FCC

Last month the FCC sent an information package, prepared by the investment banking firm Greenhill & Co. for the FCC, to the owners of every station eligible to participate in the auction. Building on the momentum generated by the information package, the commission is poised to begin the next phase of its outreach. FCC staff, again advised by Greenhill, will continue the dialogue with broadcasters in field visits to television markets around the country.

The current Indiana University at Bloomington telecommunications professor joins the commission in January 2015.

The new station in Middletown, N.J., that went off the air earlier this week over a PSIP channel dispute, returns following FCC approval of a temporary stay pending an Appeals Court ruling next month.

Even before President Obama issued his forceful call this week for “the strongest possible rules” to protect an open Internet, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was in a tight spot. Since those remarks, say people who met with Wheeler this week, he has been testy, defensive and a bit angry that he might be seen as a political pawn instead of as the head of an independent agency who is exercising his own judgment.

Comcast still expects to close the deal with New York-based Time Warner Cable by the end of March, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said. If the acquisition is approved, Comcast will have more than 32 million Internet service subscribers. As part of its commitment to getting the Time Warner deal done, Roberts said Comcast still intends to spend about $20 billion during the next two years to improve its Internet service and other products.

A top FCC official on Wednesday said the independent agency has not made a decision on whether to follow President Obama’s recommendations on net neutrality. Gigi Sohn, a special counsel in FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office, pushed back against a report in The Washington Post that highlighted differences between Obama and Wheeler.

Companies including Walt Disney, CBS and Viacom have asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to step in and block an FCC decision that would forcethem to reveal the terms of their business deals. Those deals are part of the public review of Comcast’s $45 billion bid to buy Time Warner Cable and AT&T’s $48 billion plan to buy DirecTV.

WJLP Middletown, N.J., the Jersey Shore’s first privately owned television station that went live on Oct. 1, will stop broadcasting temporarily after the FCC ordered it to abandon ch. 3 or leave the air.

Net neutrality was divisive before. Now it’s explosive — and more political than ever. President Barack Obama on Monday offered his strongest endorsement to date for rules that would treat all Internet traffic equally, and FCC officials are now discussing net neutrality options with a divided Internet industry and Capitol Hill audience.

President Barack Obama on Monday struck a blow to large cable and wireless companies by publicly pressuring the FCC to adopt tougher rules that would treat Internet providers more like public utilities.

The Republican victory is bad news for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who will likely face uncomfortable oversight hearings and investigations. Republicans will try to repeal any net-neutrality rules, although it’s hard to see them overriding a veto. They will probably push “process reform” legislation that they say would improve transparency and accountability at the FCC, but Democrats fear it would just hamper the FCC’s authority over mergers and other issues.

Three Native Americans have filed a petition with the FCC to protest the license renewal of  Fox-owned KTTV Los Angeles over the use of the word Redskins. KTTV broadcasts the NFL’s National Football Conference. The Washington Redskins play in the NFC Eastern Division.

A close look at FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to make online video distributors [OVDs] the regulatory and legal equal of cable and satellite with all the same rights and obligations means such services, including Aereo, would be subject to retransmission consent. This is a big deal and broadcasters at all levels will need to be fully engaged in the rulemaking to make sure it doesn’t go bad.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday circulated a notice of proposed rulemaking that would require cable, satellite and radio companies to post information about political advertisements online. If the commission approved the measure, it would bring those services in line with broadcast television, which was forced in 2012 to begin posting its information on political ad buys. 

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a proposal to commissioners that would update the definition of MVPDs to be technology-neutral and change the FCC’s video competition rules to encourage over-the-top innovation and consumer choice, allowing online video service providers that offer linear channels of streaming content to have the same access to programming owned by cable operators and the same ability to negotiate to carry broadcast TV stations. He explains in the FCC Blog.

Major cable companies are getting worried they could face stiffer competition from online video, thanks to a new government proposal. The FCC is working on a plan to give online TV services all of the same regulatory perks that cable companies get. Putting online companies on equal footing with cable providers like Comcast could usher in a new wave of competition in the TV industry — potentially meaning more choices and lower prices for consumers.

Last spring, the FCC decided that certain TV joint sales agreements (JSAs) may create attributable interests for the purposes of determining compliance with the multiple ownership rules. And, thanks to that change, JSAs that do create such interests have to be filed with the commission. The filing requirement is effective as of today, which means that copies of all existing TV JSAs that create attributable interests will have to be filed with the FCC within 30 days, i.e., by Nov. 28.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission expects a major auction of low-frequency airwaves to be pushed back to early 2016 from mid-2015 because of its complexity and a pending court challenge, an FCC official said in a blog post on Friday.

The FCC has delayed its review of Comcast’s proposed $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable — which, if approved, would greatly increase Comcast’s broadband footprint. The FCC is also suspending its review of AT&T’s proposed merger with DirecTV. The agency said it suspended the informal 180-day countdown clocks because nine content companies — including CBS, Fox, Time Warner and Disney — refused to disclose key information about their deals with cable providers.

The FCC levied an $86,400 fine on the parent company of Midland and Odessa,Texas NBC affiliate KWES. The FCC says it asked Midessa Television, which also owns KTLE in Odessa, KWAB in Big Spring and KTLD in Midland, about its use of Broadcast Auxiliary Services for audio and video feeds between its studio and transmitter sites.

