The FCC Takes Action - Any Action
The FCC staff seems to be under orders to act on any long pending items sitting on their desks that they can, resulting in a flurry of radio and television license renewal grants, fines, application dismissals, and other decisions, all occurring in recent weeks. Apparently taking the view that any action is better than inaction, the staff has been granting or dismissing pending items at an unprecedented clip, sometimes to ill effect. We've never seen so many fines issued in one month - to many stations for filing late license renewal applications, for having inadequate public files, for failure to comply with the children's television requirements of the FCC's rules, and for violations of the FCC's EEO rules (which we recently wrote about here and here). The Commission last week also released a number of decisions on cable carriage issues - often dismissing applications as inadequate without asking for any sort of supplemental information which might have resolved the problems with the filings. It also has been dealing with a number of long-pending requests for extensions of the Digital Television build-out deadlines.
It is not clear if this unprecedented flurry of action is the result of Chairman Martin pushing to make the Commission more efficient and encouraging the staff to work through older items, or if it is tied to the new Democratic-controlled Congress and the concerns over oversight hearings, or if it is just early spring cleaning, but clearly the Commission has been marching to a different drummer in recent weeks. We’ll keep watching to see if the frenzied pace keeps up, and more importantly, to see if the effort to clean up some of the long pending matters is extended to the various pending rule makings affecting broadcasting. See our Advisory on possible broadcast issues for 2007 for a summary of all the rulemaking matters that remain pending.
