Court Opinion

ID: 9451098
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:06:22.533261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:34.318123
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
To expedite the business of the Federal Communications Commission, Congress amended the Communications Act to dispense with a hearing requirement if the petition opposing a grant lacks “specific allegations of fact sufficient to show * * * that a grant of the application would be prima facie inconsistent with [the public interest, convenience and necessity].”1 In the Carroll context, this means that the petition must allege specific facts sufficient to show public injury, i. e., loss of service to the public as a consequence of economic loss to petitioner. In Missouri-Illinois Broadcasting Co.,2 the Commission listed the types of information necessary to require a Carroll hearing. The Commission sent petitioner and others a copy of its opinion in Missouri-Illinois Broadcasting Co., and of our opinion in the KGMO case,3 which held that the more detailed pleadings could be required upon proper notice. The accompanying letter stated:
In the event that you do not submit the information in answer to the questions set forth in the enclosed opinion [Missouri-Illinois Broadcasting Co.], the Commission will act on the application and the petition to deny as originally filed.
Petitioner answered that it did not intend to submit additional information. Thus the primary issue before us is whether the Commission erred in holding petitioner’s pleadings to be “too generally stated, speculative, and not sufficiently related to the conclusions drawn by the petitioner.”
Missouri-Illinois Broadcasting Co. requires that a petition “state, in detail, how a grant of [the] proposal would cause a net loss or degradation of program service to the area,” and lists several specific questions related to public injury. For example: What public service programs would have to be discontinued? What public service programs would have to be shifted to other time segments ? What is the cost of carrying these programs and what savings would be effected in dropping or shifting this programming?
The failure of a petitioner to answer any particular question or questions would not automatically foreclose a hearing. The test is whether “it is within the Commission’s authority to require more information than appellant gave.”4 Petitioner’s allegations of public harm consist of generalizations and conclusions, and do not provide the requisite specific information. Thus the Commission was justified in requiring more in this case.
The majority holds that a hearing is required because there are “substantial and material questions” of controverted fact. It finds “serious issues tendered by appellant as to the impact upon it, in the asserted state of the Laredo economy, of the impending competition from in-tervenor * * But a raging controversy on the question of economic injury to petitioner cannot be “material” *839when the petitioner fails to allege sufficiently specific facts to show public harm.
The majority’s decision thus undercuts the rationale for the statutory pleading requirements. There is sound reason to require specific allegations of public injury on the CarroV, issue. That issue may involve a mass of conflicting economic data and hearings are therefore likely to be lengthy and hotly contested. Thus the public may be unduly delayed in obtaining the benefits of the new facility. If the requirement of specificity in pleading public injury appears unreasonable, it is the Carroll doctrine, not the requirement, which needs reconsideration.5

. 74 Stat. 889 (1960), 47 U.S.C. § 309(d) (1) (1964).

. 3 Pike & Fischer Radio Reg.24 232 (1964).

. KGMO Radio-Television, Inc. v. Federal Communications Comm’n, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 336 F.2d 920 (1964).

. Id. at 922.

. See criticism of Carroll doctrine in Givens, Refusal of Radio and Television Licenses on Economic Grounds, 46 Va.L.Rev. 1391 (1960).