Regulation

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.

Comcast, joined by Disney, Fox Cable and NBCUniversal, is seeking a temporary restraining order to delay a Maine law requiring cable companies to offer channels on an a la carte basis.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the issue with Commerce, is putting a thumb on the scale for the sunset of the compulsory license that allows satellite providers to import distant network-affiliated TV signals into markets that lack them without having to negotiate individually for the license with broadcasters.

The FCC announced on Friday that it will be hosting a symposium on the state of the broadcast industry on Nov. 21.  On that day, there will be a panel in the morning on the state of the radio industry and one in the afternoon on television.  The Public Notice released Friday lists a diverse group of panelists, but says little beyond the fact that the forum will be occurring.  What could be behind the commission’s decision to host this session?

Facebook Inc was sued on Thursday in a proposed class action accusing it of discriminating against older and female users by withholding advertising for financial services such as bank accounts, insurance, investments and loans.

CNN, HuffPost and Rolling Stone incorrectly said Joe Arpaio was an ex-felon, but U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth won’t fault Chris Cuomo’s “mistake in legal nomenclature” and rejects the controversial sheriff’s bid to establish actual malice from “leftist” bias.

Here’s what to expect from the commission in November through January.

The Big Four networks have opened another front in their battle with Locast, the startup behind a free service that streams local TV signals in several large U.S. markets. In their latest move, ABC, NBCUniversal, CBS and Fox have urged a New York court to dismiss recent counterclaims filed by Locast and to instead focus on what the broadcasters claim to be Locast’s “wholesale violation of the Copyright Act.”