FCC commissioner and former acting chairwoman Mignon Clyburn circulated the item just before Tom Wheeler was made chairman early last month.
Blackouts have never been popular, driving a number of lawmakers and organizations, including the Sports Fan Coalition, to petition the FCC to do away with them. As a result, the NFL last year modified its agreements with local TV stations, allowing individual teams to determine their own blackout threshold—anywhere from 85 percent to 100 percent of tickets sold.
According to the FCC, when NFL teams in 2011 failed to sell out a stadium, 16 of 256 games were blacked out in four cities: Buffalo, Cincinnati, San Diego and Tampa. But this year, only one NFL game was blacked out.
While pay-TV services like Dish Network have been pushing hard for lifting the rule because it would allow them to run games that are blacked out, broadcasters and the NFL oppose it.
“We’re concerned that the FCC proposal may hasten the migration of sports to pay-TV platforms and will disadvantage the growing number of people who rely on free, over-the-air television as their primary source for sports,” said Dennis Wharton, evp of the National Association of Broadcasters.