Regulation

Last April, the broadcast industry was abuzz with the need to register previously unlicensed earth stations in order to reduce the chance of future displacement. On April 11, the FCC released a Public Notice outlining the procedures for submitting the required certifications and related information for operators of FSS earth stations in the 3.7-4.2 GHz band (either licensed or registered) by May 28.

A whopping $128 million ruling in arbitration came after Fox licensed the Emily Deschanel series to Hulu for very little. Next week, the parties appear in open court for the next round of the dispute.

The Nexstar CEO says while the FCC’s ownership coverage cap is effectively at 78% now, broadcasters would like the Pai FCC to lock it in at that level so that some future FCC with a Democratic majority cannot easily reset it at 39% by once again repealing the UHF discount.

Alphabet Inc’s Wing Aviation unit on Tuesday got the OK to start delivering goods by drone in Virginia later this year, making the sister unit of search engine Google the first company to get U.S. air carrier certification, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

TiVo has lobbed yet another lawsuit at Comcast, alleging that the cable operator is infringing on six patents that, it claims, have linkages to Comcast-supplied DVR and non-DVR set-top box devices and broadband gateways and various services and apps that run on them.

Taking a rare political stand, Nielsen has come out against a bid by the Trump administration to add a citizenship requirement to the 2020 census. The measurement firm maintains that such a stipulation would suppress participation in the census, leading to a “significant undercount,” says CEO David Kenny.

All those TV station employees wondering whether they dodged a bullet in the 2017 broadcast incentive auction can now search for that info, which shows that there were 858 stations willing to give up spectrum, or a little under half of the 1,800 stations the FCC was interested in getting bids from. Those 858 bids totaled a whopping $187,391,861,235.

Discussions between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission officials about its data-handing lapses have touched on holding the CEO personally accountable. Zuckerberg controls a majority of Facebook’s voting stock and has run the company since starting it at Harvard in 2004.

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau is taking aim at video set-top boxes, including those that stream content from the internet, over growing concerns about models being marketed and distributed that don’t meet commission requirements.

Bureau chief Michelle Carey said Thursday that associate bureau chief Holly Saurer has been named deputy bureau chief and Paul Jackson has joined the bureau as associate bureau chief.

TV and movie ratings should include a smoking depiction warning, lawmakers say in letter to media executives. “Both film and television continue to expose children and adolescents to tobacco content conclusively proven to cause physical harm to young viewers.”

Concerned that the White House may have influenced the Justice Department’s decision to try to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, Hill Democrats asked for any correspondence between the White House and Justice Department relating to merger. But the White House counsel declined, citing executive privilege.

The Justice Department is OK with Nexstar’s spin-offs of eight TV stations to Scripps, part of its deal to acquire Tribune. Scripps is buying eight stations in seven markets for $580 million. The sale keeps Nexstar on the right side of FCC ownership limits.

Good feelings about the broadcasting business at the NAB last week were tempered by the slow pace of ownership regulations at the FCC and Justice Department and the threat from the ever-growing roster of direct-to-consumer streaming services. Some other random takeaways: Is the convention shrinking? | ATSC 3.0 felt more like ATSC 2.4. | There’s a repack disconnect. | Reporting on the Trump White House.

Former CBS Chairman-CEO Leslie Moonves and CBS corporate filed legal briefs Friday in connection with a shareholder lawsuit that accuses CBS, its board and Moonves of failing to disclose information that would affect business operations and stock prices.

Does WikiLeaks do journalism, or is it something else? The answer wasn’t evident when the organization burst into public consciousness at the top of this decade with the release of government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems even less so now following the arrest of founder Julian Assange in London.

Questions about regulations from Washington don’t disappear just because you are spending time in Las Vegas, and this week’s NAB Show brought discussion of many such issues. Here’s a recap of news about some imminent actions on some  issues pending before the FCC.

The Save the Internet Act passed the Democrat-controlled House 232-190 Wednesday, with only one Republican vote in favor. But top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that net neutrality is “dead on arrival in the Senate.”

The FCC chairman tells the NAB Show that when it comes to the commission’s review, “we will not be deterred by those whose regulatory views are not guided by facts and reasons, but instead were set in stone in the era of Laverne & Shirley, Starsky & Hutch and The Captain and Tennille.”

Full House star Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, and 14 other parents were hit Tuesday with a new money laundering charge in the sweeping college admissions bribery scheme.

FCC Commissioners Michael O’Rielly, Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks weighed in on localization and local broadcasters’ coverage of crises during an NAB Show panel session.