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Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, DC 20554 In re Petition of ) ) Comcast Cable Communications, LLC ) MB Docket No. 16-258 On behalf of its subsidiaries and affiliates ) File No. CSR-8924-A ) For Modification of the Television Market of ) Station WYCI, Channel 40, Saranac Lake, New York ) To: Chief, Media Bureau OPPOSITION TO PETITION FOR SPECIAL RELIEF Cross Hill Communications, LLC (“CHC”), licensee of Station WYCI(DT) (FCC Facility ID 77515) (“WYCI” or the “Station”), hereby opposes the above-captioned Petition for Special Relief (the “Petition”) filed by Comcast Cable Communications, LLC (“Comcast”), on August 4, 2016,1 Comcast seeks relief from its obligation to carry WYCI2 in certain specified communities in the Burlington-Plattsburgh DMA where Comcast provides cable television service (“Cable Communities”). Contrary to Comcast’s assertions, analysis of the five factors listed in the Petition favors honoring CHC’s must-carry rights in almost every case, and Comcast’s recitation of the facts is incomplete and inaccurate. WYCI has historically been carried by Comcast in many of the Cable Communities; WYCI carries a substantial amount of programming of local 1 Public Notice of the Petition was given by the Commission in Special Relief and Show Cause Petitions, Report No. 0444, released August 18, 2016. This Opposition is timely filed within the 20-day period provided for in Section 76.7(b)(1) of the Commission’s Rules. 2 Because Comcast does not dispute that WYCI has mandatory carriage rights in the absence of grant of the Petition, this Opposition will not document the fact that WYCI is a full power television station located in the same DMA as the cable systems, WYCI became a must-carry station by default when it did not make an affirmative carriage election by October 1, 2014. The 2014 election deadline occurred prior to CHC purchasing the Station. Subsequently, CHC notified Comcast in writing that Comcast’s failure to carry WYCI constituted a violation of the statutory carriage requirement, and Comcast then filed its Petition. {00963818-1 } interest in the Cable Communities; carriage would promote access to in-state programming; and WYCI provides local news and information for the small Cable Communities not offered by stations in large cities central to the market.3 I. Introduction It is important to put the facts of this proceeding in the proper context. CHC took control of the Station only recently, in February of 2016,4 and it is in the process of building up a station designed to provide significant amounts of unique local programming to viewers in the market. The principals of CHC own and operate the Yankee Communications Network (“YCN”), which has been providing local television programming in New Hampshire and Vermont for over 40 years. Station WYCI is part of the YCN. In the late 1990’s, YCN moved its' operations to New London, New Hampshire to serve independent cable operators, and started work in the Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee Region of New Hampshire and Vermont. When Station WYCU-LP (Charlestown, New Hampshire) and its sister station, WYCX- CD (Manchester, Vermont), became available for sale in 2011, CHC then purchased them and began the process of upgrading their facilities to digital. This was all part of the vision and strategy to continue YCN's hyper-local programming commitment to Vermont and New Hampshire. In 2012 work began on YCN News, a daily news program that is focused on a large portion of communities in Vermont and New Hampshire that are part of the Burlington- Plattsburgh DMA. Next came YCN's production of local sporting events called Game of the 3 The information in this Opposition regarding WYCI’s programming service is limited to its service to the Cable Communities, and does not address its service to other communities in the DMA, including Saranac Lake, New York. 4 See FCC File No. BALCDT-20131115DM, consummated February 29, 2016. Because CHC did not become the licensee of WYCI until this year, it did not have an opportunity to protest Comcast’s dropping the station until recently. {00963818-1 }2 Week, then two video-magazine style conversational shows: Kearsarge Chronicle, and River Valley Chronicle, plus its political talk-show, Capital Connections. YCN airs many TV specials yearly like the Warner Fall Foliage Festival Parade, The Area Choir Christmas Concert, Mount Sunapee Expansions Hearings, and for 15 years the annual band and chorus concerts of local high schools. In 40 years of providing video programming, YCN has never wavered in its commitment to local programming. In 1986, YCN was chosen as the winner of the prestigious national Cable Ace Award for “Overall Commitment to Local Programming.” It has been recognized by the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters for YCN’s Game of the Week, and by the Lake Sunapee Region Chamber of Commerce as the 2015 “Business of the