FCC

Standard General is getting an accelerated proceeding from the D.C. Court of Appeals after filing a lawsuit against the FCC that in part seeks to overturn the commission’s move to send the firm’s proposed acquisition of broadcaster Tegna to an administrative law judge for further review.

Standard General said it filed a lawsuit asking a U.S. Appeals Court to order the FCC to reverse a decision by its Media Bureau to extend the review of its acquisition of Tegna and to instruct the commission to approve the $8.6 billion deal. “That superficially procedural directive (the hearing order) is in substance a denial of the broadcasters’ license-transfer applications,” Standard General said in its filings. “And by refusing to countermand the Media Bureau’s action — despite the broadcasters’ urgent requests — the FCC has embraced that de facto denial as its own. The commission will thus derail the deal without having  to justify that denial and back it up with substantial record evidence.”

In a request for declaratory ruling filed by the Florida Association of Broadcasters, an interesting question has been posed to the FCC – can other political advertisers who buy time during the LUR period be entitled to “lowest unit rates” rates if they are “authorized” by the political candidate?  Normally, such non-candidate political ads (usually referred to as issue ads) are charged much higher rates than those charged to candidates.

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of the way the FCC hands out billions of dollars in subsidies for broadband and other advanced communications services.

Soo Kim, managing partner of Standard General, calls the FCC Media Bureau’s decision to refer his company’s proposed $1.6 billion acquisition of Tegna to review by an administrative law judge an “unaccountable power grab.”

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel wants cable and satellite TV subscribers to know just how much they are paying to defray the broadcast-TV retransmission and regional sports net fees their providers must pony up for programming, and to help them compare traditional video costs with those of streaming services. Rosenworcel has proposed an item to the other commissioners that would require cable and satellite providers to “specify” an “all-in” price for video service both in promotional materials and on subscribers’ monthly bills.

The Biden administration appears to be in no hurry to withdraw the nomination of Gigi Sohn, its first choice for the third Democratic seat on the five-member FCC, or perhaps it was caught somewhat off guard by the need to find a new candidate if it wants to start pursuing a non-bipartisan agenda, one that prominently includes the restoration of network-neutrality rules.

Standard General, Tegna and Cox Media Group on Friday formally filed an application asking the Federal Communications Commission to review its Media Bureau’s decision to have a administrative law judge hold a hearing on Standard General’s pending acquisition of Tegna.

For over a year, Gigi Sohn stayed relatively silent as she faced a barrage of attacks over her
nomination to the FCC, which had languished in the Senate since President Biden tapped her in October 2021. But her plans began to shift, she said, after speaking with the White House and a top Senate Democrat in the days before she would eventually announce her withdrawal. Now, in her first public interview since being nominated, Sohn is speaking out against what she called a “concerted, coordinated campaign” to block her nomination and hobble telecommunications regulators.

The FCC has proposed extending its audio description mandate to TV stations in all markets by 2035, unanimously approving a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would make that the case. The issue is one chair Jessica Rosenworcel is intimately familiar with from her days on Capitol Hill. Audio descriptions provide narration for non-dialogue scenes for the blind and visually impaired.

While a couple of powerful unions have fought hard against the Standard General-Tegna merger, the fate of which is currently in the hands of an administrative law judge (ALJ), one local chapter of the International Union of Operating Engineers is a big backer of the transaction. In a letter to the FCC, Edward Curly, business manager of Local 501 of the IOUE, representing workers in Southern California and Southern Nevada, said Standard General and managing partner Soo Kim have been big supporters of organized labor and he expects no less from the merged companies. Kim has also said the company has had good relationships with unions.

The FCC’s authority to regulate spectrum auctions expired on Friday, March 10, after a Senate vote to renew its authority failed to pass on Thursday. The FCC has had responsibility over the management of spectrum auctions for more than 30 years and in 2017, in particular raised nearly $20 billion in selling off portions of the broadcast spectrum. The House approved reauthorization in February but the Senate failed to pass the resolution amid disagreement on military spectrum needs.

The Senate came in for plenty of criticism Friday for its failure to pass House-passed legislation extending the FCC’s spectrum auction authority beyond March 9. That came at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing on spectrum policy. House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) had teamed with ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to co-sponsor the legislation (H.R. 1108) extending authorization to May 19, which passed the House Feb. 19.

The media regulator was once more adversarial and had various rules it could enforce, but there’s little in the way of expectations it will act about how Fox News misled viewers about the 2020 election.

Wall Street Journal editorial: “Gigi Sohn withdrew her stalled nomination for the FCC on Tuesday after Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced his opposition. Chair Jessica Rosenworcel will now have to advance her progressive agenda without a wingman, but her effort to kill a major media acquisition on the sly shows what she’s up to.”

Now that Gigi Sohn has withdrawn her nomination for the open seat on the FCC, the musical chairs game of guess the new nominee begins. One name that has surfaced as a possible, confirmable candidate is a familiar one — Anna Gomez. Her resume includes a stint as head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the FCC’s opposite number overseeing government-controlled spectrum, as well as experience at the FCC as onetime head of the International Bureau. She also has experience on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and was a partner at communications firm Wiley, which has accounted for a number of FCC commissioners and chairs, including name partner Dick Wiley.

