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With the recent release of the FCC’s report setting out the potential opening bids to buy out the spectrum of TV stations so that it can be resold to wireless companies for wireless broadband, station owners and operators around the country have many questions about how the auction will play out, and what they really …

The FCC yesterday released a public notice extending the comment dates in their proceeding to regulate Online (or “over-the-top”) Video, particularly Internet video providers who provide multiple channels of linear video programming (programming streamed at the same time to all viewers, as opposed to on-demand video like that provided by Netflix or Amazon), in the …

On Friday, the FCC released a new report by the investment bankers advising them on the incentive auction, Greenhill and Company.  This report summarizes proposed auction procedures, but also sets out, on a market-by-market basis, the expected opening bids to be offered to TV broadcasters for the surrender of their spectrum so that the spectrum can be repurposed for wireless broadband use.  And these numbers are high – seemingly meant to attract broadcasters to consider possible participation in the auction process.  The opening numbers suggested by this report range from a high offer of $870 million in New York City, to a couple of million even in the smallest TV markets. 

While this report, and the table of expected opening offers that is part of that report, are in a format similar very to the Greenhill report that was released several months ago (about which we wrote here), those two reports actually represent two very different numbers.  The report released in the Fall set out prices that stations willing to surrender their frequencies might be expected to actually receive in an incentive auction.  The numbers in this report are merely the opening offers that will be made to stations to surrender their spectrum.  If these numbers attract more broadcasters willing to surrender their spectrum than the FCC needs to meet their spectrum-clearing targets (as they quite well may given the numbers being proposed), then the Commission will lower the offer in subsequent rounds of the auction, and the FCC will continue to lower the bids until they receive willing sellers of just the right amount of spectrum necessary to clear the FCC’s targets (which are yet to be set) for spectrum to be resold to wireless users.
Continue Reading FCC Releases Tentative Amounts for Opening Offers to TV Stations to Surrender their Spectrum in the Incentive Auction – and the Numbers Are High

The incentive auction to repurpose part of the TV band for wireless broadband marches on, and activity takes place on an almost daily basis.  Last week, in providing the February Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters, we mentioned the dates for comments on the auction procedures, asking questions about the mechanics of the auction and how …

Last month, we wrote about the FCC issues facing broadcasters in 2015.  Today, we’ll look at decisions that may come in other venues that could affect broadcasters and media companies in the remaining 11 months of 2015.  There are many actions in courts, at government agencies and in Congress that could change law or policy and affect operations of media companies in some way.  These include not just changes in communications policies directly, but also changes in copyright and other laws that could have a significant impact on the operations of all sorts of companies operating in the media world.

Starting with FCC issues in the courts, there are two significant proceedings that could affect FCC issues. First, there is the appeal of the FCC’s order setting the rules for the incentive auction.  Both Sinclair and the NAB have filed appeals that have been consolidated into a single proceeding, and briefing on the appeals has been completed, with oral arguments to follow in March.  The appeals challenge both the computation of allowable interference after the auction and more fundamental issues as to whether an auction is even permissible when there is only one station in a market looking to give up their channel.     The Court has agreed to expedite the appeal so as to not unduly delay the auction, so we should see a decision by mid-year that could tell us whether or not the incentive auction will take place on time in early 2016.
Continue Reading What Washington Has in Store for Broadcasters and Digital Media Companies in 2015 – Part 2 – Court Cases, Congressional Communications and Copyright Reform, and Other Issues

As in any month, February has many impending deadlines for broadcasters and media companies – many routine regulatory obligations as well as some that are specific to certain proceedings.  First, let’s look at some of the routine filing deadlines.  On February 2, license renewal applications in the second-to-last filing window of this renewal cycle are due to be submitted to the FCC by TV stations in New York and New Jersey.  The last TV stations to have to file in a regular renewal cycle will be due on April 1, for those TV stations in Pennsylvania and Delaware.  After these stations complete their renewal filings, it will be another 5 years before another set of routine license renewals are to be filed.  Stations in Pennsylvania and Delaware should be broadcasting their pre-filing announcements on February 1 and February 16 (and there are also post-filing announcements that need to be run by the New York and New Jersey stations, as well as those in New England that filed their applications by December 1). 

Radio and TV stations in New York and New Jersey, as well as in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and Oklahoma, should be placing EEO Annual Public File Reports in their public files (online for TV and paper for radio, with links to the reports on their websites) by February 1 if they are part of an employment unit with 5 or more full-time employees.  By February 2, noncommercial TV stations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and New York should file with the FCC their Biennial Ownership Reports, and noncommercial radio stations in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma should be filing those same reports on February 2.  Commercial radio and TV stations in the entire country will be filing their Biennial Reports in December of this year.  A guide to many of the regular FCC filing deadlines can be found in our Broadcasters Calendar available here.
Continue Reading February Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – TV Renewals, EEO Reports, Lots of TV Incentive Auction Activity, OTT MVPD and Contest Comments, and Last-Minute January Deadlines for Webcasting

Each year, at about this time, we pull out the crystal ball and make predictions of the issues affecting broadcasters that will likely bubble up to the top of the FCC’s agenda in the coming year.  While we try each year to throw in a mention of the issues that come to our mind, there are always surprises, and new issues that we did not anticipate. Sometimes policy decisions will come from individual cases, and sometimes they will be driven by a particular FCC Commissioner who finds a specific issue that is of specific interest to him or her.  But here is our try at listing at least some of the issues that broadcasters should expect from Washington in the coming year.  With so many issues on the table, we’ll divide the issues into two parts – talking about FCC issues today, and issues from Capitol Hill and elsewhere in the maze of government agencies and courts who deal with broadcast issues.  In addition, watch these pages for our calendar of regulatory deadlines for broadcasters in the next few days.