Advocates of low-power TV stations and translators have been worried that their interests will be ignored in the upcoming FCC incentive auction and spectrum repack. Now, however, the Government Accountability Office is being asked to study the situation and the hope is the results will help them win rights to continue operating in the auction’s wake — similar to the rights full-power broadcasters are already guaranteed.

The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation filed a complaint at the FCC alleging violations of long-standing rules and law by Sinclair ABC affiliate WJLA Washington. The complaint claims that WJLA continues to refuse to disclose the “true identity” of the sponsor of political ads being run by NextGen Climate Action Committee and asks for expedited action given that Election Day is just a few weeks away.

With the groundbreaking news that HBO and CBS would offer standalone streaming services, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Friday was asked repeatedly about whether the agency would weigh in on the fast-growing market for online video. “It’s the right question. Stay tuned,” Wheeler teased reporters after the commission’s regularly scheduled meeting. “It’s something we’re very involved in. We have been looking at the entire question of ‘What is an MVPD?’ ”

Three more petitions — from people involved with a Native American radio program — have been filed at the FCC against a radio station owned by Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder for the use of the team’s name on air. The paperwork follows the efforts of a George Washington University professor to revoke WWXX-FM’s broadcast license.

Aereo Inc. asked the FCC  to change the definition of a multichannel video program distributor to help the startup find a way to resume operations. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Aereo’s digital streaming service violated broadcasters’ copyrights, Aereo is now seeking permission to operate like a cable TV provider. Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other officials on Oct. 8 to advocate for online programming to be added to the MVPD definition.

Late Friday, the FCC released a Public Notice stating that “[e]ffective immediately, the expiration dates and construction deadlines for all outstanding unexpired construction permits for new digital low-power television and TV translator stations are hereby suspended.” The FCC simultaneously released a Third Notice of Proposed Rulemaking  seeking comment on a number of issues related to the transition of LPTV stations to digital and their fate in the post-auction spectrum repacking.

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has largely completed its review of pending complaints, clearing the way for the Media Bureau to grant almost 700 license renewals this week. Many of these pending complaints were presumably based on indecency claims, which have in recent years created such a backlog of license renewal applications (particularly for TV stations) that it has not been unusual for a station to have multiple license renewal applications pending at the FCC, even though such applications are only filed every eight years.

President Obama has renominated Michael O’Rielly for a full term on the FCC. The Republican commissioner was unanimously confirmed by the Senate last year, on the same day FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was also approved. O’Rielly, a former GOP Senate staffer, was approved to finish out the term of Robert McDowell, who left a little less than a year before his term expired.

As we move into the final weeks of the election season, and races heat up, there are always issues about attack ads and what a station needs to do when they receive a “take-down” notice from a candidate who is being attacked. However, ads from third parties (PACs, SuperPACs, labor unions, right to life groups and other advocacy organizations) are different. The “no censorship” provisions of the political rules don’t apply, so broadcasters are free to accept or reject third party ads based on the content of the ads.

In a public letter to Comcast and Time Warner Cable executives, the FCC announced that it is hitting the pause button on its review of the proposed $45 billion merger.  Citing inadequate responses by both cable companies to earlier FCC requests for additional information, the agency is stopping the clock on its 180-day review period until late October.

With regulatory fees behind us, October brings a number of the routine quarterly regulatory filing dates including quarterly issues programs lists and children’s television reports; a new form for TV CP applications, comments on captioning of video clips; and an incentive auction reimbursement form.

For broadcasters to take the FCC’s proposed spectrum auction seriously, they needed hard dollar figures as to their stations’ value. Now that the commission has delivered that, it looks like billions of dollars could be up for grabs and station owners need to carefully calculate a strategy: They can sit it out, they can give up some spectrum and stay in the business by doubling up on channels, they can sell their UHF channels and move to VHF channels or they can just sell it all and head for the beach.

Regardless of which side of the controversy you’re on, RTDNA sees this latest issue as a simple matter of free speech—and one in which the government has no role. If the FCC bans this term, what’s next? Will there be other words determined as not fit for current social conventions? And do we want those decisions made by a government bureaucracy? We think not.

A law professor has challenged the use of the name on broadcast television, saying it violates FCC rules against indecent content. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says that the commission “will be dealing with that issue on the merits, and we’ll be responding accordingly.”

The agency releases study for broadcasters on how its incentive auction will work and how much they could make from selling their spectrum in the auction in every TV market. Hoping to encourage widespread participation, the study also includes a letter from the IRS providing guidance on the tax implications of selling spectrum in the auction.

Seeking to entice reluctant broadcasters to participate in its planned incentive auction of TV spectrum, the FCC is distributing today estimates of what stations might be worth in the auction — market by market. Figuring that broadband carriers will pay a total of $45 billion to buy 100 MHz of TV spectrum, the FCC says a full-power station in Los Angeles could get as much as $570 million and those in New York could bring as much as $490 million. Stations  adjacent to major markets like Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa. ($150 million), and Palm Springs, Calif. ($180 million), could also make out.

The FCC is looking to spur competition in pay TV by considering steps that would give new Internet video services access to cable and broadcast shows, according to a person briefed on the plan. The commissin under Chairman Tom Wheeler, is preparing a proposal to help so-called over-the-top TV — multichannel services that seek to offer live programming via the Web — said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.