Gigi Sohn, President Biden’s nominee to the FCC, withdrew her name Tuesday after two years of partisan gridlock delayed her confirmation. In a statement, Sohn said she asked Biden to withdraw her nomination after discussions with her family and “careful consideration.” She said the “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks” on her character and career from cable and media lobbyists “have taken an enormous toll on me and my family.”

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York State Conference and former NAACP national president, has joined a growing chorus of critics of the FCC Media Bureau’s decision to designate Standard General’s proposed $8.6 billion acquisition of Tegna for hearing.

President Biden’s nominee for an open seat on the FCC, Gigi Sohn, appears stalled in committee and is in danger of failing to reach the full Senate floor for a vote, according to Democratic Senate officials. If her nomination falters, the FCC will remain deadlocked with two Republican and two Democratic commissioners — hindering the Biden administration’s effort to implement key parts of the president’s agenda.

Paramount Global is using its latest Fubo TV negotiation to offer an untenable deal to affiliates and reset the entire retransmission consent landscape. The FCC’s response should be obvious: Make everyone play by the same rules.

There are definite rumblings inside the Beltway that the current FCC may have teed up a constitutional challenge to the long-standing public-interest standard.

Former FCC Chairman Mark Fowler on the commission ordering a Media Bureau formal hearing on the Standard General-Tegna merger: “The commission has applied the standard in an unprecedented, unconstitutional way by modifying the intended purpose of the statute to its customized purpose.”

The FCC chairwoman doesn’t see (or doesn’t care) that by weakening retrans, she is chipping away at the viability of the station business and a “cornerstone” of the agency’s longstanding broadcast policy: localism.

Curtis LeGeyt, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters expressed alarm at the “needlessly prolonged” regulatory review of Standard General’s proposed acquisition of Tegna. After more than a year, the FCC’s Media Bureau referred the transaction to an administrative law judge, a move that will delay potential approval of the deal and possibly kill it.

Standard General, whose proposed $8.6 billion acquisition of Tegna has been tied up in a review by the FCC for more than a year, is calling on the full FCC to vote on approving the transaction immediately rather than delaying the deal further.

In a blow to the prospects for the Standard General-Tegna-Cox Media transaction, the FCC’s Media Bureau has designated the deal for hearing before an administrative law judge. Chairwoman “Jessica Rosenworcel has just killed the deal,” said one former top broadcast official at the news of the hearing designation.

FCC nominee Gigi Sohn said she thinks the agency should investigate DirecTV’s deplatforming of right-leaning cable news channels Newsmax and One America News Network. That came in a back-and-forth with Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) Tuesday during Sohn’s third confirmation hearing before that committee.

The Senate Commerce Committee today once again vetted public interest lawyer Gigi Sohn for the long-vacant third Democratic seat on the five-member FCC, and Republicans had their knives out. With a Senate majority, though, the Democrats hold the fate of Sohn in their own hands.

President Joe Biden’s pick for a key fifth seat on the FCC will tell lawmakers that industry opponents have sought to scuttle her nomination to prevent more lower-priced broadband service. Gigi Sohn, who was nominated in October 2021, will have her third hearing for the job before the Senate Commerce Committee today.

The FCC’s Diversity Symposium on Feb. 7 turned into a retransmission consent showdown for a little while. Perhaps that is to be expected given that the first panel featured the chair of ACA Connects as well as the CEO of Circle City Broadcasting, which is suing DirecTV and Dish Network over retrans.

The FCC has paved the way for Amazon’s satellite-delivered broadband company, Project Kuiper, and its constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. On the same day the House Communications Subcommittee held a hearing on satellite communications tech, the FCC’s International Bureau approved the orbital debris mitigation plan of Kuiper Systems as well as its license modification, which will allow the company to begin deploying birds and ultimately deliver high-speed broadband connectivity.

The commission should heed broadcasters’ request to prioritize the ATSC 3.0 standard and launch a task force to concentrate the agency’s resources in getting it unstuck. Broadcasting’s future wellbeing may depend on it.

The National Association of Broadcasters is suggesting the FCC is putting the 2018 quadrennial review cart before the 2022 quadrennial horse, asking the agency to finish its 2018 review before starting the next one.

Citing a smear campaign to continue to prevent Gigi Sohn from being seated as the fifth FCC commissioner, former Fox and ABC/Disney executive Preston Padden has written the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to call out those tactics and advocate for Sohn, with whom he is not aligned politically.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is urging Congress to move the nomination of Gigi Sohn to be the fifth member of the FCC. “It is outrageous that the FCC has gone without a full slate of commissioners while the nomination of the supremely qualified and prepared nominee, Gigi Sohn, languishes amidst lies and homophobia,“ Markey said. He is primarily addressing fellow Democrats since they control the gavel in committees and have the votes to discharge the nomination from the committee and approve her to the commission if they are all on board.

The National Association of Broadcasters said that without some action by the FCC, including sunsetting the requirement to broadcast in both the current and next-generation transmission formats, that next-generation format — the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard — is “in peril,” and with it broadcasters’ future.

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.