The FCC earlier this week released its agenda for its August 6 open meeting. That agenda includes two items of relevance to broadcasters. First, it proposes to eliminate the rule that prohibits two commonly-owned AM stations (including stations that are under common control or covered by a Time Brokerage or Local Marketing Agreement) that serve the same area from duplicating more than 25% of their programming. In January, we wrote about the commencement of this proceeding here. The FCC’s draft of the order to be considered at their August meeting is here. It proposes only to eliminate the rule for AM while retaining the nonduplication prohibition for FM stations. We will write more about that draft order next week.
The second broadcast item on the agenda is the adoption of an order abolishing the rule that required that broadcasters make available to competitors any unique transmitter site. We wrote about the initiation of this proceeding here. The draft of the order to be considered at the August meeting is here. We will also summarize that draft order in more detail next week. Chairman Pai wrote about these two items in his usual pre-meeting blog post, here. Watch for developments on these two issues in the coming weeks.
Courtesy Broadcast Law Blog
