The National Association of Broadcasters filed reply comments late yesterday with the FCC concerning a proposed rulemaking that would dictate how broadcasters serve their local communities, placing increased regulatory requirements on radio and television stations.

"As NAB stated in its initial comments, and as thousands of commenters, both broadcasters and third parties, have now shown, radio and television broadcasters are closely connected with their local communities and provide a wealth of community-responsive programming," NAB said in its filings.

NAB noted that the "assertions of small numbers of media critics" clamoring for "more programming of a specific type" is not supported by the record before the FCC, and it said the imposition of new and intrusive regulation would be unjustified.

NAB also noted that, in the last two license renewal cycles, only 0.9 percent of all renewal applications were contested, demonstrating that "99.1 percent of all licensees were serving their communities so well that their license renewal applications were unopposed."

"The commission cannot disregard this concrete, numerical evidence as to viewer and listener satisfaction with their local broadcast stations," NAB said.