Content area
Full Text
WASHINGTON - You're a local TV station on digital's bleeding edge - where Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell wants you to be - pumping out quantities of high-definition TV programming unlike any other station in the country.
The law says you're entitled to carriage on direct-broadcast satellite systems, but, paradoxically, the FCC won't let it happen.
That strange scenario played out two weeks ago, when the FCC told the only TV station operating around-the-clock in high definition format that it was currently ineligible for carriage on direct-broadcast satellite platforms.
In a decision made by the agency's Media Bureau, the FCC ruled that station WHDT in Stuart, Fla., could not assert its DBS must-carry rights because the agency lacked rules regulating terms of DBS carriage of digital TV stations.
Last August, WHDT filed a compliant after EchoStar Communications Corp. refused the station's carriage request.
"We are pleased...