January 2007

The new Congress has started its oversight of the FCC, and one of the first topics to be brought up is the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine. Presidential candidate and head of the House of Representatives Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, Dennis Kucinich, was the first to call for hearings about the reintroduction of the doctrine.  Others have joined in that cry, including it in a bill introduced in the House and Senate to reform the media ownership rules. But do these perhaps well-intentioned Congressmen really remember what the Fairness Doctrine meant? Basically, bland broadcasting.

The Fairness Doctrine was, for the most part, declared unconstitutional by the FCC in the late 1980s (though some limited aspects of the policy have persisted until very recently). The Commission decision finding the Doctrine to be unconstitutional made sense, as its application clearly abridged the free speech rights of broadcasters. Basically, the Fairness Doctrine required fair and balanced coverage of all controversial issues of public importance. While that may sound like a good goal (one good enough to be adopted by Fox News), in fact it resulted in bland programming. Continue Reading The Fairness Doctrine – Prescription for Bland Broadcasting

Yesterday, we wrote about a government task force, in which the FCC is playing a starring role, to study the media’s impact on obesity.  Now, press reports indicate that violent programming on TV may be the subject of Congressional scrutiny this year.  An LA Times report cites a number of influential lawmakers as wanting to initiate a…

The FCC yesterday adopted two orders approving the initiation of operations by Qualcomm of its MediaFLO wireless multimedia system on television channel 55 in the Richmond/Norfolk area of Virginia, and in St. Louis Missouri.  Qualcomm purchased the nationwide rights to use Channel 55 in an FCC spectrum auction several years ago.  At the end of the…

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA") adopted in 2002 prohibits the purchase of broadcast commercials by labor unions and corporations using their general funds during the 30 days before a Federal primary and the 60 days prior to a Federal general election. The Act prohibited these "electioneering communications," and essentially defined an electioneering communication as any mention of a Federal candidate. The Supreme Court this past week decided to hear the appeal of a US District Court decision which found the prohibition unconstitutional as applied to a Wisconsin Right to Life group, organized as a corporation, which had purchased ads mentioning a candidate in the 60 days prior to an election. If the Supreme Court upholds this decision, we may see more corporate and union money spent on advertising prior to the 2008 elections.

The District Court decision is not so broad so as to allow unlimited political advertising by these groups. Instead, the Court only held that advertising that was directed at specific issues (in this case Senate filibusters of judicial nominees) was not prohibited if the message was not directed at the election. In this case, the ads asked that residents call their Senators and tell them to stop delaying the judicial nominations, naming Senator Feingold, who was up for reelection. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Senator Feingold was one of the principal authors of BCRA (also known as the McCain-Feingold Act). The ads did not specifically tie this issue to the election, or mention Senator Feingold’s candidacy at all. More on the case can be found in an article in Saturday’s Washington Post. Continue Reading Supreme Court to Decide on More Political Advertising

About this time every year, predictions are offered as to what will happen in the coming year.  Since everyone else does it, we’ve offered our own predictions as to what Washington has in store for the broadcast industry in 2007.  Find a copy of our predictions in the memo on our firm website, here. …

In a report issued last week, the Parent’s Television Council submits that there has been a significant increase in violent programming on television since 1998.  The report contends that violent programming has increased, and become more graphic and more sensationalized.  Will this report  mark the beginning of a new attempt to regulate television programming?

The FCC…