47 U.S.C. § 338 — Carriage of local television signals by satellite carriers

(a) Carriage obligations. (1) If a satellite carrier retransmits (under section 122 of title 17) a TV station's programming to subscribers inside that station's own local market, it must carry every TV broadcast station in that market if the station asks — subject to the retransmission-consent rules in section 325(b). (2) Besides the remedies TV stations already have under section 501(f) of title 17, the Commission can use its own authority to enforce this obligation — but a station doesn't have to go through the Commission first before pursuing a 501(f) remedy. (3) A low-power TV station whose signal is carried under section 119(a)(14) of title 17 has no right to insist on carriage under this section, even if the carrier is already carrying other stations from the same market — and this doesn't affect the noncommercial-station rules in (c). (4) A satellite carrier serving more than 5,000,000 U.S. subscribers had to retransmit, within 1 year after December 8, 2004, the analog signals of every TV station in a local market located in a non-contiguous state (like Hawaii or Alaska), and within 30 months, the digital signals too. Those retransmissions had to reach nearly all subscribers in each station's market, and at least one market's signals had to reach nearly all subscribers statewide, at no higher cost than local retransmission costs in other states. The Commission also had to write rules, within a year, on how stations in that state could choose between mandatory carriage and negotiating retransmission consent. (5) For high-definition (HD) signals of noncommercial educational stations: (A) a satellite carrier already offering HD service in a market before the 2010 STELA law had to start carrying those stations' HD signals too — in half its HD markets by the end of 2010, and in every HD market by the end of 2011; (B) a carrier that started offering HD service on or after that law's enactment had to carry all qualified noncommercial educational stations' HD signals in that market right away. (b) Good signal required. (1) A station wanting carriage must pay the cost of delivering a good-quality signal to the carrier's designated receiving facility, or to another facility that at least half of the market's stations accept. (2) The regulations required by (g) spell out exactly what this means. (c) Duplication not required. (1) A carrier doesn't have to carry a commercial station whose signal substantially duplicates another local commercial station it already carries, and doesn't have to carry more than one local station from the same network in one market — unless those stations are licensed to communities in different states. (2) The Commission must write rules limiting how many noncommercial stations a carrier has to carry in one market, aiming to match what cable systems must do under section 535. (d) Channel positioning. A carrier doesn't have to place a local station on any particular channel number or in any particular order — but it must put local stations on channels next to each other (contiguous), and must give access to those signals at a fair price and in a fair way on any remote control, on-screen guide, or menu. (e) Compensation for carriage. A carrier can't accept or ask for money or anything of value in exchange for carrying a local station or for where it places that station on the channel lineup — except that a station can still be required to pay the cost of getting a good signal to the carrier's receiving facility, as described in (b). (f) Remedies. (1) If a station believes a carrier isn't meeting its duties under (b) through (e), it must first notify the carrier in writing, explaining why. The carrier then has 30 days to respond in writing — either fixing the problem or explaining why it thinks it's already in compliance. If the station disagrees with that response, it can file a complaint with the Commission explaining exactly how the carrier failed and why. (2) The Commission must give the carrier a chance to present its own evidence and arguments. (3) Within 120 days of the complaint, the Commission must decide whether the carrier met its obligations. If not, it orders the carrier to fix the problem; if the carrier did meet them, the Commission dismisses the complaint. (g) Carriage of local stations on a single reception antenna. (1) When a carrier retransmits a market's local stations, a subscriber must be able to receive all of them using just one antenna and its equipment. (2) If the carrier also offers those same signals in HD, subscribers must be able to get the HD versions on a single antenna too — though that antenna can be a different, separate one from the antenna used in (1). (h) Additional notices to subscribers, networks, and stations. (1) If a carrier provides a subscriber with a distant network signal that duplicates a network they could get locally, once the local signal of that same network becomes available under this section, the carrier must — within 60 days — send the subscriber a notice offering to switch them to the local signal, and warning that if they don't respond within 60 days, they'll lose the distant signal but can still get the local one. If the subscriber chooses to switch, the carrier must make the switch within 10 days after that 60-day window closes; if the subscriber doesn't respond, the carrier must cut off the distant signal within that same 10 days. (2) Before