An FCC Media Bureau public notice (PN) on the...

the FCC released by NAB Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hE9INr). The processing guidelines, which warned that TV deals involving both joint sales agreements (JSAs) and financial arrangements between stations such as first refusal purchase rights and one company guaranteeing the loans of another would receive “careful scrutiny,” was seen by many as a warning that any such deals would not be approved (CD March 14 p). Issued two weeks before the FCC vote to make JSAs attributable, the PN was “unreasoned, premature, and inconsistent with longstanding Commission policies, objectives, and existing regulations,” said NAB. The additional documentation and extra scrutiny mentioned in the PN “are substantive requirements that change existing law, not mere processing guidelines,” and “constitute legislative rules that can only be adopted pursuant to notice and comment,” said NAB. Since the bureau had traditionally approved transactions involving JSAs on delegated authority, changing that standard is “novel” and requires a decision at the commission level, NAB said. When the processing guidelines were issued, several attorneys told us one likely reason for the move was to make it harder to go to the courts for companies whose transactions involving JSAs stalled at the Media Bureau level, since the bureau would be able to sit on an application rather than explicitly deny it. Without an actual denial, it’s more difficult to get a court to take action, the attorneys said. That kind of “shell game” is “inappropriate and unacceptable,” NAB said. The PN also doesn’t cite enough evidence or precedent as basis for the change, making it “arbitrary and capricious,” NAB said. “We encourage the Bureau to withdraw the Public Notice and eliminate the improper pressure on -- and de facto rule against -- the broadcast transactions at issue,” said NAB.