Regulation

On Monday, the justices of the high court announced that they had accepted for review a case claiming discrimination in contracting against Comcast in alleged violation of section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act. The $20 billion lawsuit comes from Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Network, an African American owned programmer upset over the way that cable TV distributors refused to make good offers to license his channels.

As owners of earth stations, broadcasters may be able to cut themselves in for a portion of the billions that satellite operators hope to get from the sale of some of their C-band spectrum to 5G wireless carriers. But I’d rather see the taxpayers get the excess proceeds.

Charles Cooper has been named associate administrator of the Office of Spectrum Management at the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, where he will help develop the National Spectrum Strategy mandated by President Trump. Cooper, who comes aboard July 1, was most recently at the FCC, where he was involved in radio frequency enforcement.

April Glaser: “The current public interest requirements of broadcasters are nearly unrecognizable compared to the form they took before Reagan-era deregulation — much of the license-renewal process has been reduced to answering a few questions on an online form. Regulating social-media platforms in the exact same way broadcasters were decades ago doesn’t make sense. But the old debates over broadcast could help guide lawmakers grappling with how to rein in the new communications giants of today.”

The FCC on June 4 released streamlined financial information instructions for full-power/Class A TV stations receiving repack reimbursement that have changed their banking information or have sold or acquired an eligible station and need to transfer the banking information to the new owner.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge rejects Netflix’s view that Fox’s employment contracts are tainted with illegality.

The Senate Commerce Committee has lined up the FCC commissioners — that includes Chairman Ajit Pai — for an oversight hearing. The committee said Wednesday the hearing would be June 12 and review ongoing “activities and proceedings.”

For more than 75 years, the decrees have governed the process by which these two organizations license rights to publicly perform musical works. Justice says the review is to determine whether the decrees should be maintained in their current form, modified or terminated.

The House began its review of the STELAR compulsory copyright legislation Tuesday (June 4) with a lengthy, wide-ranging discussion of video issues from short markets to cord-cutting, with frequent references from Democrats about putting consumers first, and all peppered with “dad gummits” and stronger from Patricia Jo Boyers, president of BOYCOM Vision and vice chair of ACA Connects.

The second-ranking House Republican and a key Democrat say they’ll push to end broadcasters’ ability to black out signals during negotiations with cable and satellite service providers.
Republican Whip Steve Scalise and senior Energy and Commerce Committee member Anna Eshoo said Monday they will unveil a bill in the coming weeks. It’s likely to set off a fierce lobbying battle between broadcasters, which would lose negotiating leverage, and cable providers, which stand to benefit.

The Wall Street Journal reports the Justice Department is gearing up for an antitrust investigation of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, a move that could present a major new layer of regulatory scrutiny for the search giant, according to people familiar with the matter. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

When it comes to those opposing modifications to the FCC’s media ownership rules, the National Association of Broadcasters is not holding back in its most recent comments. The organization wrote that comments submitted in opposition to reform are “fundamentally backward” in this new media marketplace.

Those looking for Justice’s decision on whether it has any antitrust issues with Tegna’s purchase of Nexstar spin-off stations will have to wait a little longer. That is because for the sixth business day in a row the Federal Trade Commission has issued no early termination notices on any deal, an unusual hiatus for such announcements.

The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing on the TV and video marketplace for June 5. The hearing is described as examining “how television programming and the delivery of video content have evolved over the past decade.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has scheduled the next nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System for Aug. 7 at 2:20 p.m. FEMA says this year’s test will differ from the nationwide tests that have been conducted over the past several years in that it will be issued through the National Public Warning System, composed of FEMA-designated Primary Entry Point facilities, to test the readiness of the EAS to function in the absence of internet connectivity.

Effective yesterday, May 28, the FCC is accepting applications for television stations to begin to convert to the next-generation TV transmission standard – ATSC 3.0 or “Nex Gen TV.” Last week, the commission issued a Public Notice announcing that the form (FCC Form 2100) necessary for stations to apply to transition to the new standard is now available for both full-power (Schedule B to Form 2100), low-power (Schedule D) and Class A TV stations (Schedule F).

The sun is shining a little brighter in the Sunshine State, thanks to a pair of mid-May court rulings in cases involving press freedom in which the RTDNA Voice of the First Amendment Task Force has been involved.

The FCC says it will begin accepting applications from broadcasters to deploy ATSC 3.0 on May 28. The commission approved the standard in November 2017 but needed to revise a number of forms before it could begin accepting applications.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took a hard look at digital advertising Tuesday (May 21), both from a standpoint of privacy and whether edge providers who are supported by the use of data for ads are too big to be trusted not to abuse that power and not to allow foreign entities to abuse it, either.