Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia (FAB) and other parties today petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to stay the FCC’s incentive spectrum auction pending judicial review. The action comes after being denied a similar request from the FCC.
FAB says the commission’s auction rules “contravene the express terms of the agency’s underlying statutory authority (the Spectrum Act of 2012), reverse decades of settled FCC policy on the “secondary” status of licensed low-power television, and will eliminate the channels currently used by countless LPTV stations, forcing many if not most larger-market LPTV licensees to shut down — a fact the agency concedes.”