Year.” With the success of their New Hampshire and Vermont stations, and fitting those profiles of being rural North Country operations, CHC then contracted to purchase Station WYCI(DT) at Saranac Lake, New York, closing on that sale in February of 2016. Along with the commitment to purchase, CHC assisted the former licensee in upgrading the Station to digital, and it commenced broadcasting in HD. Since then, the communities in Northern Vermont have been included in YCN's daily diet of local news and public affairs programming, along with the inclusion of live local sporting events broadcast exclusively on WYCI. CHC and YCN will continue to expand its programming throughout northern New York, New Hampshire and Vermont. YCN is negotiating with the University of Vermont to begin carrying its sports, including its soccer and hockey games. This will supplement the 10 Vermont high school football games that the Station will carry this Fall as part of its on-going Game of the Week program. YCN continues its local programming on WYCI with its own version of YCN News along with fresh editions of Capital Connections. In addition, CHC will {00963818-1 }3 premiere its latest local program on the Station, Adirondack Chronicle, on January 1, 2017. CHC also is working with Lyndon State College, (in Lyndon, Vermont) to begin carrying their award-winning News 7 daily news show.5 CHC believes that WYCI is the only full-power station licensed to the Burlington- Plattsburgh DMA that is not currently carried by Comcast in the Cable Communities. WYCI provides local programming that is unavailable from any other source, and clearly contributes to the “dissemination of information from a multiplicity of sources” that the must-carry requirements were designed to protect.6 Yet it is forced to compete with stations whose programming is carried throughout the market on Comcast’s systems. After 40 years of hyper-local programming, YCN, through the Station, will continue to offer television programming to rural viewers that focuses on their communities and activities while also providing local non-profit organizations a voice in their towns. The Station already offers significant amounts of local programming of direct interest to the residents of the Cable Communities, and that local programming offering will continue to grow. As shown below, CHC is not building up this local programming service in virgin territory – the Station has a history of cable carriage on many of Comcast Cable Communities. In any event, the Commission should not allow Comcast to use its Petition to kill off the Station’s growing local programming contribution to the Cable Communities. 5 See, http://lyndonstate.edu/archives/college-news-7-broadcast-receiving-national-recognition/. 6 See Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 520 U.S. 180, 189 (1997), citing Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 662 (1994). {00963818-1 }4 II. WYCI Has a Documented History of Carriage in Many of the Cable Communities. Comcast asserts that WYCI has never been carried by its systems in the Cable Communities.7 However, that statement is demonstrably false, as Comcast’s own publications indicate otherwise. WYCI’s previous call letters were WNMN.8 Attached hereto as Exhibit 1 are Comcast’s published channel line-ups, dated 2011-2014,9 for many communities in Vermont and New Hampshire, all showing carriage of WNMN on Channel 80 in the Limited Basic Tier. It is clear that for at least three years through 2014, the Station was carried on at least 32 of the Cable Communities,10 as well as at least 8 additional nearby communities served by Comcast in New Hampshire and Vermont.11 Thus, there is historical carriage of the Station by Comcast in many of the Cable Communities, including as recently as 2014.12 7 See Petition at page 3 (“WYCI has not been historically carried on the cable system lineups that serve the Cable Communities, despite the more than 10 years it has been licensed to operate.”). 8 See Petition at Exhibit 8. 9 The dates of the channel line-ups for the first three pages are on the upper right hand corner – “12.11” (December 2011), “10.12” (October 2012), “01.13” (January 2013), and the last page has “0414” (April 2014) in the bottom right corner and “© 2014” in the bottom left corner. 10 The 32 Cable Communities in which carriage of the Station during 2012-2014 is shown are: Canaan, Charlestown, Claremont, Cornish, Croydon, Enfield, Grantham, Hanover, Lebanon, Lyme, Newport, Plainfield, and Sunapee, New Hampshire; and Andover, Bridgewater, Cavendish, Chester, Hartford, Hartland, Hartland North, Ludlow, Norwich, Perkinsville, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, Springfield, Weathersfield, West Windsor, Weston, Windsor, and Woodstock, Vermont. The channel line-up for 2011 shows carriage of the same Cable Communities as above, with the exception of Hartford, Hartland North, Norwich, and Pomfret, Vermont.

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