FCC

The commission approves the purchase of seven stations in six markets, but in light of the FCC’s changes in rules covering sharing agreements, other parts of the complex deal involving sidecar companies have been modified and are still under agency review.

The trade group’s two losses at the commission this week — on JSAs and joint retrans negotiations — are troubling to broadcasters because they believe FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has it in for them and other important issues are in the regulatory pipeline. But the news out of the nation’s capital is not all bad for NAB. The association is holding its own on Capitol Hill, where power is more diffused and NAB President (and former GOP Senator) Gordon Smith has some personal clout.

Speaking to a receptive group of cable operators, Tom Wheeler said that the goals Congress laid out when it passed the law have been “perverted,” and needed to be reformed.

After Monday’s FCC meeting left television broadcasters facing higher expenses and lower revenues by restricting the use of joint sales agreements and joint retransmission negotiations, broadcasters were due for some good news. Where the FCC is the bearer of bad news, it has often fallen to the courts to be the bearer of good news, generally by overruling the adverse FCC decision. Unfortunately, that process can take years, meaning that in Washington you have to take a very long term view of “the good outweighs the bad.”

Two or more separately owned Top-4 broadcasters in the same market would be prohibited from negotiating retrans deals altogether.

The new rule bans new joint sales agreements in which one station sells 15% or more of the advertising time of another separately owned station in the same market. In addition, most existing JSAs will expire within two years unless the commission grants an exemption.

The FCC on Thursday said it is reconsidering a rule that would provide Spanish broadcasts of emergency alerts and other important announcements. The rule was originally recommended in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In anticipation of tighter retransmission consent regulations, the Spanish-language station owner wants the FCC to allow it to keep on negotiating contracts for Entravision stations as well.

“One of the results [of the proposed JSA crackdown] … will be the opening up of broadcast licenses for minorities, women, small entrepreneurs, because they’re currently being sucked off the market,” the FCC chairman told a congressional hearing Tuesday.

NAB President Gordon Smith tells FCC Chairman Wheeler that his proposed crackdown on JSAs has already financially damaged the industry and could eventually cost jobs. “It’s time to take a step back and reevaluate,” says Smith in a letter to the chairman.

The Writers Guild of America has offered a chilling picture of the future of television to the FCC in a bid to block the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. “The FCC should deny the proposed merger,” the WGA said in a brief filed with the FCC on Friday, noting that the merged entity “would control almost 30%” of the cable and satellite TV market.

Rep. Richard Neal today asked the FCC to grandfather existing JSAs between broadcasters. The Massachusetts Democrat says the agreements lead to benefits including localism and diversity.

Sinclair has proposed dropping the use of sidecars as part of its effort to push its acquisition of Allbritton through the FCC. Sinclair says it will sell three stations that it now owns — WHP Harrisburg-Lancaster, Pa.; WMMP Charleston, S.C.; and WABM Birmingham, Ala.– to independent third parties. The company assured the FCC it would not enter any operational or financial agreements with any of the buyers.

Seeing the writing on the wall at the Federal Communications Commission, Sinclair Broadcast Group said late Thursday it would restructure its deal to buy Allbritton’s TV group. As part of the restructuring, Sinclair will no longer propose to enter into shared service and joint sales agreements in three markets where it is adding ABC affiliates from Allbritton.

In an effort to head off an all-out FCC ban on joint sales agreements, the National Association of Broadcasters rolled out a detailed compromise proposal on Thursday that would allow some JSAs to continue. The plan would protect JSAs that provide public interest benefits and don’t limit one station from using a sharing agreement to control other stations in the same market.

A U.S. regulator whose vote is needed to change television-station ownership rules that may force Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. to sell assets is pushing to ensure smaller companies can win exceptions. Mignon Clyburn, a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s Democratic majority, said in an interview she wants “balance” as the agency tightens regulations for controlling more than one station in a market.

The FCC and the CTIA-The Wireless Association believe that having two TV stations share the same 6 MHz of spectrum currently used by just one station will provide broadcasters what they need to do business and open up much desired spectrum for the wireless industry. Right now they are finding out of it can successfully be done.

Instead of prohibiting new JSAs and forcing current ones to unwind in two years unless they can get a waiver, the NAB said the commission should set conditions for legitimate station sharing deals, including requiring the brokered licensee to retain control over at least 85% of the station’s programming; keep at least 70% of ad sales revenue and “maintain at least 20% of station value in the license itself.

When it comes to getting approval for Comcast to buy its biggest rival, Time Warner Cable, lobbyist David Cohen must win over FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

In a public notice, the FCC’s Media Bureau says it’s particularly concerned about same-market sharing deals that include contingent financial interests. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly say they’re opposed to the such a move.

The agenda is out, and the FCC’s likely action on its Quadrennial Review of the multiple ownership rules now seems to be much clearer. And the decision seems likely to follow the rumors circulating in Washington for weeks, with new regulatory wrinkles added to those previously suggested. Among the hot topics: JSAs, SSAs and retransmission consent agreements.

