Black Television News Channel Programming Won't Change After FCC Waiver, BTNC Says

Black Television News Channel reiterated that the FCC has a clear path to grant BTNC a waiver of the FCC’s advertising ban on DBS set-aside channels. Once the FCC waives or modifies its current ad ban, BTNC will satisfy the noncommercial programming requirement, BTNC said in a filing in docket 14-77. Because BTNC’s programming is targeted to an underserved and geographically dispersed minority, “there is currently no viable commercial case for carriage of the programming that BTNC seeks to offer,” it said. BTNC’s programming will not be “mass entertainment” over a “small audience,” but news, educational and informational programming, it said.