FCC

A planned spectrum auction has caused concern that universities and states that hold public station licenses but are not primarily broadcasters may give up spectrum and use the proceeds for other needs.

The FCC has instituted yet another application filing freeze. The commission effectively said “enough is enough” and stopped accepting applications for LPTV channel displacements and new digital replacement translators.

Citing possible danger to local broadcasters and their viewers, five Democrats ask FCC’s Wheeler “to adopt a waiver policy that does not penalize JSAs that were structured and executed prior to the issuance of the new rules.” New waivers should be given, they urge, to JSAs “that promote more or better local news, public affairs and emergency information, diverse programming such as foreign language and expanded ownership opportunities for minorities and women in broadcasting.”

The House Energy and Commerce Communications subcommittee will hear Wednesday from a handful of media groups, coalitions and the head of the FCC’s Media Bureau about whether the existing rules have stood the test of time, especially as new forms of news and entertainment have taken hold online and on cable channels.

Two documents issued by the FCC on June 2 provide some reason for optimism on the part of licensed wireless microphone users. However, the professional audio community, which has been lobbying hard for protection of their diminishing wireless turf in the face of ongoing spectrum auctions, didn’t get everything they wished for.

The heads of the Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service say that the FCC’s plans for the upcoming spectrum auction could result in some communities losing public television service. They call that “a grievous error that risks breaking faith with the nation’s commitment to universal service for non-commercial educational television.”

Among NAB’s major beefs is that the auction regulations released June 2 don’t protect broadcasters from the possibility that they may get stuck with at least part of the cost for moving to new TV channels during the post-auction channel repacking process.  “It’s clearly unacceptable,” says NAB’s Rick Kaplan.

Now that the trade group has had a chance to read the 500-page text of the FCC rulemaking covering the incentive auction of TV spectrum and repacking of the TV band, its CEO Gordon Smith says: “The order’s fundamental flaw is that it ignores Congress’s clear direction to do no harm to broadcasters who choose not to participate in the voluntary auction.”

With the release on June 2 of the FCC’s Incentive Auction Report and Order, following the May 15 vote — a 3-2 decision along party lines — the long-term future looks to be full of potential changes and challenges for users of wireless microphones and in-ear monitors.

The rules implementing the CALM Act have been changed. But don’t worry: the revised version won’t take effect for another year.

Last month the FCC’s said its new application fee schedule would kick in as of June 6. Today the commission announced that the real effective date of the new fee schedule will be July 3. The commission promises that it will issue a further public notice confirming the date before then; it also says that new fee filing guides will be posted on its website before as well. We’ll keep an eye out and, if the date starts to move again, we’ll let you know.

An examination of the FCC’s 484 pages of incentive auction rules shows the commission has rejected a proposal to allow a blanket waiver for all a group’s stations if the group turned down federal reimbursement for moving. In addition, the FCC made clear that it believes it has wiggle room under Congress’ mandate that it make “all reasonable efforts” to preserve the coverage areas and populations served by stations required to move to new channels during the repacking.

John Oliver’s call to action on the subject of net neutrality, on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, appears to have crashed the FCC’s comments system. The tweets appeared Monday after Oliver called on viewers to lodge protest with the FCC.

The full text of the 484-page document that will govern the FCC’s upcoming incentive spectrum auction is available here.

Historically, broadcast TV’s biggest foes have been cable and newspapers, but now there seems to one more major adversary: wireless operators.Wireless has been lusting after broadcast spectrum, supporting the FCC’s incentive auction. That’s even more threatening since the auction push is headed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the former wireless trade association chief. Now, with Verizon’s nascent LTE Multicast service, it’s also planning on making a direct play for TV stations’ audiences as well.

The National Association of Broadcasters is poised to ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a March FCC vote that requires broadcasters to unwind many of their advertising sales resource sharing arrangements, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The three stations — WCIV Charleston and WCFT-WJSU Birmingham — are now owned by Allbritton Communications, which Sinclair is buying, and were to be operated by sidecar companies. But those plans were dashed when the FCC earlier this year cracked down on the use of JSAs and SSAs. Today’s action, Sinclair said, is designed to win speedy approval of the Allbritton deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is the person to watch as the panel takes up its busiest, most complex agenda in years. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.

Just two months after assessing nearly $2 million in fines to cable operators for airing ads for the movie Olympus Has Fallen containing false EAS tones, the FCC on Thursday granted an 18-month extension of its 2013 waiver allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to continue to use false emergency tones in public service announcements.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler tells Congress that broadcasters’ blocking pay TV subs access to online content during retrans negotiations concerns him. Wheeler did not tell lawmakers during the hearing what retrans blackouts had specifically raised his concerns, or what in particular he planned to do about it.

June 18 will mark the beginning of the FCC ban on top 4 stations in a market doing joint retrans negotiations, while legal challenges to the rule must be filed in court by July 18.

Allowing station and newspaper combinations, the National Association of Media Brokers contends, would “be a step forward to enhancing public service without any meaningful impact on diversity.”

