WSAZ Forecaster Accused Of Assaulting Colleague
With new attacks by President Trump, high-stakes testimony next week on Capitol Hill, and a midterm election vulnerable to online manipulation, tech’s giants are bracing themselves for two months after Labor Day that could decide whether and how much the government regulates them.
President Trump on Thursday evening railed against the news media as he spoke at a rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Mike Braun, who is seeking to unseat Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in November. Trump attacked CNN and NBC during the rally in Evansville, Ind., calling NBC “worse than CNN.” He also went after a New York Times reporter over coverage of his past crowd size, saying the reporter “doesn’t have a clue.”
“These are just dishonest, terrible people,” he said.
On Thursday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine potential antitrust developments in Google’s search and digital advertising.
The FCC has approved its schedule for collecting $322,035,000 in regulatory fees — over a third of which ($113.22 million) it will be collecting from cable, satellite and broadcast licensees — and it includes another increase for DBS and a new calculation method for TV stations.
Exclusives
A Los Angeles man was arrested by the FBI Thursday for allegedly making death threats against employees of the Boston Globe, calling the outlet the “the enemy of the people,” which President Trump says about journalists on a routine basis.
President Donald Trump set aside his complaints about tech companies and foreign leaders, at least for the moment, to return to his comfort zone of blasting the TV news business. In three morning tweets the president said the “hatred and extreme bias of me by @CNN has clouded their thinking and made them unable to function.” He also ripped into NBC News, anchor Lester Holt and president Andy Lack.
What can you do if your station’s news report is used in an incomplete or misleading way by an organization or candidate with an agenda? Unfortunately, the answer may be “not much.”
The Senate intelligence committee said on Wednesday it would hold a hearing next week to look at how social media companies are responding to foreign influence operations, with testimony expected from top executives of Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet.
Antitrust restrictions placed on Comcast Corp. after its takeover of NBCUniversal are due to expire in a few days. But that doesn’t mean the Justice Department is done scrutinizing the company. The department’s antitrust division wrote a letter to Comcast this month warning that it would continue to monitor developments in how the company handles TV programming and distribution. It also asked for notice by Wednesday of any changes that the cable giant plans to make when the decree runs out on Sept. 1, according to the Aug. 14 letter.
Following the collapsed merger and $1 billion lawsuit Tribune filed against Sinclair, Sinclair filed a countersuit, claiming that “Tribune, through its meritless lawsuit, is seeking to capitalize on an unfavorable and unexpected reaction from the [FCC] to capture a windfall for Tribune.”
How Trump Could Hurt Google
President Donald Trump’s Tuesday morning attack on Google for delivering “rigged” search results met with a swift denial from the company, but Trump’s threat to address the “suppressing” of conservative voices might not be so easily dismissed. While Trump has few direct ways of going after Google, his administration and allies in Congress could find ways to make life difficult for the company.
President Trump attacked Google on Tuesday for what he claimed was an effort to intentionally suppress conservative views supportive of his administration, an accusation that increases pressure on technology companies grappling with their increasingly central role as purveyors of information. The president hinted that he would take action against the search giant in his latest attack on a tech company.
The American Cable Association wants to make sure that Gray is not allowed to raise the retrans fees of stations before spinning them off to other buyers in its purchase of Raycom’s TV stations. That’s according to an ACA filing at the FCC.
A group of 103 members of Congress have filed an amicus brief in support of Mozilla et al.’s challenge to the FCC’s network neutrality reg rollback. Many of those are also opposing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because of his views on FCC net neutrality regulation and authority.
The FCC’s attorney general, its internal watchdog, cleared the agency’s Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, of showing any favoritism toward Sinclair Broadcasting Group in the review of its now-abandoned merger plans.
Hollywood and Wall Street has long wondered how much Sumner Redstone really knows about what is being done and said in his name. Now, thanks to an irate filing Tuesday by lawyers for the rarely seen 95-year old media mogul and the legal tenacity of his former companion Manula Herzer, by the end of the week we might know if we are finally going to get a glimpse at the real capacity of the elder Redstone
More Than Seven Dirty Words will feature interviews with FCC officials and staff and others to share untold stories, explain important policy issues and more.
Allegations of sexual misconduct against CBS chairman Leslie Moonves have now hit a courtroom as one CBS shareholder on Monday filed a putative class action against the company.
Repack Reimbursement Comments Due Sept. 26
In Monday’s Federal Register, publication is scheduled for the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on reimbursing LPTV stations, TV translators and FM radio stations for costs they incur because of the TV incentive auction and the resulting repacking of the TV spectrum. The publication in the Federal Register means that comments on the FCC proposals are due Sept. 26, and reply comments on Oct. 26.
The ousted anchor can’t force PBS to hand over internal documents dating back decades and two of his claims have been dismissed.
McCain’s Maverick Ways Extended To Broadcast
As he did on many things, Arizona Senator John McCain, who died over the weekend, went his own way on broadcasting policy during his days as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in the 1990s and the aughts. Untethered to any regulatory orthodoxy, he helped broadcasters stave off new public interest obligations, but at the same time he opposed their second-channel plans for the analog-to-digital transition and championed free air time for candidates.
Jessell | Worried About Ad Collusion? Blame The FCC
While stations are cautioned not to share too much information to avoid charges of price fixing, the FCC requires them to post the rates they charge political advertisers, from which smart rival broadcasters can deduce their entire pricing stategy.
The Senate on Thursday passed a measure to provide funding to require drug advertisements to disclose the price of the drug after a last-minute push. The move marks a rare moment where Congress took some action aimed at high drug prices, a contentious issue that has been a recent target of Democrats and the Trump administration.
A Boston woman is suing celebrity chef and former host of ABC’s The Chew and Iron Chef America regular, claiming he groped her at a bar. At least seven women have already accused Batali of alleged inappropriate touching in public, causing him to lose his television jobs.
According to two sources briefed on the Cohen investigation, prosecutors granted immunity to David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., and A.M.I.’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, so they would describe Trump’s involvement in Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal during the 2016 campaign.
