Regulation

Reps. Michael Burgess (Texas), a doctor and the most senior Republican on the panel, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) are viewed as the frontrunners to fill the seat held by retiring Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), according to multiple GOP lawmakers. Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) is also pursuing the top post, but he is seen as the dark horse in the race, the sources said.

Former FCC Commissioner and acting chair Mignon Clyburn made a case for the “public-private” partnership of regulator-industry as the blueprint for advancing a more diverse and inclusive media landscape. Clyburn was delivering her virtual acceptance speech at the Media Institute’s First Amendment awards ceremony.

The FCC is inclined to allow KGW-TV Portland, Ore., to change from a VHF to a UHF, but is seeking input on that inclination. It has given commenters until 25 days after publication of Wednesday’s (Oct. 14) petition for rulemaking in the Federal Register, which usually takes a couple of weeks. There has been a freeze on such changes for almost a decade, dating from when the FCC first started to prepare for the 2016 broadcast incentive auction.

President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said on Wednesday she was open to at least one sweeping change for the nation’s top judicial body — allowing cameras into the chamber for the first time in its 230-year history.

Prosecutors for the Justice Department and state attorney general offices are discussing ways of curbing the search giant’s market power as they prepare to sue the company.

Broadcasters would welcome reformation of the outdated newspaper-TV crossownership rule, but the Supreme Court’s decision to hear an appeal of the Third Circuit decision doesn’t solve all the industry’s COVID-induced woes. The FCC still needs to eliminate the Top 4 rule and online video distributors need to be classified as MVPDs.

As we reported last week, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals by the FCC and the NAB of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that overturned a 2017 decision by the FCC attempting to relax its media ownership rules. So, what does this actually mean for the FCC’s ownership rules and the broadcast industry? Not surprisingly based on the history of this proceeding, the answer is not entirely clear.

Broadcasters have scored a victory in the debate with Microsoft over how the FCC should allow for more unlicensed broadband in the so-called white spaces between TV channels.

The federal government on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that prevented the Trump administration from imposing a ban on TikTok, the viral video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

An extended back-and-forth between the campaigns threw the presidential debate schedule into chaos Thursday, raising the question: Will there even be another debate? In addition to safety concerns, there is also a political standoff between the two campaigns, with a fight over the dates and settings of the two remaining debates.

The country’s top court has taken up a major case about media ownership rules that will have a far-reaching impact on M&A and broadcast regulation.

A grand jury in Tyler County, Texas, has indicted Netflix on charges of “disseminating lewd material” for distributing the French film Cuties. The indictment, which specifically names company co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, accuses the Netflix of “the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age, which appeals to the prurient interest in sex and has no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The case before the justices Wednesday has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.

The Senate Commerce Committee voted last week to authorize subpoenas for (l-r) Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai of Google and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to force them to testify if they didn’t agree to do so voluntarily. Spokespeople for the companies said Monday that the CEOs will cooperate and appear at an Oct. 28 hearing.

When it comes to the deployment of ATSC 3.0 and the new services that it can provide to broadcasting and beyond, the NAB tells the FCC it should take a “light regulatory touch.” On a call on Oct. 1, NAB spoke with the FCC Media Bureau on its Notice of Ex Parte Communication that deals with potential ATSC 3.0 regulations, specifically regarding new services that broadcasters could offer the public with the NextGen TV standard.

A House report on how to limit the reach of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook has been delayed as Democrats and Republicans split on remedies.

Trump’s expected return Monday evening comes as the scale of the outbreak within the White House itself is still being uncovered. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced she had tested positive for the virus Monday morning and was entering quarantine.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted today that she tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday morning. She says she is experiencing no symptoms and had no knowledge of Hope Hick’s testing positive before her briefing last Thursday. She said in a statement posted on her Twitter account that she will begin to quarantine.

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the FCC/broadcaster appeal of the Third Circuit’s most recent smackdown of the FCC’s broadcast dereg efforts drew a crowd Friday (Oct. 2). That may be because the FCC for almost two decades has been responding to remands from the Circuit as the commission under Republican chairmen tried to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule and other local station ownership restrictions but this is the first time the Supremes will get involved.

The White House said the visit of “a few days” to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was precautionary and that Trump would continue to work from the hospital’s presidential suite, which is equipped to allow him to keep up his official duties.

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it will take up a long-running legal dispute over whether the FCC can loosen U.S. media ownership rules. A lower court has thwarted the FCC’s efforts to revise the rules since 2003 in a series of decisions.

The billionaire, along with his companies Hologram USA, FilmOn.TV and Swissx Labs, is being sued by an anonymous woman who says he raped her while she was working for his CBD venture Swissx. He denies the allegations and says the lawsuit is “a tool for extortion.”

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said he will be leaving when his term ends (either with the appointment of a successor or by January, whichever comes first) and signaled his supporters don’t need to advocate for keeping him on the commission. The president rescinded O’Rielly’s nomination after the commissioner criticized an effort to regulate social media that Trump supports.

Thursday will be a busy day on Capitol Hill on the issue of the power of Big Tech and what, if anything, to do about it. The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is holding an afternoon hearing on “Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online.”

October is an unusual month where there are several routine FCC regulatory deadlines — renewals, EEO filings, Quarterly Issues Programs Lists, and the must-carry/retransmission consent deadline, but no significant broadcast rulemaking comment deadlines, perhaps as we are nearing the end of the current administration which might not be around to finish any proceeding started now.