Regulation

Discovery says the DOJ had concluded its investigation into the proposed merger, clearing the way for the deal to close.

Congressional Democrats today introduced a long-promised resolution aimed at undoing the FCC’s repeal of the net neutrality rules. Spearheaded by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the measure would reverse the FCC’s December decision to repeal the Obama-era regulations. It would do so via the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to nix agency rules, within 60 days of their publication in the Federal Register, by a simple majority vote.

Fox News has come out victorious in a blockbuster ruling on Tuesday that could cause a sharp derailment in the sharing of clips from the cable network. In the decision, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals analyzes copyright fair use and comes to the conclusion that TVEyes, a media monitoring service, went too far by giving its customers the ability to watch virtually all of Fox News’ content.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker has called upon advertisers and tech firms to help find new way to monetize news content on mobile platforms, and on authorities to pay closer attention to the power wielded by Google and Facebook, as news providers try to adapt to the changing digital landscape.

t’s part of an aggressive push towards super-fast 5G wireless services, which require new swaths of airwaves to become available to the carriers building the networks. The FCC said it wants to hold two auctions — first of the 28 GHz band and then of the 24 GHz band — starting later this year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stacey Dash, the actress turned conservative political commentator, has filed paperwork to run for a congressional seat in Southern California. Documents submitted Monday to the Federal […]

Social media giants Facebook and Twitter should be fined if they don’t weed out automated accounts, or bots, trying to influence U.S. public opinion, says Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

March is one of those months where without the Annual EEO Public File Reports that come up for different states every other month, or without the Quarterly Issues Programs List and Children’s Television Report obligations that arise following the end of every calendar quarter. But this March has two very significant deadlines right at the beginning of the month — Online Public Files for radio and Biennial Ownership Reports — that will impose obligations on most broadcasters.

Facebook Inc and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg have reached a $35 million settlement of class-action litigation accusing them of hiding worries about the social media company’s growth prior to its May 2012 initial public offering.

CNN, The Miami Herald and The South Florida Sun Sentinel filed a civil lawsuit in Broward Circuit Court today in an effort to obtain footage of the outside of the building where the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took place earlier this month.

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) will present the Champion of Public Broadcasting Award to Rep. Charles W. Dent (R-Pa.) during its Public Media Summit today, Monday, Feb. 26, at 2:20 p.m. at the Fairmont […]

MOUNDSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by coal company Murray Energy against HBO host John Oliver. A segment of Oliver’s Sunday show “Last Week Tonight” […]

At its meeting yesterday, the FCC adopted a notice suggesting the abolition of the EEO Mid-Term Report, FCC Form 397. That form is filed at the mid-point of the renewal term of TV stations with five or more fulltime employees and radio clusters with 11 or more fulltime employees. As the content of the report is principally made up of the broadcaster’s last two EEO Public Inspection File Reports, and those reports are available in a broadcasters online public inspection file, the FCC concluded that there is no real reason that these reports need to be separately submitted, and thus proposed its elimination.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai received the National Rifle Association’s “Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award” at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. The NRA-sponsored award was given to Pai in recognition of months of heavy criticism over his successful push to repeal the agency’s net neutrality rules last December.

Well, it’s official: the Open Internet rule, better known as Net Neutrality, will go bye-bye starting April 23.

“While the commission has a long history of facilitating the introduction of new technologies and services,” the commission said, “the regulatory path from technological breakthrough to authorization of service has often been too long and arduous.”

The FCC plans to make its net neutrality repeal official on Thursday, when it will publish the revocation order, dubbed “Restoring Internet Freedom,” in the Federal Register. The expected move will trigger a 60-day window during which Congress can rescind the FCC’s move by passing a resolution of disapproval.

The Independent Television Group says the commission’s retention of the ban “was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to the evidence in the record before the agency.”

Sinclair will sell WPIX New York and WGN Chicago — as well as KSWB San Diego to smooth the way for its purchase of Tribune’s stations, the station group says in a filing. But the stations will remain in the Sinclair orbit. A footnote to the filing says Sinclair “will enter into an option and services agreement(s)” with the buyer or buyers of the stations. In addition, it will spin off one of the two top-four stations it would own post-merger in seven markets — Seattle, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma, Grand Rapids, Richmond and Des Moines.

One of the first proposals in FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s initiative for the modernization of media regulation was to repeal a rule that many did not even know was a rule — one requiring that broadcasters who have secondary licenses maintain a paper copy of the FCC rules. Not even waiting for the commission meeting tomorrow at which this proposal was to be considered, the FCC issued its Report and Order yesterday, repealing the rule.

The government should require social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to use an  open application programming interface. This would make it possible for third parties to build software to monitor and report on the effects of social media algorithms. To be clear, the proposal is not to force companies to open up their algorithms — just the results of the algorithms.

The saga of the sale of The Weinstein Co. took another turn as the leading bidders for the company are seeking to loosen a Gordian knot with the New York State Attorney General’s office. Discussions are underway to hold a Wednesday meeting between AG Eric T. Schneiderman and the investor group leader Maria Contreras-Sweet and Yucaipa’s Ron Burkle, sources confirm.

Smiley claims PBS used a sexual misconduct investigation as a pretext to get rid of him, but the network says the decision to suspend his show was justified.

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the State of California’s SAG-AFTRA-backed law making it illegal for the entertainment news site IMDbPro to publish actors’ ages is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

Lawmakers are concerned that advances in video manipulation technology could set off a new era of fake news. Now legislators say they want to start working on fixes to the problem before it’s too late. Technology experts have begun to sound the alarm on the new software, which lets users take existing videos and make high-quality altered video and audio that appears real. The emergence of the technology opens up a new world of hoaxes driven by doctored audio or video, and threatens to shake faith in the media even further.

The president’s decision to attend the Gridiron Club dinner seems conciliatory, though bitter feelings remain on both sides.

Siding against Charter, a New York state judge has refused to dismiss Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s lawsuit alleging that the company duped consumers by delivering broadband speeds that were slower than advertised.