Court Opinion

ID: 9445030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:18:34.322455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:06.274612
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Pursuant to a proposal filed by Hudson Valley Broadcasting Company, Inc., found to comport with the Commission’s present television allocation plan and rules, the Commission assigned VHF Channel 10 to Vail Mills, New York. The stay which the majority grants would have the effect not merely of precluding the Commission from accepting, processing and holding any hearing on applications for that channel until the present action shall have been finally determined. It would do more. The majority intends it to do more. As a practical fact, the majority would stay the Commission’s hand “pending the outcome of the deintermixture proceeding.” Under the circumstances of this case, .such interference with the performance by the Commission of the duties entrusted to it does such violence to my understanding that I am bound to dissent.
The differences between my colleagues and me involve issues of policy in the division of authority as between the Commission and the court. It seems to me established that the public interest criterion should control. “Courts and administrative agencies are not to be regarded as competitors in the task of safeguarding the public interest. * * Courts no less than administrative bodies are agencies of government. Both are instruments for realizing public purposes.” 1
2Again the Court told us: “It is always easy to conjure up extreme and even oppressive possibilities in the exertion of authority. But courts are not charged with general guardianship against all potential mischief in the complicated tasks of government. * * Interference by the courts is not conducive to the development of habits of responsibility in administrative agencies.”*
Such thinking should govern the instant case. Here, the Commission out of its own expertise found that the public interest required that additional VHF television broadcasting on available Channel 10 be brought to the affected area at the earliest possible moment. The Commission says: “Refusing to make use of this valuable VHF frequency as contemplated by the present rules would, we believe, be a waste of valuable spectrum space for which active demand is indicated. Channel 10 in Vail Mills will represent a second television service to an appreciable percentage of families residing in the area as well as a first service to a significant number of families.” Surely the Commission is authorized to make such a finding and to interpret the Act so as to achieve its purposes.3
*752It is correct, as the majority say, that “Greylock and the Van Curler Broadcasting Corporation,4 both UHF operators in the area, protested 5 and then appealed.” Greylock, a UHF station, says it will be “irreparably injured” if the public is given what it wants, namely VHF television broadcasting.
Greylock’s president and principal stockholder, in his affidavit supporting its motion for an immediate stay, tells us that “Operation on Channel 10 is at least a year away.” But the Commission’s rule-making proceedings may not be concluded within a matter of years.
Greylock’s affidavit adds that if Channel 10 comes on the air, Greylock cannot successfully operate in the area to be served. This is another way of saying that the public demands the superior entertainment and the network broadcasting to be provided by VHF. I do not understand that any licensee is guaranteed freedom from competition. Indeed, § 304 of the Act, 47 U.S.C.A. § 304, provides:
“No station license shall be granted by the Commission until the applicant therefor shall have signed a waiver of any claim to the use of any particular frequency or of the ether as against the regulatory power of the United States because of the previous use of the same, whether by license or otherwise.”
Our case comes to this, Greylock, WMGT, insists that the court shall provide it with a listening audience. T have no doubt that Greylock can be heard both in the Hudson Valley proceeding and in the Commission’s rule-making hearings, now under way. Moreover, it can itself apply for Channel 10. Yet because the majority here finds “irreparable injury” it would stay the Commission’s hand.6
Greylock asks the court to stay the Commission’s hand to obviate “cancellation of UHF conversion orders.” Thus the court is asked to stimulate the sale of converted sets which will represent a totally unnecessary expenditure by the viewing public if and when Greylock closes down its UHF broadcasting. That is Greylock’s plan. Its president swears: “It will definitely be my recommendation to the petitioner’s Board of Directors that WMGT discontinue its UHF operations if and when Channel 10 is utilized at Vail Mills. I am certain that the Board will adopt my recommendations.” Since he is president and principal stockholder, it is reasonable to conclude that the corporation will do exactly as he says. So’, after the area is saturated with conversions, Greylock will immediately apply for Channel 10 if this court shall have refused to stay the Commission’s order.
Such evidence has been submitted. In my judgment, it falls far short of creating that degree of public injury for which Greylock in its own private interest is being permitted to speak. “The award of an interlocutory injunction by courts of equity has never been regarded *753as strictly a matter of right, even though irreparable injury may otherwise result to the plaintiff.” 7
I do not know what criteria will be relied upon by the Commission when it considers various proposals for “deintermixture.” Moreover an ultimate disposition does not necessarily depend upon deintermixture, especially since desirable programming and live network telecasting are important facets in the public’s choice. The November 10, 1955, “Notice of Proposed Rule Making” poses many of the complexities of a most difficult problem, the intricacies of which are singularly matters for Commission decision. Perhaps YHF operations on Channel 10 in this very area would have afforded the Commission data and information which would be invaluable in arriving at a correct result, whether it be a different allocation or a share-the-time form of broadcast or what not. At any rate, the solution lies singularly within the Commission’s orbit, and meanwhile a needed and a wanted service should be provided. Steps to insure that it will be provided could have been taken — - except for the court. I do not understand that we are the sole guardians of the “public interest.”
It may well be that there should be more, not less competition. It may well be that there should be fewer UHF stations with greater power permitted to those allocated to a given area. The Commission has here specifically found that operation of Channel 10 is in the public interest. “If time and changing circumstances reveal that the ‘public interest’ is not served by application of the Regulations, it must be assumed that the Commission will act in accordance with its statutory obligations.”8 I believe the Commission’s action was dutiful and within its province.
That is why I say my differences with my colleagues are fundamental. The claim for equitable relief is being treated as though the issue involved only a controversy between two litigants, while our true concern should involve a recognition of the proper distribution made by Congress for the exercise of legal authority by the Commission on the one hand, and by the courts on the other. It seems to me appropriate to recall what the Court said in the WJR case:9
“At the outset we note our complete agreement with the Court of Appeals that the Commission was under no duty to WJR to postpone final action on the Coastal Plains permit until it had disposed of the clear channel proceeding. As the court pointed out, WJR had no vested right in the ‘supposititious eventualities’ that the Commission at some indeterminate time might modify its rules governing clear channel stations. Furthermore, the judicial regulation of an administrative docket sought by WJR ‘would require [the Court of Appeals] to direct the order in which the Commission shall consider its cases.’ And this, as the court said, it ‘cannot do.’ 174 F.2d [at page] 231.”
But, here the majority would do it.

