Regulation

Digital media go way too far in collecting personal information and using it to target ads. It’s not good for people and, incidentally, it’s not good for broadcasting, which can’t compete with the likes of Google and Facebook in the Big Data game. A privacy law banning digital media from profiling their users is unlikely, but tough regulations that limit it may be possible.

AT&T and Time Warner have agreed to extend the deadline for their long-delayed merger until June 21, according to an SEC filing Thursday. The extension should allow time for a verdict in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking to block the deal. The trial will begin in March. June 21 is the date when both parties can officially abandon the deal.

The judge overseeing the Justice Department’s bid to stop AT&T from buying Time Warner said Thursday that he would deny a request to tighten protections on confidential data.

Each year around this time, Pillsbury’s communications practice releases its Broadcasters’ Calendar for the upcoming year. It may not be the perfect stocking stuffer, but broadcasters that don’t read it closely are much more likely to end up on the FCC’s Naughty List next year.

The FCC this week announced the filing of two applications seeking broadcast acquisitions by non-U.S. based companies. In one, a company controlled by Mexican citizens would go from 25% to 100% ownership and control of a company that owns two FM stations in California and Arizona. In another, an Italian company would acquire a number of radio stations in Florida. Each of the FCC notices ask for public comment on the proposed acquisitions.

The $13.4 million notice of apparent liability is for its airing of paid programming that did not include proper disclosures when broadcast. Sinclair says it will contest the fine.

Tom Wheeler, the former chairman of the FCC under President Obama, on Wednesday called for internet giants like Facebook and Google to be regulated. “It is time to recognize that the most powerful companies in the country should not be making their own rules,” Wheeler wrote.

Walt Disney Co joined 21st Century Fox on Wednesday in asking the judge hearing AT&T Inc’s antitrust case to strengthen an order aimed at keeping its data private if it is used at trial next year.

Two additional former Fox News employees are suing Bill O’Reilly and the cable news network for defamation, joining the legal battle that was brought earlier this month by former Fox News producer Rachel Witlieb Bernstein.

The political pundit alleged that Roger Ailes conditioned her network role on a sexual relationship.

The NFL has lost a Canadian appeals court battle to stop the CTV network from being forced to air United States Super Bowl telecast commercials.

Kirkland, Wash.-based Wave Broadband has filed a claim with the FCC saying cable giant Comcast is unfairly trying to force Wave to provide higher-priced sports TV channels to customers who don’t want them.

The Open Internet Preservation Act, introduced Tuesday by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or throttling legal content, applications or services.

Three former employees claim a Sinclair affiliate discriminates against women and ignored complaints about harassment. Jaclyn Mason, Richelle Meiss and Rebecca Zak are suing Sinclair, along with its digital comedy venture Circa Laughs, Medio Pictures Partners, Airplane! writer-director David Zucker and Medio COO Randall Sherman.

The sale of WPME Lewiston, Maine, by Ironwood Communications Portland to Ion Media Networks tops the latest list of TV station transactions submitted to the FCC for its approval, according to BIA/Kelsey.

A U.S. federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that music licensing giant BMI did not have to abide by the Obama administration’s more restrictive interpretation of how royalties should be collected. The decision dealt a setback to the Justice Department’s effort to require BMI and ASCAP, to license music to digital streaming services, radio and television stations, bars and other music users only if they could issue a “full-work” license.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former “Glee” star Mark Salling has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. Salling entered the plea in a downtown Los Angeles federal court on Monday […]

Can anyone with even the most nominal understanding of these businesses argue that having one company own the ESPN channel group along with the Fox regional sports channels would be good for consumers and competition?

AT&T and the U.S. Department of Justice have been unable to resolve antitrust concerns over the pending Time Warner acquisition outside of court, according to a document filed Friday.

An Iowa Supreme Court justice has issued a highly unusual order prohibiting the Des Moines Register from publishing information gleaned from court records. The Register has objected, calling the order an unlawful form of prior restraint that violates the First Amendment and “stands as an undesirable and unsustainable outlier in the law and policy of this state and this nation.”

Lawmakers on the House and Senate’s top antitrust committee say Congress should take a closer look at Disney’s $52 billion bid to buy 21st Century Fox.

The FCC plans to fine Sinclair Broadcast Group $13.3 million after it failed to properly disclose that paid programming that aired on its TV stations was sponsored by a cancer institute, three people briefed on the matter told Reuters. The proposed fine covers about 1,700 spots including commercials that looked like news stories that aired during newscasts for the Utah-based Huntsman Cancer Institute over a six-month period in 2016.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department has signaled it is willing to approve Sinclair Broadcast Group’s planned takeover of Tribune Media. but with a condition: It wants the companies to sell off roughly a dozen television stations. DOJ told the companies the deal as currently structured raises antitrust problems and that 12 to 13 station sales are necessary to alleviate concerns about competition in markets where a combined Sinclair-Tribune would otherwise have a commanding presence. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

In another boost to major station owners like Sinclair and Fox, yet another partisan vote by the Republican-controlled FCC moved the commission a step closer to raising or eliminating the 39% ownership cap. The rule adopted today starts a process of review that many local broadcasters and observers see as likely to result in a change to the longstanding cap, which currently limits a single owner from controlling stations with reach to more than 39% of U.S. households.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether the 2011 Comcast-NBC merger has hurt market competition. Blumenthal sent a letter to the Trump administration’s top antitrust prosecutor, Makan Delrahim, on Wednesday, asking him to revisit the deal and to try to keep in place behavioral conditions that are set to expire next year.

The Thursday FCC vote along party lines will likely usher in big changes in how Americans use the internet, a radical departure from more than a decade of federal oversight. The move not only rolls back restrictions that keep broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from blocking or collecting tolls from services they don’t like, but bars states from imposing their own rules.

Blue Alerts are designed to protect law enforcement officers and communities.

The Thursday vote scheduled at the FCC could usher in big changes in how Americans use the internet, a radical departure from more than a decade of federal oversight. A growing public movement suggests that the FCC vote won’t be the end of the issue. Opponents of the move plan legal challenges, and some net-neutrality supporters hope to ride that wave of public opinion into the 2018 elections.