Broadcasters have no obligation to air harmful ads

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Dave SeylerBusiness opponents of the broadcasting community aren’t going to like this, but according to a GAO report, broadcasters can air in-house ads on issues in which they have a stake while turning down ads on the same issue from their opponents.


It is true that outside political advertisers must include an announcement identifying the sponsor for airing. Pertinent information about the advertising, even if it is provided cost-free (RBR-TVBR might say especially if it is provided cost-free) must be placed in the station’s public file.

However, those rules apply to outside advertisers. There are no such disclosure on political ads produced by the broadcasters themselves – no ID, no public file requirement, nada.

And it goes a step further. GAO wrote, “Currently, there is no legal obligation for broadcasters to air advertisements or programming presenting opposing views, including views that do not align with broadcasters’ interests.”

GAO said it was asked to do this study, and was attempting to accumulate statistics from 2007 through 2012. However, stations are only required to keep political ad info in their public files for two years, so studying that time frame proved impossible.

In releasing its report, it said it was making no recommendation of any kind to the FCC.

RBR-TVBR observation: We are happy to note that GAO confirmed our take on this issue when it came up just recently.

Discussing a complaint from the American Television Alliance after CBS stations in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Las Vegas and Pittsburgh turned down its ad supporting the since-withdrawn Rockefeller-Thune “Local Choice” legislation, we wrote in an observation:

“ATVA believes CBS is behaving unethically, but that’s a gray area– a station should not be forced to run an ad that is damaging to its own business.”
Apparently we were barking up the right tree – according to GAO, CBS is NOT required to run a self-damaging ad.

We also noted that in that immediate case, CBS might have been doing ATVA a favor – it could have controlled the timing of the ATVA ad’s airing and its own point-by-point rebuttal ad. CBS could have taken down every single point in an ATVA ad and used as much time as it wanted to counter-attack.

At any rate, the law is the law and the regulations are the regulations. There now may be an attempt to change things so that broadcasters DO have to accept advertising detrimental to their own businesses – and in a way, it would seem to be fair. We have personally and lately seen broadcast ads urging viewers to support their local broadcast station at a time when cable is trying to tip the scale against broadcasters – and we saw these ads on a broadcast signal retransmitted by a cable system.

MVPDs would likely have a much stronger case saying this is unfair, than they do with Local Choice, which would impose a la carte rules on broadcast but not on cable channels.

But if MVPDs do try to change the rules in this count, we wish them luck. The process has only just started, in the form of the GAO report, and it will be likely be years and years if and when anything changes regardless of who has the stronger case.