Discussion of FCC, copyright, advertising and other legal issues of importance to radio and television broadcasters and other media companies
Principal Editor: David O’Connor
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
For the last few years at this time of the year, we’ve departed from our usual coverage of legal and policy issues to talk about something else – broadcasters giving back. With Giving Tuesday upon us, we wanted to urge our readers to consider ways to give back to our industry. I guess it is now a tradition, so we’ll do it again this year and suggest some of the many ways we can express our thanks to the industry in which we work.
Broadcasters have long been known for their service to their communities, service benefitting individuals and groups across the country. While broadcasters are always giving back to their communities and should be celebrated for that, those of us who make our living in some aspect of the industry should recognize that there are plenty of ways for us to give back as well – both to those associated with the industry who have fallen on hard times, and to those who need assistance in obtaining education and training to enter the media industry we so appreciate. We should all be thankful for jobs, friends, and good fortune. But we should also ourselves give back where possible. In the broadcast industry itself, there are many groups doing good work.Continue Reading Giving Back to the Broadcast and Media Industries on Giving Tuesday
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
President-elect Trump this week selected sitting FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to be the new Chairman of the FCC starting on Inauguration Day, January 20. As a sitting Commissioner, Carr can become permanent Chair immediately – no Senate confirmation is necessary. Current FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced that, as is traditional, she will not only step down from her position as Chair on January 20 and will also leave the Commission on that date – leaving one empty seat on the FCC to be filled by the new President (to permanently fill that vacancy, Senate confirmation is needed). Until that third Republican seat is filled, Chairman Carr will be operating with a Commission split 2-2 on party lines, suggesting that initially any major Commission actions will need to be ones that are bipartisan. However, when Commissioner Carr becomes Chair, he can appoint the heads of the Bureaus and Divisions at the FCC that do most of the routine processing of applications and issuing most of the day-to-day interpretations of policy. As Carr has been at the FCC since 2012 and has served as a Commissioner since 2017, one would assume that he already has in mind people to fill these positions – and thus his team should be able to hit the ground running. What policies should broadcasters and those in the broader media world be looking for from a Carr administration at the FCC?
Immediately after the election, we wrote this article about several of the specific FCC issues where we anticipated that a Republican administration would move forward with policies different than those that have been pursued by the current administration. Since his nomination, we have seen nothing that would suggest that the issues that we highlighted earlier in the month will not be on the Carr agenda. In our last article, we noted that the FCC could be expected to take a different tact on the reinstatement of FCC Form 395-B, the EEO form that would require broadcasters to break down their employees by employment position and report on the gender, race, and ethnicity of the employees in each employment category. In one of his first tweets on X after his nomination was announced, Carr said that the FCC would no longer be prioritizing “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts – seemingly confirming, among other things, that a reversal of the action on the Form 395-B could be in the works (which could easily be done, as there are pending Petitions for Reconsideration of the reinstatement along with pending appeals in the courts).Continue Reading Brendan Carr to Become Next FCC Chair – What is Next for Regulation Affecting Broadcasters?
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
With the election over, broadcasters and their Washington representatives are now trying to decipher what the next administration will have in store at the FCC and other government agencies that regulate the media. Already, the DC press is speculating about who will assume what positions in the government agencies that make these decisions. While those speculations will go on for weeks, we thought that we would look at some of the issues pending before the FCC affecting broadcasters that could be affected by a change in administration.
There are two issues presently before the courts where the current Republican Commissioners dissented from the decisions which led to the current appeals. The FCC’s December 2023 ownership decision (see our summary here) is being appealed by both radio and television interests, arguing that the FCC did not properly relax the existing ownership rules in light of competition from digital media, as required by Congress when it established the requirement for Quadrennial Reviews to review the impact of competition and assess whether existing radio and TV ownership rules remain “necessary” in the public interest. While briefs have already been filed in that case, it will be interesting to see how the new administration deals with the issues raised, as both sitting Republican Commissioners dissented, saying that the FCC should have considered digital competition in substantially relaxing those rules (see Carr dissent here and Simington Dissent here). Even if the change in administration does not change the Commission’s position in court, the 2022 Quadrennial Review has already been started (see our article here), so a new administration already has an open proceeding to revisit those rules.Continue Reading How FCC Regulation of Broadcasters May Change in a New Administration – Looking at the Pending Issues
With much of everyone’s focus on the outcome of the November 5 general election, broadcasters can’t forget the regulatory dates and deadlines in November and early December. While the dates and deadlines in November are lighter than in many other months, many routine deadlines do fall in early December, and even the upcoming month does have dates worthy of note.
The one broadly applicable deadline for AM stations that does fall early in the upcoming month is November 3, when Daylight Savings Time ends. AM daytime-only radio stations, Am stations with different daytime and nighttime patterns, and those operating with pre-sunrise and/or post-sunset authority should check their sign-on and sign-off times on their current FCC authorizations to ensure continued compliance with the FCC’s rules. Broadcasters need to note that all times listed in FCC licenses are stated in standard time, not daylight savings time even if it is in effect.
For television stations, there is a deadline later in the month. November 26 is the deadline for television stations to provide an aural description of visual but non-textual emergency information, such as maps or other graphic displays, conveyed outside of station newscasts. This would include maps showing severe weather and other graphic depictions of emergency information during non-news programming. Since 2013, stations must make textual information about emergency conditions that occur during non-newscast video programming (such as textual crawls about emergency conditions) audibly accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired through having the textual information presented aurally on the station’s SAP channel – the secondary audio channel. The 2013 rules required that visual maps and other non-textual information also be described on SAP channels but, as we discussed in articles here, here, and here, the FCC has extended this deadline numerous times because of the unavailability of workable technology that can automatically perform the functions required by the rule. By the November 26 deadline, stations will either need to provide aural information about non-textual emergency information that runs outside of a newscast, or avoid airing such graphical alerts during non-news programming, or hope that there are new requests for FCC relief before the looming deadline.Continue Reading November 2024 Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters: AM Stations Need to Adjust to the End of Daylight Savings Time, Deadline for Aural Description of Visual Emergency Alerts for TV, Final Rules for FM Zonecasting, and More
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
