Regulation

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit won’t review a three-judge panel decision throwing out much of the FCC’s broadcast ownership deregulation order according to a court document obtained by B&C. If the FCC or NAB want to continue to appeal the FCC order, the next stop is to seek Supreme Court review.

Benton County (Arkansas) Circuit Judge Brad Karren sentenced a local television reporter to three days in jail Tuesday after he found her in contempt of court for recording a hearing in a murder case. Nkiruka Azuka Omeronye, a reporter for KNWA-KFTA Fort Smith, Ark., admitted in court to making an audio recording during the Oct. 7 hearing in a capital-murder case.

The cable industry’s lobbying group, NCTA, is siding with the Association of National Advertisers and pharmaceutical companies in their attempt to invalidate a new regulation requiring video ads for prescription drugs to include their list price.

High-ranking antitrust enforcers, speaking at an influential D.C. legal forum, zeroed in on big tech companies’ potential for anticompetitive behavior but also signaled they may take a broader approach to policing the industry.

Will CBS CEO Joseph Ianniello have to take the witness stand at a trial next month and talk about Leslie Moonves and the company’s problems on the “me too” front? On Monday, CBS took steps to avoid that possibility.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has decided to hold a public auction of C-Band spectrum. That is the midband spectrum the FCC wants to free up for 5G, and that is the proposal that the chairman signaled Monday he would be asking the other commissioners to vote to approve in an order early next year.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has introduced yet another version of a STELAR renewal bill, the “Satellite Television Community Protection and Promotion Act (STCPP) of 2019.” There are already Senate Commerce and House Energy & Commerce versions of a bill that would renew the satellite compulsory distant signal license and the mandate that broadcasters and MVPDs negotiate carriage deals with each other in good faith.

FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly said that the FCC’s outstanding proposal to classify OTT platforms as MVPDs is the sort of ‘zombie’ proceeding the body should finally kill off.

Empty chairs represented Apple and Facebook at the House’s Small Business Committee’s Big Tech hearing Thursday, “A Fair Playing Field? Investigating Big Tech’s Impact on Small Business.” Chair Nydia Velázquez voiced her displeasure.

After hearing arguments Wednesday, Supreme Court justices seemed to agree that an appeals court applied the wrong legal standard in allowing Entertainment Studios owner Byron Allen’s $20 billion race bias suit against Comcast to go forward.

According to multiple sources, the STAR Act stellar reauthorization bill is being pulled from today’s (Nov. 13) markup in the Senate Commerce Committee. Broadcasters oppose reauthorization, while MVPDs support it.

Cities from Los Angeles to Boston are fighting an FCC decision they say will cost them millions by letting cable TV providers such as Comcast Corp. partly pay them with services like free air time instead of money. At least 46 cities are asking federal appeals courts to undo an FCC order they argue will force them to raise taxes or cut spending on local media services, including channels that schools, governments, and the general public can use for programming.

Byron Allen’s racial discrimination case against Comcast Corp. heads to the Supreme Court today, where justices will consider Comcast’s argument that the case should hinge on two words: “but for.” Allen filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast in February 2015, arguing that the nation’s largest cable operator was discriminating against his company, Entertainment Studios, by refusing to carry its seven lifestyle cable channels. Comcast maintained the decision was made strictly on business grounds because of the lack of audience demand for Allen’s channels.

U.S. Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim says that existent U.S. antitrust laws are “flexible enough” to address harm caused by technology companies, in the face of growing criticism that such laws cannot tackle tech monopolies.

The former employee in April filed a $120 million lawsuit against the company and its CEO, Suzanne Scott, alleging that she was sexually abused by Roger Ailes and later defamed.

Three of the Big Four broadcast networks have agreed to insure their viewers don’t lose access to distant signals if Congress lets the STELAR compulsory satellite license expire at year’s end, according to letters from those nets, and the fourth is about to do the same, according to a source familiar with the network’s thinking.

The Virginia Press Association asked Friday to intervene in a $50 million lawsuit Johnny Depp filed against Amber Heard, his ex-wife. Depp says he was defamed by an op-ed piece Heard wrote in The Washington Post in December 2018, in which she never identified Depp by name but referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Less than a week before Comcast and Department of Justice lawyers will face off against Byron Allen in the Supreme Court in the Entertainment Studios boss’ $20 billion discrimination lawsuit against the NBCUniverisal owner, Rep. Bobby Rush now wants the telecommunications giant brought down to size.

The FCC today ordered nine TV station groups linked to Sinclair Broadcast Group to return to the negotiating table with AT&T’s DirectTV after some consumers have been without access to 20 stations for five months.

The National Association of Broadcasters has joined with the FCC in seeking a full court hearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel decision vacating most of the FCC’s broadcast deregulation decision. Broadcasters had backed that decision and would have preferred even more deregulation.

Hank Price: “It is a tragedy that the newspaper-TV station crossownership ban, originally created not because of public outcry but for political reasons, is still with us, now sporting a small group of vocalists who think that any form of consolidation will destroy local news.”

The FCC is seeking full-court review of a three-judge panel decision vacating its broadcast media ownership deregulation decision. The commission filed a petition for review Thursday (Nov. 7), arguing that the three-judge panel decision of appeals court imposed burdens beyond those allowed in the Administrative Procedures Act, second-guessed the FCC to the point that it undermined congressional intent, and breaks with higher-court and sister-court precedents.

The FCC has issued the text of its decision approving the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. That came in the form of a Memorandum Opinion and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Order of Proposed Modification. The FCC modified some build-out requirements on Dish spectrum as part of the spin-off of the merged company’s Boost Mobile prepaid operations to the satellite operator.