WPIX New York owner Mission Broadcasting is being fined $150,000 by the FCC over a contract dispute with cable giant Comcast that caused the cable TV company to file a complaint with the agency in 2022. TV stations and cable operators have a legal duty to negotiate retransmission consent carriage deals in good faith. But the FCC found that Mission violated that standard by requiring contract terms with Comcast that would have prevented either side from filing a complaint with the FCC.
The National Football League isn’t officially saying anything yet, but the league just suffered a major loss. Failing to get the nearly decade-long antitrust lawsuit over the lucrative Sunday Ticket package thrown out of court, the Roger Goodell-run NFL is going to trial for potentially $6.1 billion just over a week after this year’s Super Bowl.
The FCC is fining Nexstar’s KAMR Amarillo, Texas, $6,000 and a Paramount Global’s KPYX San Francisco $3,000 over lax recordkeeping discovered by agency staff in reviewing the stations’ license renewal applications submitted in 2022.
ChatGPT and other generative AI applications rely on copyrighted material to do what they do. But rather than compensate creators, the companies are turning to one of Silicon Valley’s most reliable playbooks: claiming what they do is legally fair use. (Richard Drew/AP)
RTDNA President-CEO Dan Shelley says TV news’ credibility is on the line in this election year as never before, and he has some advice on how stations can recapture viewers’ trust. A full transcript of the conversation is included.
Britain’s competition regulator plans to make Big Tech companies give their rivals greater access to data and limit them from promoting their own products under new powers it is due to receive from the government, it said on Thursday.
A federal judge in Ohio has issued an emergency restraining order blocking enforcement of a new state law that would have required some large tech platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube, to ban minors under 16, without parental consent.
It’s a law that attorneys for Big Tech have contended unfairly targets companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon. The legal case is being closely watched by other states that have also weighed a similar tax for online ads. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with a lower federal court’s decision to dismiss the challenge on First Amendment grounds argued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as three other trade associations.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced on Wednesday a $50-million grant to Dish Wireless from the agency’s Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. The money will go to the establishment of the company’s Open RAN Center for Integration and Deployment, or ORCID. The Cheyenne, Wyo.-based testing facility will allow companies to test equipment and software to ensure their technology works with existing 5G networks. The funding for ORCID is an attempt to allow smaller vendors to enter the market.
AI Threats Loom Over Cautious Congress
After a year filled with hearings and forums discussing the risks and benefits of AI as the technology expands into critical sectors, experts say it is time for Congress to act — while some warn that lawmakers are already behind.
Fox Corp.’s effort to protect its WTXF Philadelphia from license revocation just got some new local political support. Pennsylvania State Rep. Morgan Cephas sent a brief letter calling on the FCC to renew the license, which is being challenged over 2020 election reporting that aired on Fox News Channel and Fox stations around the country. The challenge to the license began last summer. Although Fox has asked for prompt renewal, the FCC has not acted.
WGBP has deployed just about every legal argument possible in an effort to win a carriage dispute with Dish Network. Now the station is trying a little humor with the FCC’s Media Bureau staff to get across its point that Dish is blurring the meaning of regulations that are clear on their face. “While these interpretations are clear and unambiguous, Dish effectively asks the Media Bureau staff to stand on one foot, put on a pair of oversized sunglasses, and spin around five times, to try to find a different meaning,” said Wiley Rein lawyer Ari Meltzer, counsel for WGBP owner CNZ Communications, in a Jan. 5 filing with the commission.
The artificial intelligence start-up said that it collaborated with news organizations and that The Times, which accused it of copyright infringement, was not telling the full story.
With the Iowa Republican Caucus happening in mid-January and dozens of additional primaries and caucuses to follow before the 2024 general election, broadcasters need to be aware of the use of artificial intelligence, deepfakes and synthetic media in political advertising and the various laws at play when such content is used. These laws seek to ensure that viewers and listeners are made aware that the person they are seeing or the voice they are hearing in political advertising may not be who it looks like or sounds like.
A congressional committee made the demand of the Commerce Department after the New York Times reported on concerns among U.S. intelligence officials over the Emirati company, G42.
Meta Platforms is pressing a federal district court judge to stay a Federal Trade Commission administrative proceeding that could result in an order prohibiting the company from monetizing teens’ data. In papers filed late last week, Meta tells U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly it will face “irreparable harm” unless he halts an administrative hearing at which the company “will be forced to litigate before its litigation adversary, and without the procedural protections inherent in federal court litigation.”
The suit alleged that the streamer was overly optimistic about its business prospects despite it being aware of the impact account-sharing would have on growth.
OpenAI is firing back at The New York Times after the company was sued for copyright infringement over the use of the publisher’s articles to train its artificial intelligence chatbot. In a blog post, the Sam Altman-led firm said that the Times is “not telling the full story” and claimed it “intentionally manipulated” prompts to make it appears as if ChatGPT generates near word-for-word excerpts of articles.
The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on what tech companies are billing as their version of a challenge to “must-carry” laws, statutes that they say are unconstitutional threats to their First Amendment freedom. The high court’s decision could determine the future of social media and other edge providers to moderate their content.
Cox Communications is set to pay $13 million to settle an Arizona lawsuit that alleged the cable TV company disguised price hikes as “routine fees.” The lawsuit accuses Cox of deceiving Arizonans who bought TV services from the provider to enter long-term contracts by promising a “price lock guarantee” and other fixed pricing “deals,” according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
A second major cable news channel is seeking an exemption from federal video description rules intended to help millions who are either the blind or visual impaired. Fox News — the top-rated cable network overall for the past eight years — is asking for the exemption from the FCC, joining MNBC in asserting that the agency’s rules have traditionally excluded networks that offer little in the way of recorded programming.
NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt says he’s “tremendously frustrated” with the FCC’s late December decision to reaffirm and tighten its regulations on broadcast ownership. So, what’s the organization’s next move? A full transcript of the conversation is included.
CNZ Communications, owner of WGBP Opelika, Ala., claims that under FCC precedent, Dish needs to carry the station throughout the entire Atlanta, Ga., and Columbus, Ga., DMAs. CNZ filed a complaint with the FCC on Dec. 11 seeking full carriage in both markets. Yesterday, Dish asked the FCC to deny the complaint, saying it was “based on a misreading of the relevant statute, regulations, and FCC precedent.”
Less than a week after Paula Abdul accused Nigel Lythgoe of sexually assaulting her twice over the past 20 years, the So You Think You Can Dance co-creator has been hit with another suit from two other women. However, unlike the action by the former American Idol judge, this latest blow against Lythgoe may not pack much legal punch.
Hey FCC, It’s Not The 1960s Anymore
The FCC has held tight to anachronistic structural regulations, dealing a massive blow to broadcasters in dire need of regulatory relief. Localism will be one of the casualties.