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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? 

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

  • The National Association of Broadcasters denounced recent threats to revoke broadcast station licenses for political reasons, stating: “The threat from
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  • The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau released its second EEO audit notice for 2024.  Audited stations and their station employment units (commonly
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The FCC last week released a Public Notice announcing the opening of a filing window for parties interested in building new noncommercial TV stations at 12 communities in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia.  Applications by nonprofit educational organizations can be filed in a window opening on December 4 and ending at 6 PM Eastern Time on December 11.  The Public Notice describes the filing procedures and eligibility requirements, and sets out how, if there are multiple applicants for any channel, the applications will be evaluated under the FCC’s “points system” for choosing between competing noncommercial applicants. 

Seeing this filing window raised questions among some broadcasters as to when there will be filing windows for other services, particularly ones where commercial stations can apply.  There has not been a window for filing for new FM stations since 2021 (see our article here noting that many channels in the auction immediately after the pandemic went unsold and could be re-auctioned in the future).  The last filing window for new commercial TV channels opened in 2022.  No filing window for new LPTV stations or TV translators has occurred since 2009, largely because applications were on hold during the TV incentive auction and repacking of the TV band (see our article here – but note that there is currently an opportunity for major channel changes by LPTV and translator stations, but not for new stations).  There has been no window for new AM stations in well over 20 years (except for special windows to allow applicants for channels where station licenses had been surrendered to the FCC).  And no window for new FM translators has been open since 2003 (see our article here about the final resolution of applications from that window – 15 years later), except for the special windows for translators to be used with AM stations, and the last of those windows closed in 2017 (see our article here).  Why have there been no commercial filing windows for so long?Continue Reading FCC Opens Window for Filing for 12 New Noncommercial TV Stations While Other Commercial Filing Windows on Hold

  • The FCC’s Media Bureau released a Public Notice announcing the opening of a filing window for construction permits for new
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