systems seeking a waiver of signal importation limits to prove the unique circumstances that justified the waiver, while still requiring them to show that local stations would not suffer adverse public service impacts as a result of ratings or revenue losses from the imported signal, an action that was considered a greenlight to the creation of additional national superstations. While most superstations took on a passive stance on their distribution—programming to their local audience while benefiting tacitly from their extended distribution—a small number attempted to fight efforts to be redistributed; in March 1979, Metromedia—which was fighting an FCC grant allowing ASN Inc. (which also had been given permission to uplink WGN-TV and WOR-TV) to make KTTV an "involuntary superstation," claiming such retransmission would be a violation of a provision of Section 325 of the Communications Act that prohibited signal retransmission without a broadcaster's express consent, even though Section 111 of the 1976 Copyright Act effectively allowed such importation – asked the FCC to temporarily halt all authority for the satellite distribution and marketing of superstation signals. Concurrent with the Metromedia petition, the NAB—later to be joined in the petition by, among others, the MPAA, the NBA, the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, WGN Continental Broadcasting and ABC—urged the FCC to conduct an expedited rulemaking aimed at curbing "the harmful impact of superstation development on broadcast program service to the public," positing that they posed a serious threat to the ability of program producers to guarantee exclusive local rights to prospective stations seeking to buy programs being offered on the syndication market. ASN rebutted that KTTV had acknowledged the company was being authorized to redistribute its programming without distributor permission as the station could not do it on its own without shouldering liability. The issue was never fully settled, however, as ASN Inc. ceased operations amid financial issues before it could be able to retransmit KTTV's signal. The FCC repealed its remaining cable television regulations in a 4–3 vote on July 22, 1980, eliminating its restrictions on the number of broadcast stations that cable systems could carry and syndication exclusivity protections for local television stations on the basis that "local stations are not adversely affected when a cable system offers subscribers signals from television stations in other cities." The repeal of its signal importation and Syndex rules resulted in many cable systems beginning to carry other