Disregarding all the changes that have roiled the television industry over the four decades since the FCC adopted its ban on owning two TV stations in the same market, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler now believes that it is absolutely imperative that the FCC buck up the old rule by closing loopholes that broadcasters have been using to get around it.

If a majority of the commission supports his proposal, joint sales agreements and joint TV station retransmission consent negotiations will be banned, effective immediately.

The football league tells the FCC that eliminating blackouts also will make the game less TV-friendly and that the regulatory agency doesn’t actually have authority to change the rules.

There was quite a stir Monday when the FCC, despite being closed for a snow day, proposed very large fines against Viacom, NBCUniversal and ESPN for transmitting false EAS alert tones. So what lesson should broadcasters and cable networks take away from this? The all too obvious one is to do whatever it takes to prevent false EAS tones from making it on air. However, an equally useful lesson is to make sure that your contracts with advertisers require the advertiser to warrant that the spots provided will comply with all laws and to indemnify the broadcaster or network if that turns out not to be the case.

The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters suggests that rather than outlawing all JSAs and SSA, the FCC should let stations restructure them to guarantee that the operated stations would eventually be transferred to a minority owner or otherwise serve the public interest. If so, they would be given a waiver to operate for some longer period of time, say five years.

The cable network penalties represent the largest yet proposed in ongoing investigations of misuse of the Emergency Alert System warning sounds.

Following a firestorm of media attention regarding the FCC’s efforts to examine newsroom decision making as part of a Critical Information Needs Study, the FCC  announced a week ago that it would modify the study to eliminate the questions directed at newsroom decisions. But that didn’t calm the furor. Late Friday, the FCC sought to put an end to this certainly unwelcome attention. It released a terse statement, the entirety of which is: “The FCC will not move forward with the Critical Information Needs study. The commission will reassess the best way to fulfil [sic] its obligation to Congress to identify barriers to entry into the communications marketplace faced by entrepreneurs and other small businesses.”

Justice’s 18-page filing in support of the FCC’s proposal to kill JSAs is a bloated document that has a slap-dash quality and is notably short on substance. What’s worse, it references comments it made in a similar FCC proceeding in 1997, saying they continue to make a lot of sense. 1997?! That’s 17 years ago. I would say that anything written about media markets in 1997 is totally irrelevant today.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who designed the initial study as acting FCC chairman last year, said the study of newsroom practices was an attempt by the agency to better understand, not control, the industries it regulates, including the news industry. The study has seen backlash from Republicans concerned about the chilling affect it could have on the country’s newsrooms, prompting current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to scale it back.

Despite speed bumps from the FCC (plans to kill JSAs and SSAs) and Aereo, many industry observers think the station trading market will heat up, with speculation that possible players include not only the usual suspects (Sinclair and Nexstar) but also Post-Newsweek, LIN, Meredith, Media General, Raycom and Sunbeam.

Even though the FCC chairman said the agency would stay out of the newsroom in a proposed study of the media marketplace, GOP leaders want to make sure it stays that way. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the communications and technology subcommittee, vowed today to introduce legislation to kill the agency’s so-called “Critical Information Needs” study. He’s also planning to hold a hearing.

“The Department [of Justice] believes it is appropriate for the commission’s ownership ‘attribution’ rules to treat any two stations participating in a JSA (or agreement similar in substance to a JSA) as under common ownership,” said DOJ’s antitrust division in a Feb. 20 filing.

The FCC is trying to reassure House Republicans it has no plans to restrict the freedom of the press. In a letter released today, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee his commission “has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters.” Wheeler defended new FCC research as the first step toward pinpointing “market barriers” that might affect the “diversity of media voices.”

Closed captioning is designed to help the deaf and hearing-impaired enjoy television. But the captions are often riddled with typos or incomplete sentences that leave viewers struggling to make sense of what’s being said. Now the FCC is doing something about it. On Thursday, the agency is expected to adopt new rules that it hopes will improve the quality of closed captioning.

In ex parte remarks, it suggests any changes should be made in concert with a broader consideration of broadcast ownership rules.

Chairman Tom Wheeler will try to revive the FCC’s net neutrality regulations with a view that a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in DC last month upheld the agency’s right to set rules for the Internet, even as it vacated much of the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet Order.

It’s a new year, and the FCC is starting with a new round of EEO audits. Letters to more than 280 affected radio and TV stations went out late last week, and the FCC’s Public Notice of the audit, listing all of the affected stations, has just been released. The commission has pledged to audit 5% of all broadcast stations and cable systems each year to assure their compliance with the commission’s EEO rules – requiring wide dissemination of information about job openings and non-vacancy specific supplemental efforts to educate their communities about job opportunities in the media industry.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly on JSAs and SSAs: “I think it is fair to say that the media marketplace is far more competitive than it was decades ago when the FCC’s media ownership rules were established, or in 2002 … or 2006 when they were last reviewed. That is why I would be perplexed and deeply concerned by a push to abruptly switch gears and tighten the rules as part of a media ownership proceeding. Such a move would conflict with the spirit, intent and wording of the statute. It would also likely harm the public interest if fewer stations could offer local news, especially in smaller communities.”