing the desired

entitlement still might be ranked a “realistic possibility.” See

Ranger Cellular, 348 F.3d at 1050. 

But NJTV points to no such policy, and we can discern

none. Indeed, on the very day it dismissed NJTV’s application,

the Mass Media Bureau unceremoniously threw out the lottery

winner’s as well. Further, the Commission appears to have a

practice of moving on from obsolete allocation systems when

new ones become available. Cf. Bachow, 237 F.3d at 686.

Finally, 47 U.S.C. § 309(j)(1) seems to require auctioning

generally, subject to exceptions that appear not to include lowpower television. See § 309(j)(2). The FCC has in fact read

§ 309(j) as placing low-power stations within the auction

process. In re Amendment of Parts 73 and 74 of the

Commission’s Rules To Establish Rules for Digital Low Power

Television, Television Translator, and Television Booster

Stations and To Amend Rules for Digital Class A Television

Stations, 19 FCC Rcd 19331, at ¶ 163, 2004 FCC LEXIS 5632

(2004). We of course do not prejudge the validity of this

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conclusion, but it is ample—even if it were later found to be an

invalid reading of § 309(j)—to demolish any idea that the

Commission generally preserves the results of ancient lotteries

in amber. NJTV has come nowhere near showing that the

victory it desires is a “realistic possibility.” 

NJTV next requests the displacement relief to which it

would have been entitled had the FCC granted the application by

1997—when the relevant regulation protecting digital channels

took effect. See 47 C.F.R. § 74.706. Of course, the FCC must

be afforded an “opportunity to pass” on an appealable issue as

“a condition precedent to judicial review.” 47 U.S.C. § 405(a);

see BDPCS, Inc. v. FCC, 351 F.3d 1177, 1182 (D.C. Cir. 2003).

If the disputed issue was not raised before the FCC, we will

nonetheless review it if “a reasonable Commission necessarily

would have seen the [issue] as part of the case presented to it.”

Time Warner Entertainment Co. v. FCC, 144 F.3d 75, 81 (D.C.

Cir. 1998). 

NJTV failed to satisfy § 405(a). In its petition for

reconsideration, NJTV did not indicate that its request for

displacement relief arose from a claim of unreasonable FCC

delay. The theory crystallized slightly in NJTV’s application for

full Commission review, which alleged that NJTV “would have

been unquestionably eligible for a displacement frequency” had

the FCC not delayed processing. The solution NJTV proposed,

however, was for the FCC to “at least give NJTV the

opportunity to pursue its dream of New Jersey-oriented service

once adequate spectrum . . . becomes available again.” That

request was too vague to provide the FCC an opportunity to pass

on the idea that the FCC’s delay had been so unreasonable as to

entitle NJTV to the remedy of being treated as if it had prevailed

in the initial competition. See Bartholdi Cable Co., Inc. v. FCC,

114 F.3d 274, 279 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (“The Commission need not

sift pleadings and documents to identify arguments that are not

stated with clarity by a petitioner.”) (internal quotation marks

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and citation omitted). 

Accordingly, the appeal is 

Dismissed.

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