Regulation

“We are concerned that the FTC has failed to impose strict structural reforms and managerial accountability that would put an end to Facebook’s privacy invasions,” Sens. Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley write.

The FCC and Public Knowledge veteran succeeds the retiring Gene Kimmelman as head of the public interest group.

While a $5 billion fine from the FTC, which Facebook has been expecting, is by far the largest the agency has levied on a technology company, the real worries for Facebook — and its investors and the companies that use it to advertise on its service — are the other restrictions and government oversight that might come with it.

The American Television Alliance (ATVA) is using the Nextar/DirecTV retrans impasse to pitch Congress on renewing STELAR, the satellite license law that also includes requiring the FCC to enforce good faith negotiations in retrans disputes.

At its July 2019 Open Meeting this week, the FCC voted to make several changes to its Children’s Television Programming rules. It released its final order adopting the changes Friday afternoon.  Although characterized by Commissioner O’Rielly as “modest” changes, the revised rules are likely to alter television broadcasters’ compliance efforts in several significant respects, including the time at which the programming is aired, the type of programming that qualifies as educational and how a broadcaster demonstrates compliance with the revised rules.

AT&T has sued Max Retrans, a consultant that works with TV stations negotiating with distributors, claiming it used confidential data to get higher fees for its clients. In U.S. Court in St. Louis, AT&T said it is seeking an unspecified amount of damages, including inflated retransmission consent fees, punitive damages, attorney’s fees and court costs.

An internal email from the GM of Red River Broadcasting’s NBC affiliate in Sioux Falls, S.D., says the Justice Department has signed off on the $32 million sale to Gray Television first proposed in 2018.

Citing a greater variety of children’s programming available, the commision relaxed its regulations, giving broadcasters greater flexibility in meeting their mandates.

Executives from Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google will testify before a House of Representatives congressional committee next week in a hearing to discuss the tremendous market power wielded by online platforms.

Legislators continued to turn up the heat in the ongoing retransmission consent battle between DirecTV and Nexstar Media Group, with representatives from seven states joining Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday in sending letters to DirecTV parent AT&T urging for an end to the blackout as it entered its fifth day.

The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division is reviewing the antitrust consent decrees that govern ASCAP and BMI — the decrees that require that these performing rights organizations treat similarly situated licensees (and artists) in the same way and that allow a court to review the reasonableness of the rates that ASCAP and BMI propose. Those comments were initially due tomorrow, July 10, but the DOJ announced on its website that the comment deadline has been extended until Aug. 9.

Howard Husock: “As a conservative, this is not the kind of thing I usually find myself saying, but the situation is dire and the consequences for our democracy are immense.”

The narrow ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., struck down a requirement that was set to go into effect within hours, on Tuesday. Drugmakers had argued that requiring them to disclose list prices amounted to coercion that would violate their free speech rights under the Constitution.

The FCC earlier last week posted on its blog an article from the chief of its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau about state EAS plans, stressing how important these plans are to making sure that any emergency message conveyed through an EAS alert is properly transmitted to all who are supposed to receive it, so that it ultimately reaches the members of the public who should be aware of the emergency situation which triggered the alert.  The article contains a link to all of the state EAS plans that have been submitted to and approved by the FCC. Is your station doing what it’s supposed to be doing?

On Tuesday, July 9, Jane Hinckley Halprin will preside over her first hearing as the FCC’s administrative law judge to determine a series of questions regarding the role of a convicted felon in the ownership of four AM radio stations.  Given the absence of any record on which to evaluate Judge Halperin’s style on the bench, we thought it would be a good time to take stock of what we can learn about Judge Halperin from her initial actions as an ALJ.

The FCC has taken flak for trying to free up spectrum in a band (2.5 GHz) used — or FCC Republicans would argue, underused — by educational broadband services (EBS), but Republican commissioner Brendan Carr says that some “national organizations” may be “siphoning millions of dollars” for purposes other than providing the teaching or educational material required, including for political activity.

If the Department of Justice is going to allow T-Mobile to merge with Sprint, it’s going to need more concessions from Deutsche Telekom. The German telecommunications company that will control a combined T-Mobile/Sprint is in talks with both Dish Network and the DOJ on the parameters of a divestiture and spectrum-hosting agreement that will prop up Dish as a new U.S. wireless competitor. Deutsche Telekom, Dish and the DOJ are close to an agreement, and a deal could be finalized by next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

As legislation is being proposed to regulate Big Tech, broadcasters should realize that any regulation involving use of the internet by business will eventually affect television stations, particularly any encroachment on the First Amendment. This is a genuine concern because one of the bubbling issues is who can post what information.

When the FCC initiated its most recent EEO audits, we mentioned that the commission was planning a rulemaking to review the effectiveness of its EEO rules for broadcasting and multichannel video operators. The FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking to review these rules has now been released. This review was prompted by complaints raised in connection with the abolition of the FCC Form 397 Mid-Term EEO Report that the rules were not doing enough to foster minority hiring.

Laurie Luhn, the former Fox News staffer who made sexual abuse allegations against Roger Ailes, has dropped a $750 million lawsuit against Showtime over the forthcoming miniseries The Loudest Voice.

Last week, Senators and Democratic presidential nomination rivals Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker called on the DOJ and FCC to investigate Sinclair’s purchase of 21 regional sports networks from Disney. Why single out Sinclair? Because they don’t like Sinclair’s right-wing, pro-Trump politics. And another thing, it’s hard to see how the FCC can single out Sinclair for doing something (circumventing ownership limits) that many other broadcasters have done with impunity.