Opinion ID: 2506
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Market Modification Decisions in the New York City DMA

Text: In 1996, Cablevision petitioned the FCC to exclude a number of communities from the markets of several local broadcast stations, including WRNN, a station licensed in Kingston, New York that transmitted its signal from Overlook Mountain in Woodstock, New York. The FCC's Cable Services Bureau (the Bureau) granted Cablevision's request in part and denied it in part, excluding communities in Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties from WRNN's market, but declining to exclude communities elsewhere, such as New York's Westchester County and Connecticut's Fairfield County. Cablevision Sys. Corp. ( 1996 CSB Order ), 11 F.C.C.R. 6453 (1996). In making both decisions, the Bureau noted that, in the New York DMA, reliance on the four enumerated factors alone would not allow it to take into account the particular difficulties faced by these stations in light of the purposes of the carriage rule. Id. at 6475 ¶ 50. Accordingly, the Bureau also considered the station's Grade B contour, i.e., the area within which viewers can receive its broadcast signal over the air, and the geography and terrain separating the target communities from the broadcasting station. Id. at 6480-81 ¶ 67. In 1997, the FCC affirmed the Bureau's decision, noting that Grade B contour coverage, in the absence of other determinative market facts (i.e. where the four statutory factors by themselves define the market, where there is no clear proof that the contour fails to reflect actual coverage, or where there is a terrain obstacle such as a mountain range or a significant body of water) is an efficient tool to adjust market boundaries because it is a sound indicator of the economic reach of a particular television station's signal. Market Modifications and the New York Area of Dominant Influence ( 1997 FCC Order ), [1] 12 F.C.C.R. 12262, 12271 ¶ 17 (1997) (footnote omitted). When WRNN and several other stations petitioned for review, this court endorsed the agency's reliance on Grade B contour in particular and factors not enumerated in the statute in general. We approved of the view that the four factors [enumerated in the statute] are not exclusive, and we held that [t]he FCC and the Cable Services Bureau, experts in the area of regulation of the television industry, carefully and properly analyzed the particular facts of the various petitions under the four factors listed in the statute and under non-statutory factors. WLNY-TV, Inc. v. FCC, 163 F.3d 137, 141-42 (2d Cir.1998).