Regulation

Donald Trump has sent CNN an extraordinary four-page letter that pledges legal action. The president says the cable news outlet is violating the Lanham Act.

The FCC’s repack of 1,000 TV stations into smaller spectrum quarters is almost two-thirds of the way to completion, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told a Senate oversight hearing audience Thursday (Oct. 17), and has proven to be a smooth transition.

The FCC today voted along party lines to approve the $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, meaning the deal has received the full blessing of the U.S. government. But the merger is still facing a significant obstacle as more than a dozen state attorneys general forge ahead in their lawsuit to block the deal.

In new court papers in an ongoing lawsuit, it’s also argued that Judith Sheindlin’s emails with a long-time CBS attorney are protected under attorney-client privilege.

A federal judge in Boston sentenced the Desperate Housewives star last month to 14 days in prison, a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and a year’s probation. She has reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, a low-security prison for women in the San Francisco area.

The “eccentric billionaire” FilmOn and Hologram executive has been sued by multiple women for sexual harassment.

Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has come out with his plan to “end corporate corruption and greed” and it would include potentially unwinding mergers approved under the Trump Administration. Among the companies Sanders singled out: “Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox has created a conglomerate that controls media in sports, in movie theaters, and on television,” he said.

Fall brings football and retrans renewals. The FCC still has a retrans complaint pending from AT&T, and there’s some hope for congressional action.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons says he intends to name Ian Conner as the new head of the commission’s Competition Bureau. Conner is currently the deputy director of the bureau, a post he has held since September 2017, appointed by then chairman Maureen Ohlhausen as acting director. Conner is formerly a partner in the antitrust and competition group at Kirkland & Ellis.

With the clock ticking down on the renewal, or sunset, of the STELAR compulsory license, the National Association of Broadcasters bought a Facebook ad flight in key markets pushing for the license’s expiration. And while the ads have not been carrying a “political advertising” disclaimer, NAB said they would going forward.

A New York judge on Thursday dismissed a claim that Charlie Rose retaliated against three female employees who complained of sexual harassment. Judge Doris Ling-Cohan found that while Rose had allegedly disparaged the women — calling one a “f—ing idiot” and another a “f—ing kindergartner” — his comments did not amount to retaliation under the New York City Human Rights Law.

Matt Lauer is denying the explosive allegations that he raped a co-worker in 2014 as “categorically false, ignores the facts, and defies common sense.” The rape accusation, made by former NBC News employee Brooke Nevils and detailed in Ronan Farrow’s new book Catch and Kill, is “filled with false details” Lauer said today in a statement to news organizations.

Commercial and public broadcasters are asking the FCC to relax its rules to allow them to deploy more transmitters at the edge of their service areas as they build out for ATSC 3.0.

Moving ever closer to its reunion with Viacom, CBS on Tuesday finds its corporate culture again under the spotlight in a $1 million-plus discrimination and retaliation lawsuit from the company’s former director of international treasury.

Low-power TV, TV translator stations, and FM stations intending to request reimbursement for expenses incurred as a result of the repack of full-power and Class A television stations were required to file their Initial Reimbursement Form (Form 2100, Schedule 399) by Oct. 15. Now the FCC has announced that the deadline to file the reimbursement forms for LPTV and TV Translator stations is pushed back to Nov. 14 by 11:59 p.m.

While TV mogul Byron Allen alleges racism in refusing to license his niche channels, U.S. businesses worry that a win for him during the new Supreme Court term would increase legal costs and hurt their reputations.

Advertisers sued Facebook in 2016 over user metrics that supposedly measured the average length of time consumers spent viewing posted video ads. The lawsuit said that the time was inflated by up to 900 percent and that helped convince advertisers to buy Facebook’s video advertising services.

Even though advertising for e-cigarettes is not currently illegal at the federal level, there are moves to change that position (including the announcement last month of an anticipated ban on flavored vaping products).

In what could signal a big change in regulatory approach, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has plans a vote on an item that would set the precedent that streaming services qualify as “effective competition” to MVPDs sufficient to trigger basic rate deregulation of those MVPDs.