So here are some issues that are on the table at the FCC – starting first with issues affecting all stations, then on to TV and radio issues in separate sections below. 

General Broadcast Issues

There are numerous issues before the FCC that affect both radio and television broadcasters, some of which have been pending for many years and are ripe for resolution, while others are raised in proceedings that are just beginning. These include:

Multiple Ownership Rules Review: In April, the FCC finally addressed its long outstanding Quadrennial Review of the broadcast multiple ownership rules – essentially by punting most of them into the next Quadrennial Review, which probably won’t be resolved until 2016.  Issues deferred include any revisions to the local ownership limits for radio or TV (such as loosening the ownership caps for TV stations in smaller markets, which the FCC tentatively suggested that they would not do), any revision to the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule (which the FCC tentatively suggested that they would consider – perhaps so that this rule can be changed before the newspaper becomes extinct), and questions about the attribution of TV Shared Services Agreements (which the FCC is already scrutinizing under an Interim Policy adopted by the Media Bureau).
Continue Reading What Washington Has in Store for Broadcasters in 2015 – Part 1, What’s Up at the FCC

The FCC this week issued a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, suggesting that certain responsibilities for the captioning of video programming be reassigned from the Video Programming Distributor (the TV station or cable system) who has the direct contact with the viewer, to the producer of the programming as that is where the …

The FCC adopted proposed auction procedures for its incentive auction at its meeting on Friday, and thus far has released a Fact Sheet on these procedures by which it plans to buy back spectrum from broadcasters and resell it to wireless companies for wireless broadband uses.  The tentative procedures, along with the recent “Greenhill Report” setting possible prices to be paid to television stations who are willing to surrender their channels for the FCC to resell to wireless companies (see our summary here), are setting the stage for a series of meetings with broadcasters to attempt to convince enough to participate in the auction to satisfy the FCC’s goals for the auction – goals that also became a bit clearer from Friday’s releases.  Further information on the auction procedures is expected soon in a more detailed Public Notice fleshing out the proposals outlined in the Fact Sheet so that comments can be filed by the end of January. 

The fact sheet is not the detailed notice of auction procedures that some broadcasters may be familiar with from participating in past broadcast auctions – that will apparently come soon in the Public Notice that it summarizes.  But it does provide an outline of proposed general principles that will be applied to the incentive auction.  Initially, it proposes that the FCC would set opening prices for each station – prices at which the FCC would offer to pay the licensee to give up its spectrum.  The prices would be set based on an analysis of two factors: (1) the impact that the station would have on the repacking of the broadcast spectrum after the auction because of the interference that it causes and (2) the population covered by the station.  If a station agrees to move to the VHF band instead of surrendering its licenses altogether, it would receive somewhere between a third and a half of the opening price if it accepts a high VHF channel, and between 67 and 80% of the opening price for a low VHF channel.  According to the fact sheet, the prices that will initially be offered to the broadcaster will be initially set high, and will be lowered as the auction progresses until the prices reach a point where there are just enough broadcasters willing to take the lowered offer to clear the amount of spectrum that the FCC needs to fill the demands of the wireless users.  There has also been introduced the concept of a “dynamic reserve price,” setting a limit on how much the FCC is willing to pay some stations for giving up their spectrum, which could conceivably result in the amount that they are offered being lowered even when it is known that they cannot be repacked into the amount of the spectrum that remains available in the smaller post-auction TV band.   How much spectrum must be cleared for the auction to go forward?
Continue Reading Putting Details to the Incentive Auction – FCC Asks for Comments on Fact Sheet on Auction Structure, and Prepares for Meetings with Broadcasters

We are often asked by television broadcasters if specialty programming – particularly local programming, like a local church’s broadcast of its Sunday morning church service – is covered by the FCC’s closed captioning obligations.  In a decision released on Friday, the FCC staff denied the request of a church for an exemption from the rules requiring the closed captioning of most television programming, and may have helped to make clear an answer to those questions.  This decision also helps to clear up a big question that has been hanging over such programs, for over 3 years since the FCC reversed dozens of prior waivers granted by its staff to nonprofit groups claiming that the captioning would be economically burdensome on their operations (including the waiver that had been granted to this church).  So what factors did the Commission review in denying this “economically burdensome” waiver request?

In 2011, the Commission stated that its staff had to consider the overall circumstances of each petitioner in evaluating economic waivers of the captioning rules, and could not simply rely on the fact that the petitioner was a nonprofit organization the FCC.  After revoking the waivers, the Commission asked the groups whose waivers were revoked to refile their requests with greater detail and support, not simply relying on the fact that the proponent was a nonprofit organization.  Factors to be considered in evaluating any claim that the captioning obligation was economically burdensome include: (1) the cost of the closed captions for the programming and attempts of the programmer to find cheaper sources of captioning; (2) the impact of the captioning obligation on the operation of the provider or program owner; (3) detailed information on the financial resources of the provider or program owner including income and expense statements for the prior two years; (4) attempts to get outside sponsors for the programming or support from the station on which the programming is to be broadcast; and (5) the type of operations of the provider or program owner.  In applying these factors in the decision released on Friday, the FCC staff concluded that the church had not justified a waiver because it had sufficient funds from which to pay the cost of the captioning. 
Continue Reading FCC Denies Closed Captioning Waiver for Church Service – Clarifying New Standards on “Economically Burdensome” Exceptions to Captioning Requirements