Nexstar Asks Court to Overturn Station Ownership Rules

Nexstar Media Group has filed papers in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit asking the court to overturn FCC station ownership rules, which the agency recently upheld and tightened in its 2018 Quadrennial Regulatory Review of the broadcast ownership rules. 

TVTechnology reports the FCC is required to review its ownership rules every four years but was so late with the 2018 review that it began the 2022 review without completing it. The NAB sued and in September U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has issued a ruling giving the Federal Communications Commission 90 days to complete the 2018 quadrennial review of ownership rules. 

In December, the FCC completed that review by upholding most of the ownership rules and tightening some others. The ruling closes “a loophole that involves the transfer of [a network] station affiliation to a multicast stream or low-power station that can be used to evade rules,” FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenthal said at the time. 

In its filing in the Appeals Court in Texas, where Nexstar has its headquarters, Nexstar complained that “despite the Commission’s delay [in completing the review], the Quadrennial Order is replete with legal errors. First, the Quadrennial Order violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in several ways. 

Among other things, the Quadrennial Order fails to consider important data submitted by participants, reaches conclusions directly contrary to the record, and employs reasoning that is illogical and inconsistent. Second, the Order exceeds the Commission’s statutory authority because it tightens media ownership rules in spite of the statute’s clear deregulatory purpose and the lack of basis for such tightening. And third, the Order’s new content-based restriction on multicasting ignores important First Amendment and statutory authority concerns that participants raised directly with the Commission during the notice-and-comment period.”