a carrier starts carrying a new local market's stations, it must give each station's licensee at least 60 days' notice of its plan, the receiving facility location, the station's right to choose between carriage under this section and negotiating retransmission consent under section 325(b), and the fact that the station has only 30 days to decide — or it loses the right to demand carriage for the rest of that 3-year cycle. These notices must be sent by certified mail to the address in the Commission's station database. (i) Privacy rights of satellite subscribers. (1) When someone signs up for satellite service, and at least once every year after that, the carrier must send them a separate written notice explaining: what personal information is collected and how it's used; how and why it might be shared, and with what kinds of people; how long it's kept; how the subscriber can access it; and the subscriber's legal rights under (7) and (9) to enforce these privacy protections. Existing subscribers had to get this notice within 180 days of the rule taking effect, and every year after. (2) In this subsection, "personally identifiable information" doesn't include anonymous, aggregated data; "other service" covers other wire or radio communication services that use the same equipment as the satellite service; and "satellite carrier" also includes any company under common ownership with a satellite carrier that provides such wire or radio services. (3) A carrier can't use its equipment to collect personal information about a subscriber without that subscriber's written or electronic consent — except to provide the service itself, or to catch unauthorized use of the signal. (4) A carrier can't share personal information without consent either — except: to run the service or a legitimate related business; under a court order, if the subscriber is told about it; to share just a subscriber's name and address, if the subscriber was given a chance to opt out and the information doesn't reveal what they watched or did; or to a government agency in specific legal circumstances (though never records revealing what programming the subscriber picked). (5) Subscribers must be able to see all the personal information a carrier has about them, at a reasonable time and place, and must get a fair chance to correct mistakes in it. (6) A carrier must delete personal information once it's no longer needed and there's no pending access request or court order for it. (7) A subscriber whose privacy rights are violated can sue in federal court for actual damages (at least $100 per day of violation, or $1,000, whichever is more), punitive damages, and attorneys' fees — on top of any other legal remedy available. (8) States are still free to pass their own consistent privacy laws for subscribers. (9) Except for the government-access rule in (4)(B)(iv), the government can only get a subscriber's personal information through a court order if it presents clear and convincing evidence the subscriber is reasonably suspected of a crime and the information would be material evidence, and the subscriber gets a chance to appear and fight the request. (j) Regulations by Commission. The Commission had to write regulations implementing this whole section within a year after November 29, 1999, following a public rulemaking. Those regulations must set requirements comparable to what cable operators face under sections 534(b)(3), 534(b)(4), 535(g)(1), and 535(g)(2). (k) Definitions. This subsection defines several terms used throughout the section: a "distributor" (a company that packages and delivers secondary transmissions to subscribers); an "eligible satellite carrier" (one not already locked into a contract covering at least 30 qualified noncommercial educational stations that was in force shortly after the 2010 STELA law); a "local receive facility" (the point in each market where a carrier collects a station's signal); "local market," "low power television station," "qualified noncommercial educational television station," "satellite carrier," "secondary transmission," "subscriber," and "television broadcast station" — each borrowing its meaning from specific cross-referenced sections of this title or title 17, as detailed in the statute. (l) Market determinations. (1) On written request, the Commission can add communities to, or remove them from, a particular commercial station's local market, to better serve this section's purposes. (2) The Commission may decide a community belongs to more than one market, and must weigh factors like: whether the station (or others nearby) has historically been carried on cable or satellite there; whether the station actually serves that community; whether the change would help people get signals from their own state; whether another available station covers local news or sports/events of interest to that community; and how viewing patterns differ between subscribing and non-subscribing households. (3) A market change can't create new carriage duties for a carrier if it isn't technically or economically possible with the carrier's current satellites, and a carrier can't drop a station's signal while a market-determination request about it is still pending. (4) The Commission must grant or deny each request within 120 days. (5) Changing a station's local market this way doesn't affect which households qualify for distant signals under section 339, despite the grandfathering rule in (h)(1).