Last Friday, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld, against a challenge from cable programmers including C-SPAN, the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) decision to require cable systems to make the digital signals of local broadcast must-carry stations "viewable" to all their subscribers, including analog subscribers. NAB had intervened in this case, filing a brief and participating in oral argument to support the FCC.

The court dismissed the cable programmer' claims, saying they lacked "standing" - that is, they were unable to show how they were injured by the FCC's decision, which regulates cable operators. The cable programmers had argued that the FCC's decision adversely affected their First Amendment rights by reducing the capacity on cable systems for carriage of their programming, as opposed to broadcasters' programming. The court found this unconvincing, directly quoting the NAB's brief that the cable programmers "failed to show how carriage of a handful of must-carry channels would have any impact on cable operators' programming choices."