Dish/Lilly Blackout Ends After FCC Intervention; ACA Calls for Retrans Rule Change
The FCC says a carriage disruption involving Dish Network and Lilly Broadcasting came to an end Monday night after calls from Chairman Ajit Pai's office to the two. The agency said after it "expressed its concern about the impact of…
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this dispute on the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands," the two restored One Caribbean TV carriage. Neither Dish nor Lilly commented. Pointing to that blackout, American Cable Association President Matt Polka in a docket 10-71 filing posted Tuesday pushed for a change in the FCC's retrans good faith negotiation rules. ACA said the agency should add to its list of per se bad faith actions broadcasters failing to provide an MVPD with authorization to retransmit signals, and pay-TV providers refusing to retransmit those signals, in any county where the Disaster Information Reporting System is activated. It also said the agency "should find it intolerable" that a broadcaster would use blocking of viewers during a state of emergency as a means of leveraging higher retransmission consent fees. Switching providers or installing antennas is a ridiculous broadcaster suggestion during an emergency like the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, ACA said.