FCC’s Heavy Hand With Nexstar And WPIX Is Misguided, Out-Of-Date
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel is in a position to do much good for TV journalism, but she chooses to do harm. On March 21, the agency fined Nexstar $1.2 million […]
The FCC has hit Nexstar Media Group and its business partner Mission Broadcasting with a $1.2 million fine and an order to sell WPIX New York or other stations to come into compliance with longstanding station ownership limits. The commission on Thursday issued a 42-page decision in its probe of Nexstar’s ties to Mission Broadcasting and whether their business agreement violated the FCC’s reach limit on TV station ownership.
Nexstar Media Group has been fined $720,000 — double the normal amount — for violating FCC rules while negotiating a new carriage deal last year with a cable company in Hawaii. The FCC’s Media Bureau, in an order issued today, said Nexstar violated agency rules by demanding that Honolulu-based Hawaiian Telcom agree not to file an FCC complaint against the broadcaster as a condition of reaching a new carriage deal. Hawaiian Telcom filed a complaint anyway.
WPIX New York owner Mission Broadcasting is being fined $150,000 by the FCC over a contract dispute with cable giant Comcast that caused the cable TV company to file a complaint with the agency in 2022. TV stations and cable operators have a legal duty to negotiate retransmission consent carriage deals in good faith. But the FCC found that Mission violated that standard by requiring contract terms with Comcast that would have prevented either side from filing a complaint with the FCC.
The FCC is fining Nexstar’s KAMR Amarillo, Texas, $6,000 and a Paramount Global’s KPYX San Francisco $3,000 over lax recordkeeping discovered by agency staff in reviewing the stations’ license renewal applications submitted in 2022.
Gray Television is suing the FCC over its decision to fine the broadcaster over half a million dollars for an affiliation move in Alaska the regulator said violates its duopoly restriction. That is according to an appeal filed late Wednesday (May 24) in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Atlanta, where Gray is based.
Exclusives
The FCC has levied a fine of $504,000 against Fox for “willfully violating” commission rules on transmitting EAS tones during regular programming. The violation occurred during an NFL promo aired Nov. 28, 2021. Fox described the promotional segment as a “short comedic advertisement” for an upcoming game, which was aired as part of the Fox NFL Sunday pre-game show.
Cellphone carriers facing roughly $200 million in fines for sharing their customers’ locations are for now shielded from paying by the FCC’s partisan deadlock, according to people familiar with the matter. A partisan divide leaves the regulator short of the votes required to require T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon to pay fines.
The FCC said it will not rescind its half-million dollar fine against Gray Television for “willfully and repeatedly” violating its prohibition on owning two of the top-four rated full-power TV stations in a market. Gray said it will take the FCC to court and expects to get the decision reversed.
The FCC has proposed fining TV stations owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group more than $3 million collectively for alleged violations of the agency’s children’s-TV programming rules. The stations “apparently willfully and repeatedly violated rules limiting commercial matter in children’s programming,“ the FCC said, but conceded the actions were inadvertent.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau has issued a $20,000 fine against ESPN for “willfully violating the commission’s rules that prohibit the transmission of false or deceptive emergency alert system” tones during a program. The FCC said the violation occurred during the airing of 30 for 30: Roll Tide/War Eagle on Oct. 20, 2020.
The FCC has officially imposed the maximum per-violation fine of $512,228 each for all but one of the stations it had identified in a September 2020 notice of apparent liability as violating the FCC’s requirement of good faith retransmission consent negotiations. The 18 stations had been the target of a complaint by AT&T and its DirecTV DBS service alleging they had unreasonably delayed those negotiations including failing to respond to AT&T proposals.
The American Television Alliance said the FCC was right to propose fining Gray Television a half-million dollars for violating, as the FCC alleged, the commission’s local ownership rules. The commission, for the first time, has proposed fining an affiliation purchase for resulting in what it said was a violation of its prohibition on owning two of the top-four rated TV stations in a market.
