Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The FCC released the full text of its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking adopted at its regular monthly Open Meeting earlier this month proposing significant revisions to the FCC’s procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. The proposed changes are aimed at streamlining the process for determining if constructing communications facilities, including broadcast towers, will affect the environment and historical sites. Comments and reply comment dates will be announced when the NPRM is published in the Federal Register.
- The FCC’s Media Bureau granted permission for Connoisseur Media to assume control of Alpha Media and its radio stations. The grant included a waiver of the Local Radio Ownership Rule to allow the company to control 8 stations in the Tyler-Longview market, where the rules currently limit ownership to 7 full-power commercial stations, finding that this combination merely preserved the status quo in the market, leaving in place an ownership situation not caused by Alpha, but created when BIA reclassified two out-of-market stations as being home to the market. As the Tyler-Longview market is highly diverse in ownership and programming, preserving the status quo would not have any anticompetitive effects on the market nor frustrate the Local Radio Ownership Rule’s purpose.
- The President of the Arizona State Senate sent FCC Chairman Carr a letter requesting that the FCC investigate the Arizona State University-owned PBS affiliate in Phoenix for its coverage of the 2022 Arizona governor’s race. The letter alleges that the station interviewed Democratic gubernational candidate (now Arizona governor) Katie Hobbs on the air after Hobbs declined to debate Lake, while refusing to interview Lake because University officials disagreed with her denial of the 2020 Presidential Election results. The letter requests that the FCC investigate the station for viewpoint discrimination and recommends that the FCC revoke the station’s license to protect Arizona viewers from media manipulation.
- The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau issued two Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting to property owners in Bridgeport, Connecticut and Springfield, Illinois for allegedly allowing pirates to broadcast from their properties. The Bureau warned the property owners that the FCC may issue fines of up to $2,453,218 under the PIRATE Radio Act against each owner if they continue to permit pirate radio broadcasting from their properties.
- The Media Bureau entered into a Consent Decree with a group of TV stations to settle a September 2024 Forfeiture Order which imposed a $140,000 monetary penalty on their licensee for their airing of program length commercials (where a character in a children’s program appears in a commercial during that program, thereby making the entire program into a commercial that violates the FCC’s commercial limits in children’s programs) during a Hot Wheels program (see our note here). As with the Bureau’s recent Consent Decrees with other TV stations who received fines because of the same program (see our notes here, here, and here), this Decree eliminates the licensee’s financial penalty and requires it to implement a compliance plan to avoid future children’s programming commercial limit violations. As we noted here, the Bureau also entered into a Consent Decree in June with Sinclair, the Hot Wheels program originator, replacing its $2.6 million penalty under the same Forfeiture Order with a $500,000 payment and a compliance plan that resolved both the Hot Wheels matter and other issues.
- The Media Bureau released three NPRMs proposing changes to the FM and TV Tables of Allotments. The first NPRM proposes a change in the city of license for KQSL(TV) by amending the TV Table to specify the use of TV Channel 8 at Cloverdale, California instead of at Fort Bragg, California, thus providing fast-growing Cloverdale with its first local service (while another station remains licensed to Fort Bragg). The second NPRM proposes substituting TV Channel 26 for Channel 16 at West Point, Mississippi to address potential interference that could be caused by planned antenna sharing of petitioner’s TV station with another TV station. The third NPRM proposes allotting FM Channel 226C3 for use by a new station at Enterprise, Utah. A new station on this proposed channel would provide Enterprise with its second local service.
- The Media Bureau granted an FM station’s modification application to change its community of license from Channel 250A at Batesville, Texas to Channel 250A at Pearsall, Texas to allow it to move its transmitter site and serve more people. The Bureau noted that the station’s existing community of Batesville would still be served by another FM station licensed to that community, and residents of the community can receive service from five other stations.
On our Broadcast Law Blog, we discussed the FCC’s release last week of its first EEO audit notice for 2025 – the first to be issued under FCC Chairman Carr’s leadership – noting how the audits now seem to be aimed in part at seeking out the types of “invidious” DEI programs – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — that the current administration has labeled as discriminatory.
