[BC] Format control by landlords

[R A Meuser]

This is not uncommon. When I was working to relocate a station in NYC, 
we looked at a property in Rockefella Center (actually the old NBC radio 
building). Part of the lease conditions was that no video could be 
produced at the location (a conflict with NBC TV). This prevented web 
streaming, etc so it was a deal breaker. But a landlord can do such 
things. In another building a prime tenet which was a bank would not 
allow any radio station to rent space if it had any kind of pop format. 
They considered the people who work in such stations and their listeners 
as undesirable. In yet another building a prime tenet stipulated that if 
space was rented to a radio station the station must use a separate 
entrance and be located on a floor that used a different elevator bank. 
That was all before the real estate boom in NYC.




Barry Mishkind wrote:
> There is at least one instance of something more recent, although I do 
> not know exactly how it turned out.
> 
> There was a situation a couple of years back about an LA station that 
> tried to use a lease to control the format of another station. Whether 
> it was run through the FCC, the courts, or both, I do not recall.
> 
> Perhaps someone knows more about the case.  I might have the time to 
> search for the original document that alerted me to the situation.
> 
> barry
> 
> At 05:37 AM 10/7/2007, Rich Wood wrote
> 
>> ------ At 03:55 PM 10/6/2007, Paul B. Walker, Jr. wrote: -------
>>
>>> I think with a good lawyer someone could argue Citadel is impeeding 
>>> their business.. and apparently, a friend tells me.. a violation of 
>>> communications law.
>>
>>
>> I believe there was a case quite a while ago where a renting station 
>> was limited to certain formats. As I recall the FCC considered it 
>> outside programming control of the renting station and prohibited it. 
>> It was very much like the FCC's ruling on syndication contracts that 
>> forced the station to blindly obey the directives of the syndicator. 
>> The fact that the station had many other options didn't matter.