Regulation

The FCC has released its status report on the post-broadcast incentive auction TV station repack, which involves most of 1,000 full-powers and 2,000 low-powers in a 10-phase plan, and as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai signaled last week, the commission is ahead of schedule. It is also making available more money for the TV station transition.

A lawsuit could change the way we think about privacy in the digital age. Privacy is not quite dead. For egregious cases, there are remedies lying ready to hand in the civil law of torts, at least for the case that Bezos might want to bring against AMI.

Federal prosecutors are looking into the National Enquirer’s handling of a story about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair to see if the tabloid’s publisher violated a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

Former Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest-serving member of Congress who played a key role in many pieces of landmark legislation, has died. He was one of broadcasters’ most stalwart defenders in Congress. He pushed to ensure broadcasters were treated fairly in the first DTV transition in 2009 and what would be the second one — the TV station repack — following the incentive auction. NAB CEO Gordon Smith said: “Broadcasters were honored to call Chairman Dingell a friend, and we will never forget his tenacity, good humor and belief in the benefits of free and local radio and television.”

Broadcasters should be very careful when considering whether to accept e-cigarette or vaping ads, especially on stations having a high percentage of minors or teens in their audience. The FDA has threatened to review the promotional activities of the e-cigarette and vaping industries to evaluate compliance with the law.

Former Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, is receiving hospice care, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press Wednesday.

The Justice Department has signed off on the sale of 15 TV stations from Evening Post Industries’ (EPI) Cordillera Communications to Scripps for $521 million. That came in an early termination notice Tuesday released by the Federal Trade Commission, which divvies up merger reviews. The notice means that the antitrust review has been ended early with no issues that would cause the deal to be blocked or conditioned.

House Democrats are asking the FCC for documentation about its operations as they prepare to challenge the agency with their newfound oversight powers.

An appeals court has again denied Charter’s effort to dismiss the claim by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios that the cable operator’s “refusal” to enter into a carriage contract with the programmer was racially motivated. The case now proceeds to trial unless it is settled beforehand.

Former Democratic FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn is advising T-Mobile and Sprint on their proposed $26 billion merger as the two companies seek regulatory approval from her former agency. She said that she sees the work as a continuation of her efforts in government to expand internet access to hard-to-reach and overlooked communities.

The C-Band Alliance’s voluntary, market-based plan to clear 200 MHz for 5G wireless while fully protecting the TV and other current C-band customers. This should be a “no brainer” — private companies using their own capital to clear voluntarily the mid-band spectrum necessary to bring 5G to all Americans and to stay even with China in the race to 5G while protecting existing customers.

Lately, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice headed by Makan Delrahim has been undermining the FCC — and perhaps even Congress — and disrupting the broadcasting business as it struggles to ward off rivals for viewers and ad dollars on multiple fronts. I cannot remember a time when Justice has plunged so deeply into the nitty gritty of the broadcasting advertising marketplace and what kind of local station combinations should be allowed.

Spanish-language network Univision on Friday joined a lawsuit against the Commerce Department’s decision to include a citizenship question on the upcoming 2020 U.S. Census. The media company signed on to a lawsuit pursued in northern California, challenging the Commerce Department’s authority to add a question on citizenship to the census.

Fox and Netflix’s long legal dust-up over the streamer’s snatching of two executives almost three years ago is heating up as the former attempts to get the upcoming trial pushed back and the sparring latter wants to draw Rupert Murdoch’s New Fox and almost every other studio in town into the damning action.

In a filing with the FCC, the station group says it will ask the agency for a waiver of the rule that prohibits common ownership of two top four stations in a market. Nexstar also acknowledges that it will have to exit markets to comply with the commission’s 39% ownership cap. As things now stand, the merger would swell Nexstar’s coverage to 47.1%.

The National Association of Broadcasters continued to lead the industry’s lobbying charge in 2018, spending $14.16 million on lobbying efforts last year, according to an Inside Radio review of disclosure filings. That represented an 8% decline compared to what the NAB allocated to lobbying in 2017. The reports also show the NAB reduced its lobbying spending by 23% from 2016 to 2018.