The FCC has voted to deny an appeal of its decision that eight station groups failed to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith and has further decided to propose fining each of the 18 stations at issue over $500,000 apiece. It is the first time the FCC has ever issued a forfeiture order for a failure to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith, as its rules require.
EAS Fine Against CBS Raises 1st Amend. Debate
False EAS alerts have typically popped up in commercials as a way of getting jaded viewers’ and listeners’ attention, which makes them challenging to successfully defend. But what happens when the use of the alert tone is not in an ad, like in the case of its inclusion by CBS in an episode of Young Sheldon? The FCC is effectively claiming that CBS falsely yelled “fire” in a crowded theater, which is the well-established exception to First Amendment protections. CBS, on the other hand, is countering that it only yelled “boogeyman,” and that any reasonable viewer isn’t going to panic, because the public knows the difference between real and fictional things.
The FCC today said Walt Disney Co.’s ABC unit has agreed to pay a $395,000 civil penalty after an October 2018 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live used a simulated wireless alert tone.
Thursday morning, the FCC started to email notices to numerous radio stations throughout the country, notifying them that there are issues with their online public inspection files. Clearly, this is a warning to stations that the FCC is watching their public files, and that compliance problems will bring issues, and possibly fines, if the files are not complete by license renewal time.
The $13.4 million notice of apparent liability is for its airing of paid programming that did not include proper disclosures when broadcast. Sinclair says it will contest the fine.
The FCC plans to fine Sinclair Broadcast Group $13.3 million after it failed to properly disclose that paid programming that aired on its TV stations was sponsored by a cancer institute, three people briefed on the matter told Reuters. The proposed fine covers about 1,700 spots including commercials that looked like news stories that aired during newscasts for the Utah-based Huntsman Cancer Institute over a six-month period in 2016.
Comcast will pay a $2.3 million fine to resolve an FCC investigation into the cable company’s billing practices, the agency said. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau had investigated after what the agency called numerous complaints of the MSO charging for products and services that weren’t ordered.
Cascading False EAS Alerts Bring $1M Penalty
The FCC said that WSIX-FM Nashville has formally admitted to a violation of the FCC’s EAS rules, and has agreed to (1) pay a $1,000,000 civil penalty, (2) implement a three-year compliance plan, and (3) “remove or delete all simulated or actual EAS tones from the company’s audio production libraries.”
FCC Fines Newport Television $35,000
The commission cites KTVX Salt Lake City for broadcasting a private telephone conversation. Then-owner Newport admits violating FCC rules prohibiting broadcasters from invading consumer privacy and failing to respond promptly to investigative requests.
The FCC’s Media Bureau has proposed a $20,000 fine against Maryland Public Television for alleged violations of the agency’s equal opportunity employment rules and “false” reporting to the FCC about the alleged infractions.
More Big FCC Fines For Kids TV Violations
Fines of $20,000 for violations of the obligations to prepare and file Children’s Television Reports have been flowing out from the FCC as it works its way through license renewal applications filed by television stations over the last year. In the last two weeks, the fines have continued, with a few targeting full-power stations, and many others hitting Class A stations.
There are limits to how much commercial time can be inserted into television programming aimed at children, and a Max Media’s WMEI Arecibo and WOST Mayaguez in Puerto Rico overshot them by less than a minute — an infraction they’ll pay for.
Unlicensed STLs? Be Prepared To Pay
It’s important not to lose sight of the Little Things. Your primary operating license? That’s a Big Thing. You know where that stands, and you make sure that everything about it is in good order. But how about your auxiliary licenses — studio-transmitter links (STLs), remote pickups, that sort of thing? Those Little Things may seem like unimportant incidentals in the greater scheme of your operation, but heads up: the FCC doesn’t share that perception.
FCC Toughens Public File Enforcement
In the past decade, $10,000 has become the standard “go to” fine for even minor public file violations. In fact, there was a recent case where the FCC chose to adjust its base fine upward and issue a $15,000 fine for a public inspection file violation.
