Regulation

The incoming head of the Senate antitrust subcommittee favors broad changes as Democrats press the issue of perceived monopoly power.

Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks said it has “resolved and withdrawn” its lawsuit against Charter Communications. The one-sentence joint statement from Entertainment Studios and Charter did not elaborate on whether Allen’s TV channels would now be carried by Charter or if any money changed hands.

The FCC has signed an agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the White House’s top communications adviser, to advance spectrum R&D. The move is a nod both to interagency multilateralism and the value of science, two things the previous administration was criticized for downplaying.

TVNewsCheck‘s quarterly quick briefing on the legal and regulatory proceedings affecting broadcasters from communications attorneys David Oxenford and David O’Connor.

A recent study published by two FCC economists shows the agency’s local ownership regulations depress the amount of local news programming that could otherwise be produced. The FCC could immediately promote more local news production just by relaxing its outmoded rules.

“There is no longer a competitive market in which newspapers can fairly compete for online advertising revenue,” the owner of The Charleston Gazette-Mail and other West Virginia news publications said in a lawsuit in federal court on Friday. It accuses the companies of profiting from “anticompetitive and monopolistic practices” that have damaged the newspaper business.

A Delaware judge has allowed CBS stockholders to sue over the 2019 merger of Viacom and CBS, finding a reasonable claim that former CBS chief Joseph Ianniello “sold” his support for the deal to Shari Redstone in exchange for a $125 million payout.

After raising more than $80.9 billion thus far, the FCC’s C-band auction is set to continue with the assignment phase scheduled to begin on Feb. 8. FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has released a public notice announcing the upcoming assignment phase, where bidders that won generic spectrum blocks during the clock phase of the auction will now have the chance to bid on preferred combinations of frequency-specific license assignments, consistent with their clock phase winnings.

In the newly created position he will drive Sinclair’s compliance strategy from privacy to meeting FCC regulations.

With the federal government and the FCC under new management, Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel may well take the commission in a direction that aligns with the policies she supported during her time as a commissioner.  It is notable that, no matter what policies she advances, the routine regulatory dates that fill up a broadcaster’s calendar are generally unchanged. Some of the dates and deadlines which broadcasters should remember in February are discussed here.

Lawmakers say the attack on the Capitol has generated more support for tougher regulation of the industry.

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said Tuesday that the digital divide has morphed during COVID-19 to a monstrous divide that leaves people of color disproportionately on the wrong side. “This cannot stand,” he said, adding that the country can no longer put off the hard work of digital equity. “This is the time. This is the moment.”

President Biden’s nominee to serve as the secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, said Tuesday a controversial law that provides tech companies a legal liability shield from third-party content posted on their platforms needs to be reformed.

Michael Pack, the former head of Voice of America’s parent agency, hired two law firms to open-ended, no-bid contracts, including one specifying that top lawyers would earn $1,470 per hour, according to documents and people familiar with the matter. The two agreements have cost taxpayers close to $4 million over a five-month period, far more than was previously known, and possibly in violation of federal rules.

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has assembled her team after getting the nod for the interim (at least) post last week. She had been widely expected to get the acting chair post so there was plenty of time to ponder the acting staff she has lined up.

Facebook and Amazon topped all other U.S. companies in federal lobbying expenditures last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the most recent disclosures. It was the second straight year they outspent all other companies, including stalwarts such as AT&T and Boeing.

President Biden on Thursday appointed Rebecca Kelly Slaughter acting chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission and Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission. The two appointments reflect the tectonic political shift underway in Washington as Democrats, newly in charge of the White House and Congress, prepare to roll back a slew of deregulatory actions implemented under President Donald Trump.

Google today threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with plans to make tech giants pay for news content. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly hit back, saying “we don’t respond to threats.” Above, Mel Silva (r), the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, appears via a video link during a Senate inquiry into a mandatory code of conduct proposed by the government at Parliament House in Canberra, Friday, Jan. 22. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP)

U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said she wasn’t dismissing Parler’s “substantive underlying claims” against Amazon, but said it had fallen short in demonstrating the need for an injunction forcing it back online. Amazon kicked Parler off its web-hosting service on Jan. 11. In court filings, it said the suspension was a “last resort” to block Parler from harboring violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is tapped by President Biden to lead the agency.

Michael Pack resigned as the chief executive office of the U.S. Agency for Global Media just minutes after President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. The agency runs the Voice of America and sister networks. Pack had created a furor when he took over the agency last year and fired the boards of all the outlets under his control along with the leadership of the individual broadcast networks. The actions were criticized as threatening the broadcasters’ prized editorial independence.

Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim said that if the government does not find a way to harness the massive market power of those platforms to democratic policies, the country risks “devastating outcomes for our civil democratic society.” He suggested one solution could be a new “public-private” agency, the Digital Markets Rulemaking Board, with the power to regulate edge providers like social media sites.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons will exit the agency on Jan. 29. Simons, an antitrust lawyer, has led the agency since May 2018. News of Simons’ departure comes as the FTC is in the process of conducting a broad review of what it calls “dangerously opaque” privacy practices in the online ad industry.

Disney is asking a Los Angeles judge to dismiss a sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation complaint from California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing for being “hopelessly vague” about which Criminal Minds workers it’s suing on behalf of.