Regulation

The FCC’s approach to Fiscal Year 2020 regulatory fees for broadcasters is “patently unfair and likely unlawful,” ignoring the impact COVID-19 is having on the industry, according to comments filed by the NAB. The comments are in response to an FCC proposal that would require the commission to collect $339 million in regulatory fees for the fiscal year. While that amount is the same as last year, the NAB says that the FCC proposal would see many broadcasters have to pay increased regulatory fees for the second consecutive year.

Byron Allen has withdrawn his $20 billion racial discrimination lawsuit against Comcast. The two parties have entered into a carriage agreement, with the cable company carrying Allen’s 15 TV channels, including The Weather Channel. The deal also includes the distribution of Comedy.TV, Recipe.TV and JusticeCentral.TV on X1, video on demand and TV everywhere.

Lori Bullerdick is suing Fox News Channel and its former Chicago bureau chief for allegedly failing to provide safety training and protection, despite giving her “overwhelmingly dangerous” assignments, and subjecting her to a “hostile” work environment because of her gender and sexual orientation.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says he has been trying to focus on diversity for the last couple of years,but has been hampered by the courts. Pai was asked during his post public meeting press conference on June 9 about the link between media ownership and the wider conversation in the country about racial justice, whether the FCC was doing enough to promote media diversity and what more it could do.

Digital rights groups and the ad industry view President Trump’s recent order regarding social media as a threat to the First Amendment. But four Republican senators said Tuesday the order marks an “important step” to addressing “censorship” by social media companies.

Today, the FCC voted unanimously to help promote broadcasting as a new ancillary/competitive broadband service by making it clear that legacy broadcast TV attribution and ownership regulations do not apply to broadcast-delivered internet services like over-the-top video and data made possible by the ATSC 3.0 broadcast transmission standard.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the White House wrongly suspended the hard pass of Playboy’s correspondent Brian Karem after a raucous incident in July in which he got into an argument with Donald Trump’s former aide Sebastian Gorka following a Rose Garden ceremony.

The National Association of Broadcasters this week recommended to the FCC that it adopt new ownership rules that would encourage broadcasters to offer “Broadcast Internet” services via ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV).

Despite significant Democratic opposition and concerns over his fitness for the job, the Senate voted 53-38 to confirm Michael Pack to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and its sister outlets including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Cuba-oriented Radio and Television Marti.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has tripped over himself publicly enthusing about President Trump’s executive order calling on the FCC to police social media. In his attempts to ingratiate himself with the president, he’s forgetting it’s Congress’ decision whether or not to give the agency oversight and enforcement duties over such media. ~ Also, remembering LPTV champion Mike Gravino.

A few weeks after an internal NBC investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of America’s Got Talent regarding Gabrielle Union‘s allegations of racism, the former judge reportedly is suing the show’s network, production companies and Simon Cowell.

The FCC is advising LPTVs and translator stations still operating on the guard band between TV stations and wireless operators and in the so-called duplex gap between wireless uplink and downlink spectrum that they will have to shut down by July 13. That affects stations on channels 38, 44, 45 and 46 in the so-called duplex gap, and is the case because the long-awaited closing of the 10th and last phase of the post incentive auction transition closes July 3.

A freelance journalist, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Minneapolis, and dozens of news organizations urged Minnesota authorities to let journalists work unimpeded. One organization has logged more than 230 incidents targeting journalists since George Floyd’s death. The Associated Press captured film of New York police shoving and swearing at two of its journalists while documenting arrests Tuesday night after a curfew went into effect. Journalists covering the story are exempt from the curfew.

Mitch Rose, SVP of federal government affairs for Comcast NBCUniversal. has been named EVP and head of the company’s Washington. Rose succeeds Kathy Zachem, who is retiring after 13 years with Comcast NBCU.

Broadcasters are telling the FCC it should confine its white spaces item to the narrow changes agreed to by the National Association of Broadcasters and Microsoft and not range into other, murkier areas where Loch Ness monsters and Sasquatches lurk to muck up the compromise. That came in reply comments to the regulator’s proposal to make those changes. Other commenters wanted it to make some more adjustments.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based tech group supported by Facebook, Google and Twitter, filed a lawsuit against President Trump on Tuesday, alleging that his executive order targeting social media giants threatens to “curtail and chill constitutionally protected speech” during the presidential election.

He rails against the “far left’s” hoaxes. He says the World Health Organization has been “beclowned” over its response to the coronavirus. And he describes a “secret and partisan surveillance machine” run by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff. Those aren’t President Donald Trump’s words. They came from Brendan Carr, the junior Republican on the FCC, who is embracing a flavor of distinctly Trumpian rhetoric that could help him leapfrog his way to the chairmanship of the five-member regulatory agency.

FCC commissioner Geoffrey Starks has weighed in on the current protests in response to the death of George Floyd in policy custody, signaling that increasing media diversity is one of the necessary responses to systemic racial inequality.

Here’s a look at what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is, and the practical implications of the loss of its protections would have for online services. The implications include the potential for even greater censorship by these platforms of what is being posted online — seemingly the opposite of the intent of the Executive Order triggered by the perceived limitations imposed on tweets of the president and on the social media posts of other conservative commentators.

Preston Padden: “In Nixon’s railing against the liberal bias of the networks, one can almost hear Mr. Trump railing against social-media companies.”

Three online advertisers are suing Google for allegedly violating antitrust laws by monopolizing digital advertising markets. “Google leveraged its stranglehold on online search and search advertising to gain an illegal monopoly in brokering display advertising on other companies’ websites,” the marketers allege in a class-action complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

June is a busy month with important obligations for many stations. June brings the start of summer and the start of the license renewal cycle for television stations. Also, the FCC will hold its Open Meeting on June 9 and there is one item in particular that will interest TV stations that have adopted or plan to adopt the ATSC 3.0 standard. And there’s more.