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’s Media Bureau waived the requirement that broadcasters file their biennial ownership reports by December 1 of this year, postponing the filing deadline until June 1, 2027 unless the Bureau states otherwise. This 18-month extension was granted because multiple commenters in the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding urged the FCC to end this requirement because of the costs and burdens of compliance, without sufficient offsetting public benefit. The Bureau made clear that the waiver did not apply to broadcasters’ other ownership report filing requirements, including following the acquisition of a full-power TV, AM, or FM station or after a station’s original construction permit is granted.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the National Association of Broadcasters’ appeal of the FCC’s June 2024 Foreign Sponsorship Identification Report and Order. In the June 2024 Order, the FCC expanded broadcasters’ obligation to determine whether those who “lease” program time on their stations are agents of foreign governments to include issue ads, paid PSAs, and other spot time that does not promote a commercial product or service (see our Broadcast Law Blog discussion here). The NAB raised a number of arguments against the FCC decision to extend the verification obligation to spot time, including arguing that the FCC had not given notice that this proposal was on the table so that broadcasters could comment on it. The Court rejected that argument, finding that the result was reasonably foreseeable based upon public comment on the issue and the FCC’s discussion in the Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and rejected all other arguments against the FCC’s adoption of this new requirement. While the FCC extended until December 8, 2025 the compliance deadline for other aspects of the June 2024 Order (see our article here), it did not address when the obligation to verify that sponsors of spot time are not agents of foreign governments would become effective. Broadcasters should seek advice from their own counsel as to that effective date.
- FCC Chairman Carr sent Comcast’s CEO a letter announcing that the Media Bureau is investigating Comcast, NBC, and Telemundo’s relationships with its local broadcast TV affiliates by reviewing their affiliation agreements to see if they raise public interest issues. Recognizing that the issues he raised “may not be unique to Comcast,” Carr stated that there was increased public distrust in national news outlets (which supply programming for local broadcasters) and that network use of streaming platforms has potentially created incentives for the networks that conflict with their affiliates ability to serve the public interest. He suggested that this could raise localism concerns and implied that the networks have undue influence over broadcasters’ local programming decisions.
- The Media Bureau announced pleading deadlines on applications for the swap of several TV stations between Scripps/ION Television and Gray Media. The applications would create Top 4 station combinations in the Lansing, MI DMA for Gray, and in the Grand Junction-Montrose, CO, Colorado Springs-Pueblo, CO, and Twin Falls, ID DMAs for Scripps. As we wrote here last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the FCC’s Top-4 Prohibition (prohibiting broadcasters from owning two of a DMA’s Top-4 affiliated TV stations), a decision likely effective in late October. Scripps and Gray request that the FCC either approve their combinations as being in the public interest under the current rules or approve the applications with the approval to take effect upon the effective date of the Court decision.
- The FCC released the final version of its Direct Final Rule order adopted last week at its regular monthly Open Meeting, eliminating 18 rules the FCC deemed to be obsolete or outdated, including one broadcast rule relating to analog TV receivers’ closed captioning decoder requirements. The direct final rule process allows the FCC to delete a rule without prior public comment, but it allows a 10-day comment period after the order’s publication in the Federal Register where, if substantive negative comments are filed opposing the deletions, the FCC will implement regular notice and comment procedures before the deletions take effect. The order has been published in the Federal Register with an official release date of August 4, meaning that the 10-day comment period on the deletions ends on August 14.
- The Media Bureau entered into Consent Decrees with TV stations in New York and Tennessee to settle a September 2024 Forfeiture Order which imposed $20,000 monetary penalties on their licensees for program length commercials (where a character in a program directed to children appears in a commercial during that program which, under FCC precedent, makes the entire program into a commercial, violating the limits on commercials in children’s programs). The violation occurred during a Hot Wheels program (we noted the original penalty 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 and here), these Consent Decrees eliminate the licensees’ financial penalties and require them to implement compliance plans to avoid future violations of the rules on commercial limits in children’s programming. 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 entered into Consent Decrees with an Illinois noncommercial TV station and a Georgia Class A TV station to resolve its investigations of the stations’ failures to comply with their online public inspection file (OPIF) requirements. The Bureau found that the Illinois station failed to timely upload 13 Quarterly Issues Programs Lists to its OPIF. The Bureau found that the Georgia station failed to file or did not timely file in its OPIF 22 Quarterly Issues/Programs Lists, 7 commercial limits certifications, and 8 children’s TV programming reports. The Consent Decrees require the Illinois station to make a $6,000 voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury, and the Georgia station to make a $10,000 payment. Both stations must also implement compliance plans to insure that OPIF violations do not occur in the future.
On our Broadcast Law Blog, we took a look at broadcasters’ regulatory deadlines in August, discussing the likely release of news on the Annual Regulatory Fees to be paid in September, EEO public file report obligations for stations in several states, comment deadlines in various rulemakings, and lowest unit rate windows for a number of upcoming elections.
