Regulation

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau says ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV has agreed to pay a $3.5 million civil penalty over claims that Pluto TV streamed off-TV video on some platforms without the availability of the requisite captions, in violation of FCC rules. The company has also admitted to liability for its actions.

An auction of the Tegna TV station empire has been thrown into doubt as the company has questioned whether a prospective sale to a leading bidder would face antitrust concerns from U.S. regulators.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has named the permanent heads of the Bureaus of Competition, Holly Vedova, and Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine, both of whom had already been in the roles in an acting capacity.

As we enter the last quarter of the year, the broadcasters’ October calendar is full of important regulatory dates and deadlines. Broadcast Law Blog shares some of those dates and urges you to stay in close touch with your lawyers, engineers and consultants for the dates and deadlines applicable to your station’s operations.

Calling out Facebook and Google, among others, nonprofit watchdog group Accountable Tech has called on the Federal Trade Commission to ban targeted advertising based on user data, or what it calls “surveillance” advertising. That came in a petition for rulemaking filed today (Sept. 28) that asked the FTC to stop the practice of “unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting,” which it calls an example of the unfair competition the agency is charged with preventing.

Australia’s antitrust watchdog is calling for powers to curb Google’s use of internet data to sell targeted ads, joining other regulators in saying the firm dominates the market to the point of hurting publishers, advertisers and consumers.

Sanford Williams promoted to senior leadership in the Office of Managing Director, Joy Ragsdale to lead the Office of Communications Business Opportunities.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan suggested last week that she plans to devote more resources to the “root causes” of unlawful activity than to prosecuting small-time violators.

A group of over two dozen U.S. Senators are urging President Biden to designate acting FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel to a permanent position, making her the first woman to hold the office. The chairmanship of the commission has been in limbo since Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021, with Rosenworcel operating in acting capacity.

Senators from both parties signal rough going over research revelations.

Government regulation will never fix everything wrong with online discourse. The industry needs to develop professional norms—just as journalism once did.

Facebook today acknowledged that the performance of its ads has suffered as Apple has rolled out new privacy controls for iOS users, and it could be poised to get even worse as Facebook offsets it by charging higher prices and increasing the ad loads in its feeds.

CCIA sues over legislation it said is unconstitutional potential aid to Nazi and white supremacist speech.

Facebook took unfriendly fire from both sides of the aisle in a Senate Judiciary Committee Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on Big Data.

“The Wire” creator David Simon announced via Twitter on Monday that he wouldn’t film an upcoming HBO project in Texas as he apparently previously planned due to the new restrictions.

The Biden Administration is telling a federal court that low power TVs are not eligible for satellite must-carry and it should reject a challenge to a clear statutory directive to that effect.

Senators urge agency rulemaking on opt-in, protecting children and more.

After working at NBCUniversal for a decade, 59-year-old television executive Mark “Scott” Vila has gone public with an age discrimination complaint against the entertainment behemoth. Vila, who oversaw programming development for NBCUniversal properties including Syfy, USA Network and streaming service Peacock, was among nearly a dozen employees laid off this February.

Poised to win big at this weekend’s 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, The Queen’s Gambit is now a pawn in a legal game. Barrier breaking Soviet chess icon Nona Gaprindashvili has sued Netflix for $5 million in a defamation lawsuit over a line in the Anya Taylor-Joy starrer.

Kirstyn Crawford, an ABC News staffer claims the network retaliated against her after she filed a complaint early this year alleging that she was sexually assaulted by Michael Corn, who was then her boss as the top producer of Good Morning America.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who oversees the agency’s antitrust division, said the Justice Department will not shy away from enforcing antitrust laws against so-called killer acquisitions, where dominant firms buy start-ups before they can become competitive threats. Acquisitions of nascent competitors, she said, “are one category of particularly concerning transactions because they undermine competition that can disrupt monopolies.”

President Joe Biden’s failure to nominate a fifth FCC member has forced Democrats to work with a 2-2 deadlock instead of the 3-2 majority the president’s party typically enjoys at the FCC. But things could get worse for Democrats starting in January. If Biden doesn’t make his choice quickly enough to get Senate confirmation by the end of this year, Republicans could get a 2-1 FCC majority despite Democrats controlling both the White House and Senate.

The National Association of Broadcasters, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters have asked the FCC to delay implementation until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules on the issue.

President Joe Biden will nominate privacy advocate Alvaro Bedoya for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission, an agency facing accusations of lax scrutiny of major tech platforms’ anticompetitive behavior and data practices, according to people familiar with the White House’s plan.

In a lawsuit, Christine Martinez says she helped create Pinterest claimed the founders had agreed to compensate her, but never did.

Dynamic spectrum sharing got a boost from FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington at a speech to the Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder, Colo., though he painted a complex portrait of such a future for which AI is likely no magic bullet.

The FCC has released its fifth report on broadcast ownership, according to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, and there is some slight improvement in the number of women and minority-owned stations, but the emphasis is on the “slight.”