Broadcasters have asked a federal court to
delay hearing its appeal of the FCC's political file online posting
requirement, suggesting that experience gained from this election cycle will
help it determine how, and if, to proceed. NAB says the FCC and its supporters
are OK with pushing back the schedule.
In
a petition to the U.S. court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia, the NAB asked the court to
defer NAB's opening brief from Oct. 4 to Feb. 15, 2013.
Back
in April, the FCC voted to require the top four affiliates in the top 50markets to start filing their political files online,
which went into effect Aug. 2. Both the FCC and the appeals court rejected
broadcaster requests for stays.
The
FCC still has a petition for reconsideration from broadcast groups before it,
and in asking the court top hold off, NAB points out that the
FCC could act on that, and has also said it would review the results of from
the 200 station postings before it applies that requirement to all other
stations starting in 2014.
"Based
on experience gained during the 2012 election cycle, NAB may conclude that it
is not necessary to proceed with this case," NAB said. And if,
instead, the results reinforce its argument that "requiring television
stations to post the prices for specific advertisements to a public website
immediately after the sales occur will cause serious competitive harm and place
NAB's members at a significant disadvantage to
non-broadcast competitors who are not required to post rate information on the
Internet." the FCC could still act on its petition for reconsideration,
which offered up an alternative where stations would provide aggregate rather
than individual prices.
NAB offered to provide a status report to the
court in January on any "relevant developments."