The New York upfronts are an exciting time, nothing less than a weeklong celebration of broadcasting, but they ultimately determine nothing but who will win the ratings crown for one broadcast TV season. The far less glamorous business taking place at the ATSC and FCC will determine ultimately whether there will be a broadcast TV season.

On Thursday, the FCC adopted rules to implement its broadcast television incentive auction and released three documents relating to those rules, as well as separate statements from four of the five commissioners. At the meeting, the commissioners noted that, when released, the Report and Order will contain a number of rule changes to implement the auction. Here are the major takeaways.

The new regulations, which drew dissents from both of the agency’s GOP commissioners, could hurt broadcasters that don’t participate, NAB says. “The FCC cavalierly concluded that broadcasters forced into a shrunken TV band won’t be guaranteed full compensation for this disruptive move — as was the express intent of Congress,” says NAB’s Dennis Wharton

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had enough reluctant support today from his two fellow Democrats to win a 3-2 preliminary vote to let Internet service providers charge Web companies to provide fast lanes for their content, which advocacy groups and Internet companies said undermines the ideal of treating Web traffic equally.

The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition gathered outside the FCC in Washington today to promote the FCC’s inventive auction. Concerned that a growing watchdog-group-organized protest over an FCC net neutrality proposal had “sucked the oxygen out of the auction, we wanted to put the oxygen back,” said coalition leader Preston Padden (left).

Pay TV industry lobbyists are continuing  to urge lawmakers to add provisions to the STELA legislations that would substantially reduce broadcasters’ retrans negotiating leverage. But the real threat on retrans looms at the FCC. The chairman there “is demonstrably hostile to the terrestrial broadcast system,” says one leading broadcast attorney.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is moving to expand salvage his controversial open Internet or net neutrality plan prior to a Thursday vote. According to an FCC official, Wheeler made revisions after the commission received 35,000 public comments — many of them expressing outrage.

Two years ago, when TV stations were first required to post their local public inspection files online, a number of observers anticipated that the ubiquitous availability of the now-misnamed “local” files would lead to an influx of complaints from non-local parties enjoying easy Internet access to once distant files. Well, the complaints have started.

It asks the appeals court in Washington to overturn the FCC’s new “processing guidelines” for TV station applications proposing sharing arrangements and contingent financial interests, calling their adoption “arbitrary [and] capricious.”

She is a former Neustar executive and technology journalist in Washington.

The Zapple Doctrine was an outgrowth of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. It  required that stations that give air time to the supporters of one candidate in an election give time to the supporters of competing candidates as well. Even though the Fairness Doctrine has been defunct for years, Zapple apparently lived on so stations had to be concerned about giving air time to supporters of political candidates for fear of having to provide similar time to those supporting competing candidates. Apparently, that uncertainty has now been resolved, as in two just released cases, the FCC”s Media Bureau has declared that Zapple, like the rest of the Fairness Doctrine, is dead.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s controversial net neutrality proposal showed signs of fraying Wednesday, taking hits from a fellow Democratic commissioner and the nation’s leading tech companies. After weeks of backlash, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said a scheduled May 15 vote on the plan should be delayed at least a month, while Google, Facebook and other Web giants slammed the proposal as a “grave threat to the Internet.”

Block Communications, owner of TV stations, newspapers and cable systems says larger broadcasters and cable operators need to be reined in. It suggests the FCC increase its existing powers to ensure that broadcasters and pay TV operators negotiate retrans deals in good faith. Block also suggests that the FCC limit its intervention to retrans cases in which the pay TV operator serves fewer than 400,000 subs and the TV station group owns or operates at least 25 TV stations — or in which the pay TV operator serves more than 1.5 million subs and the broadcaster owns or operates five or fewer TV stations.

The Sinclair CEO says the uncertainty surrounding the regulatory environment is making it tough on broadcasters. Congress and the courts need to supply some answers to disputes over shared service agreements and the FCC’s ownership cap. Also on the top of his to-do list is creating a next-generation broadcast TV standard that will let stations “be everywhere 24 hours a day, 365 on every device.”

In a May 7 letter to the FCC, the NAB, the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance, the National Religious Broadcasters and the National Translator Association “urge the commission to do everything in its power to ensure that the important benefits of LPTVs and TV translators are not undermined as a result of the incentive auction.”

As part of a House telecom committee proposal for STELA legislation, broadcasters with JSAs who applied for a waiver from the FCC would be able to keep the sharing arrangements intact for 18 months after the agency ultimately rejected a waiver request, or Dec. 31, 2016, whichever is later. The compromise JSA language is expected to be included  in the STELA reauthorization bill that  is scheduled for a House Energy and Commerce Committee vote tomorrow.

Tensions between broadcasters and the FCC have gotten so high that FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wonders “if it’s time to call Dr. Phil and see if he is available to mediate.” In a speech to the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters today, Pai extended an olive branch to the industry, saying: “Every segment of the industry we regulate should have confidence that the Commission will give them a fair hearing, and none should be under the impression that the FCC is out to get them.”