Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 520 U.S. 180, 44 (1997)

Page:   Index   Previous  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45  46  47  48  49  50  51  Next

Cite as: 520 U. S. 180 (1997)

Opinion of the Court

adequate substitutes for guaranteed carriage. The record suggests independent broadcasters simply are not in a position to engage in complex antitrust litigation, which involves extensive discovery, significant motions practice, appeals, and the payment of high legal fees throughout. See JSCR

¶¶ 556-576 (App. 1528-1537); Meek Declaration ¶ 58 (Record, Defendants' Joint Submission of Expert Affidavits and Reports in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment, Vol. II.A, Exh. 2). An administrative complaint procedure, although less burdensome, would still require stations to incur considerable expense and delay before enforcing their rights. As it is, some public stations have been forced by limited resources to forgo pursuing administrative complaints under the Cable Act to obtain carriage. See Declaration of Carolyn Lewis ¶ 13 (App. 548-549); Declaration of John Beabout

¶ 11 (App. 526-527). Those problems would be compounded if instead of proving entitlement under must-carry, the station had to prove facts establishing an antitrust violation.

There is a final argument made by appellants that we do not reach. Appellant Time Warner Entertainment raises in its brief a separate First Amendment challenge to a subsection of the Cable Act, 47 U. S. C. § 534(c), that requires carriage on unfilled must-carry channels of low power broadcast stations if the FCC determines that the station's programming "would address local news and informational needs which are not being adequately served by full power television broadcast stations because of the geographic distance of such full power stations from the low power station's community of license." § 534(h)(2)(B). We earlier reserved this question and invited the District Court to address it on remand. See Turner, 512 U. S., at 643-644, n. 6. Because this question has received "only the most glancing" attention, ibid., from the District Court and the parties, we have no more information about "the operation of, and justifications for, the low-power broadcast provisions," ibid., on which to base an informed determination than we did on the

223

Page:   Index   Previous  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45  46  47  48  49  50  51  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007