The Time Warner Cable system in Los Angeles has won the right to deny full must-carry to a broadcast station in the area. The FCC granted Time Warner's petition to modify the Los Angeles designated market area (DMA) for KHIZ Ch. 64 in Barstow, Calif. "for the purposes of cable television mandatory broadcast signal carriage rules."
KHIZ previously tried to derail Time Warner's carriage denial by filing an opposition with the FCC. In response, Time Warner said that it had never carried KHIZ on its systems, and that KHIZ was essentially out of range of those system communities convinced the FCC to grant the petition. Time Warner said its "cable communities are located 79 to 102 miles from Barstow, mountain ranges exist between KHIZ and the cable communities, and that KHIZ fails to provide a good quality signal to the cable communities." Most of those communities in question are L.A. suburbs--Encino, Northridge, Van Nuys, El Segundo, Huntington Beach, Pasadena, etc. Time Warner also supplied the FCC with a propagation study that demonstrated KHIZ was not getting a Grade B signal into the contested communities.
The FCC found that Time Warner met the statutory criteria for market modification, i.e., KHIZ had no historical carriage on the systems or in the communities, no evidence of viewing patterns in noncable households, no local news, sports or other local service to the community. KHIZ submitted that it's programs "Money Matters" and "The Macabre Theatre" fulfilled the local-service criteria. The FCC thought not.
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