Regulation

The Senate Appropriations Committee has recommended level funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($465 million), as well as $29 million for the Ready to Learn early education initiative with the Department of Education, and $20 million to continue a noncommercial TV transmission tech upgrade.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) says he will put a hold on the nomination of Nate Simington for a Republican seat on the FCC until and unless he commits to recusing himself from any decision on the fate of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the legal provision that gives social media networks immunity from civil liability for how they moderate their networks.

Google has asked a judge to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of marketers that allege the company monopolized “online display advertising services.” “The whole is no greater than the sum of the parts, and the amalgam does not add up to a monopolization claim,” Google argues in papers filed Monday with U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose.

Northland Television tells a judge that Donald J. Trump for President has now lost standing to pursue its libel suit against its WJFW Wausau, Wis., over a “hoax.”

Net neutrality proponents are gearing up to press the Biden administration to restore a set of broadband regulations that were passed in 2015, but repealed by the current FCC.

Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. The strategy proved effective, resulting in pivotal victories in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Pennsylvania, onetime Democratic bastions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

The FCC yesterday released a Public Notice making clear that lowest unit rates (or lowest unit charges) end on Election Day.  Some broadcasters had asked the question, fearful that there would be political advertising bought after Election Day to take positions on issues about counting the vote and other legal matters that could arise in a contested election and, if that advertising was bought by the campaign committees of those standing for election today, lowest unit rates would still be in effect.

An injunction that blocks the government from enforcing a ban on WeChat downloads “improperly hampers” efforts to combat foreign spying, the U.S. Department of Justice argues in new papers filed late last week with a federal appellate court.

The future of the local TV industry could very well come down to who wins Tuesday’s election between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Early next year, the Supreme Court will decide on a decades-old legal battle centered around the FCC’s attempts to make local media ownership rules less restrictive. The result could have a far-reaching impact on one of the oldest businesses in the TV industry.

A freeze on technical improvements by full-power TV stations is about to come to an end after more than 15 years. Television stations have been unable to improve their coverage areas by a freeze first instituted in 2004 to allow the FCC to deal with a stable database of TV stations during the transition to digital operations. After that, the freeze was soon reinstated to facilitate the incentive auction and subsequent repacking of the TV band into less spectrum so that TV channels above 37 could be auctioned for use for new wireless communications technologies.

Alphabet’s Google must tell a district court how it will respond to a federal antitrust lawsuit by mid-November, with the two sides making initial disclosures later in the month, U.S. Judge Amit Mehta said in a brief order on Friday. The U.S. Justice Department sued Google on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the $1 trillion company of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals in the biggest challenge to the power and influence of Big Tech in decades.

November is one of those few months with no routine FCC filing obligations (no renewals, reports, fees or other regularly scheduled deadlines. While that might seem to suggest that you can take time that you normally devote to regulatory actions to begin your holiday preparations even in this most unusual year, there are still many issues to consider, and you can also use this month to plan for complying with deadlines that fall in December.

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google were scolded by Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms and received a warning of coming restrictions from Congress. Lawmakers of both parties are assessing the companies’ tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, and are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech.

The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas. With the presidential election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views. Above (l-r): Dorsey, Pichai and Zuckerberg.

The FCC has adopted an order to expand access of broadcast TV programming to blind or visually impaired. In April, the FCC voted unanimously — and unopposed by industry, said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — to propose to require 40 more TV markets (DMAs 61-100) to provide audio descriptions of video programming but also wants to know if the current pandemic changes any part of the equation.

At Tuesday’s public meeting Tuesday (Oct. 27), the commission made that expansion official.

Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s choice to fill the vacancy of the late liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, potentially opens a new era of rulings on abortion, the Affordable Care Act and even his own election. Democrats were unable to stop the outcome, Trump’s third justice on the court, as Republicans race to reshape the judiciary.

The FCC has voted unanimously to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking establishing disclosure requirements for TV and radio content sponsored by foreign governments. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated the item last month, it was voted earlier this month and released Monday (Oct. 26).

The broadcasters involved in the FCC’s first forfeiture order over failure to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith aren’t giving up the fight. The commission voted last month to deny an appeal of the Media Bureau’s determination that a number of station groups failed to negotiate retrans consent in good faith with AT&T, proposing a forfeiture of $512,000 against each station. While the broadcasters argue the FCC should vacate the decision and dismiss the proceeding, at the very least, they want the commission to reduce the amount of proposed forfeitures to $25,000 per station. That would take the proposed penalty from more than $9 million for the 18 stations involved down to a collective $450,000.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.): “As a former radio station owner in rural Oregon, I know well that our local broadcasters are often Americans’ primary source of local news, particularly in rural areas. To ensure every American has an opportunity to be served content relevant for all identities, Congress must act to bring our media ownership laws into the 21st century, create policies to incentivize new entrants into the marketplace, and help lift voices of underrepresented individuals by promoting diversity where it matters most: ownership.”

Stations are required to undertake a variety of activities to educate the public about broadcast employment opportunities and to train their employees to advance in their careers beyond their current positions. These outreach efforts must be undertaken even when stations don’t have job openings. The commission has not said that these obligations are suspended during the pandemic.  In fact, it has been conducting EEO audits throughout the course of the pandemic