. Scripps-Howard Radio v. Federal Communications Commission, 1942, 316 U.S. 4, 15, 62 S.Ct. 875, 882, 86 L.Ed. 1229.

. Federal Communications Commission v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 1940, 309 U.S. 134, 146, 60 S.Ct. 437, 443, 84 L.Ed. 656.

. 47 U.S.C.A. § 301; § 303 (b), (d), (g), (h) and (r), among others ; § 403.
“The Supreme Court has admonished us many times to give ‘great weight’ to an agency’s interpretation of its governing statute * * Bazelon, J., in West Texas Utilities Co. v. N.L.R.B., 1950, 87 U.S.App.D.C. 179, 181, 184 F.2d 233, 235.
“We are in accord hero with the authorities which require great weight to be giveu an administrator’s interpretation of the statute he is directed and empowered to administer.” Prettyman, J., in Union Manufacturing Co. v. N.L.R.B., 1955, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 252, 255, 221 F.2d 532, 536, certiorari denied 1955, 349 U.S. 921, 75 S.Ct. 660.

. We unanimously denied Van Curler’s motion for a stay. Van Curler went off the air voluntarily, not because of a VHF allocation to Vail Mills but because Van Curler lost its network affiliation.

. Although not in point here, the desire of Congress may be seen from Public Law 391, appi’oved January 20, 1956, which amended § 309(c), the protest provision of the Act. 47 U.S.C.A. § 309(c). To accompany H.R. 5614 which became Public Law 391, Senate Rep. No. 1231 explained:
“The public may be deprived unnecessarily for a prolonged period of time of new radio or television service pending the outcome of the protest hearing. The Commission is now required, except where the continuance of an existing service is concerned, to stay the effectiveness of any protested grant until it issues a final decision on the protest after a full evidentiary hearing. Even where there is a pressing need for the service in question and little or no likelihood exists that there will be any grounds shown for setting aside the grant, the Commission is given no discretion to consider whether the public interest requires the grant to remain in effect.”

. Cf. Allen v. Grand Central Aircraft Co., 1954, 347 U.S. 535, 540, 74 S.Ct. 745, 98 L.Ed. 933.

. Yakus v. United States, 1944, 321 U.S. 414, 440, 64 S.Ct. 660, 674, 88 L.Ed. 834, and see Scripps-Howard Radio v. Federal Communications Commission, supra, note 1, 316 U.S. at pages 14, 15, 62 S.Ct. at page 882, 86 L.Ed. 1229.

. National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 1943, 319 U.S. 190, 225, 63 S.Ct. 997, 1013, 87 L.Ed. 1344; cf. Federal Communications Commission v. Sanders Bros. Radio Station, 1940, 309 U.S. 470, 475, 476, 642, 60 S.Ct. 693, 84 L.Ed. 869; eases cited in testimony of Commissioner Coy, Hearings Before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the House on S. 65S, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 124 et seq. (1951).

. Federal Communications Commission v. WJR, 1949, 337 U.S. 265, 272, 69 S.Ct. 1097, 1102, 93 L.Ed. 1353.