Filing Opposes Better Treament for Political Spots

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, March 2, 2015

In a filing with the FCC opposing a petition seeking preferential treatment for political candidates over other advertisers, NAB says that both Congress and the Commission have rejected the basic premise of the oppossed petition -- that stations must treat candidate spots better than the equivalent commercial spots in a class of time.

In its petition, the NAB describes the practices of many stations, which sell multiple classes of time at various prices with varying rights as to preemption. "Unsurprisingly, non-preemptible time is more expensive to purchase than time with lesser preemption rights," wrote NAB. "When a station sells multiple classes of preemptible time, stations also must have a method to decide which advertisements in a particular class should be preempted in the event there are more purchasers of ads in a class than there are spots available to any advertiser. One such method of deciding which ads to preempt is referred to as the Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) method."

NAB continued, "The petitioner here requests the Commission to declare that broadcast stations selling multiple classes of preemptible time may not use the objective LIFO method to preempt candidate advertisements, even when stations apply that method to decide which commercial ads to preempt."

"An examination of the terms and legislative history of the lowest unit charge provision of the Communications Act demonstrates that Congress did not intend for candidate advertisements to receive better treatment than commercial ads in the same classes of time include fixed, perpetual auction, non-preemptible, immediately preemptible, preemptible with one week notice and run-of-schedule."

NAB pointed out that, "according to the Commission, the language and legislative history of the Act show that Congress 'specifically rejected' that approach. The Commission, moreover, has already addressed and rejected the petitioner's arguments about preemption."

The filing concludes that the current petition "fails on all levels," as it asks the Commission to adopt an approach contrary to Congressional intent and thus beyond the scope of the FCC's authority.