(a) Upon receiving notification pursuant to § 76.94, a cable community unit located in whole or in part within the geographic zone for a network program, the network non-duplication rights to which are held by a commercial television station licensed by the Commission, shall not carry that program as broadcast by any other television signal, except as otherwise provided below.

Ask a business law question, get an answer ASAP!
Thousands of highly rated, verified business lawyers.
Click here to chat with a lawyer about your rights.

(b) For purposes of this section, the order of nonduplication priority of television signals carried by a community unit is as follows:

(1) First, all television broadcast stations within whose specified zone the community of the community unit is located, in whole or in part;

(2) Second, all smaller market television broadcast stations within whose secondary zone the community of the community unit is located, in whole or in part.

(c) For purposes of this section, all noncommercial educational television broadcast stations licensed to a community located in whole or in part within a major television market as specified in § 76.51 shall be treated in the same manner as a major market commercial television broadcast station, and all noncommercial educational television broadcast stations not licensed to a community located in whole or in part within a major television market shall be treated in the same manner as a smaller market television broadcast station.

(d) Any community unit operating in a community to which a 100-watt or higher power translator is located within the predicted Grade B signal contour of the television broadcast station that the translator station retransmits, and which translator is carried by the community unit shall, upon request of such translator station licensee or permittee, delete the duplicating network programming of any television broadcast station whose reference point (See § 76.53) is more than 88.5 km (55 miles) from the community of the community unit.

(e) Any community unit which operates in a community located in whole or in part within the secondary zone of a smaller market television broadcast station is not required to delete the duplicating network programming of any major market television broadcast station whose reference point (See § 76.53) is also within 88.5 km (55 miles) of the community of the community unit.

(f) A community unit is not required to delete the duplicating network programming of any television broadcast station which is significantly viewed in the cable television community pursuant to § 76.54.

(g) A community unit is not required to delete the duplicating network programming of any qualified NCE television broadcast station that is carried in fulfillment of the cable television system’s mandatory signal carriage obligations, pursuant to § 76.56.

Note:

With respect to network programming, the geographic zone within which the television station is entitled to enforce network non-duplication protection and priority of shall be that geographic area agreed upon between the network and the television station. In no event shall such rights exceed the area within which the television station may acquire broadcast territorial exclusivity rights as defined in § 73.658(m) of this Chapter, except that small market television stations shall be entitled to a secondary protection zone of 32.2 additional kilometers (20 additional miles). To the extent rights are obtained for any hyphenated market named in § 76.51, such rights shall not exceed those permitted under § 73.658(m) of this Chapter for each named community in that market.