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 House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Communications & Technology Subcommittee held an FCC oversight hearing. The hearing featured written testimony from FCC Chairman Carr, Commissioner Gomez, and Commissioner Trusty, and questions to the Commissioners from the committee members on various broadcast issues including public interest obligations, the news distortion policy (including the FCC’s ongoing investigation of CBS), ownership rules (including the national TV ownership cap), oversight of retransmission consent fees, recent investigations of broadcasters (including those of NPR and PBS), review of the Nexstar-Tegna merger, and viewpoint diversity. Additional information and video of the hearing can be found here and here.
- There have been press reports this week that the Senate Commerce Committee is planning to hold a hearing next month on the national TV ownership cap, which prohibits broadcasters from owning TV stations with a combined audience reach of more than 39% of nationwide TV households – with UHF TV station’s audience reach counting at only 50%. As we noted here, here, and here, last July, the FCC released a Public Notice seeking to refresh the record of a proceeding begun during the first Trump administration as to whether the FCC can and should modify the national ownership cap. Broadcasters and pro-business advocacy groups support relaxing or eliminating the cap, arguing that it harms broadcasters’ ability to compete against digital media giants for viewers and ad revenues. In contrast, cable and satellite operators, and pro-consumer groups, oppose changing the cap, arguing that the FCC lacks authority to do so (arguing that only Congress can change the cap) and that any relaxation would increase retransmission consent fees and cause other consumer harms.
- The FCC’s Media Bureau released its quarterly Broadcast Station Totals. The release shows that, compared to the same release from a year ago, there are 41 fewer AM stations and 36 fewer commercial FM stations, but 278 more noncommercial FM stations. There were 11 more commercial UHF stations but 7 fewer commercial VHF stations, 1 more noncommercial UHF TV station, and 5 more noncommercial VHF stations.
- The FCC announced that March 16 is the effective date of its November Direct Final Rule eliminating certain public safety and homeland security rules that it identified in the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding as obsolete, outdated, or unnecessary. In that decision, the FCC repealed several rules deemed unnecessary that dealt with the Emergency Alert System. Some of the eliminated EAS rules include rules describing nonbinding procedures for voluntary EAS participations and local area EAS plans that would otherwise exist as part of the state EAS plan (eliminated as they were not binding and thus did not need to be expressed as a rule); a rule specifying that entities may contact the FCC for guidance on EAS participation (which the FCC deemed obvious and unnecessary as a rule); and a rule authorizing broadcast stations to transmit EAS alerts using subcarriers (which the Commission said is not used in practice).
- The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau proposed $20,000 fines on four individuals for pirate radio broadcasting in the New York City metropolitan area – in Brooklyn, New York, Irvington, New Jersey, and Spring Valley, New York (see here and here). Each of the individuals were connected to pirate stations through websites and social media, land records, or other means.
- The Enforcement Bureau also issued a Notice of Violation against a Michigan AM station after an inspection found that the required gates enclosing the AM towers were left unlocked and its fences were in disrepair, the towers’ paint and lighting were also in disrepair, the station’s logs were not properly maintained, and the station was not operating in compliance with the FCC’s technical rules. The station must now explain to the Bureau how it will correct the rule violations and prevent future violations from occurring.
- The Media Bureau dismissed five construction permit applications for new LPFM stations in Macdona, Texas; Spring, Texas; Alvin, Texas; Whaley Corner, Texas; and Mt. Charleston, Nevada for each applicant’s failure to show that it met the FCC’s LPFM ownership eligibility requirements. The Bureau found that each applicant failed to show that it was a local applicant as required by the rules because it was not physically headquartered, nor were 75% of its board members residing, within a 10-mile radius of its proposed station’s transmitter site (the distance required for LPFM stations outside of the top 50 urban markets).
