In a letter filed with The FCC Tuesday, GeoBroadcast Solutions hit back against the NAB’s latest attempt to thwart its technology which, if approved, would allow broadcasters to hyper-target local content to communities for several minutes per hour.
The company went after the NAB’s Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan for his “irrelevant argument.” GeoBroadcast says Kaplan lobbed an out-of-context personal allegation against GeoBroadcast CEO Chris Devine that had no bearing on the merits of the proposal before the Commission. They called it a “blatant attempt to change the subject and derail the rulemaking.”
The filing says the NAB Letter highlights a 2009 lawsuit against Devine filed by the estate of one of his business investors. “The letter repeats a variety of meritless claims from the lawsuit and misleadingly suggests that the case was settled because of the merits. In fact, this baseless lawsuit grew out of a sad, intra family dispute and was voluntarily withdrawn by the plaintiff with prejudice because in fact Devine’s conduct in the matter was appropriate. As any entrepreneur knows, baseless lawsuits happen in business and this meritless suit was handled the way it should have been: with the plaintiff dismissing the suit with prejudice and not receiving a penny in damages.”
GeoBrodcast goes on to say that not included in the NAB letter is why this “strange filing highlighting decade-old bare allegations in a civil lawsuit has any bearing on the proposed rule change. The legal irrelevance to an FCC rulemaking of the lawsuit’s unsubstantiated allegations regurgitated in the letter underscores the letter’s purpose—to create a sideshow where the public interest debate is put aside. No party should be plumbing the depths of the Internet for salacious reports about a party to this proceeding since that does not advance the Commission’s analysis of the public interest. We want to discuss the merits of the proposal since we and many others view them as compelling.”
The NAB has pulled out all the stops to try to stop the FCC from changing its rules to allow stations to us FM boosters to hyper-target several minutes of programming and advertisers in smaller communities that may not be able to afford radio. The NAB has also said the technology will cause interference and that it will disrupt the revenue flow to other stations.
The FCC will make the final determination on the rule change and whether the technology gets approved. There’s no indication yet when The Commission might make that final decision.
The the most recent GeoBroadcast filing HERE.
Follow our detailed coverage of this issue HERE.
