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In looking at today’s deregulatory FCC, one might think that the Commission would look to the intent of a rule, rather than focusing on the details of the language implementing that rule. But in the case of a San Francisco TV station asking to be carried on DISH’s satellite television system pursuant to the rule…

Prometheus Radio Project and Media Mobilizing Project, public interest groups who have been opponents of relaxation in the FCC’s broadcast ownership rules, have filed the first Petition for Review of the FCC’s Order on Reconsideration of the Quadrennial Review of those rules. In November, the FCC by a 3 to 2 vote eliminated the rule…

It’s a new year, and a good time to reflect on where all the Washington issues for TV broadcasters stand at the moment, especially given the rapid pace of change since the new administration took over just about a year ago. While we try on this Blog to write about many of the DC issues…

At its next open meeting to be held on January 30, the FCC will consider two more proposals in its Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative.  As with many of the other proposals that have been advanced by the FCC as part of this initiative thus far, these proposals address relatively minor matters concerning paperwork obligations rather than substantive FCC rules.  Draft proposals were released yesterday by the FCC dealing with two matters.  The first is a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking suggesting the elimination of requirements that broadcast licensees file paper copies of certain contracts with the FCC.  The second is an Order deleting certain rule sections that explicitly deal with the operations of full-power analog television stations – stations which no longer exist.

It is certainly difficult to argue with the FCC’s decision to delete rules that apply to a service that no long exists, so it is obvious that the more substantive of the two proposals advanced yesterday is the one dealing with the filing of contracts with the FCC by broadcast licensees.  But even this proposal was not particularly substantive, proposing only the elimination of the rules requiring the filing of physical copies of the required contracts, not the obligations that these contracts be available for public inspection and review.  The NPRM suggests that instead of filing the required contracts with the FCC, the inclusion in a broadcaster’s online public file of information about these agreements is sufficient to eliminate the need for the filing with the FCC of physical copies of these documents.  The agreements that are now required to be filed are also required to either be included in the public file or the licensee may opt to include in the public file a list of the contracts with a commitment to produce them within 7 days upon request.  The NPRM also proposes to formalize the practice specifically adopted in connection with some but not all of the required documents – allowing broadcasters to redact financially sensitive business information from any document that it provides upon request.  The NPRM as currently drafted does not ask whether the FCC should examine whether the filing of some or all of these contracts, or even their inclusion in a station’s public file, should be required at all.
Continue Reading Next Media Modernization Proposals – Eliminate FCC Filing Requirement for Certain Broadcast Licensee Contracts and Expunge Analog TV Rules

When the FCC adopted its Report and Order authorizing the “next generation TV” standard ATSC 3.0, it did not resolve all issues, instead leaving a few for further public comment. Notice of the issues raised in the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published in the Federal Register just before Christmas, setting February 20 as the deadline for initial comments on the outstanding issues, and March 20 as the deadline for reply comments. What issues are left to be resolved?

In allowing the voluntary transition to ATSC 3.0, the FCC required that stations choosing to transition to the new standard must enter into agreements with another station in their market to remain in the current ATSC 1.0 transmission standard and host a “lighthouse” signal rebroadcasting the primary video signal of the converting station on one of the multicast streams of the host station. The FCC recognized that not all stations would be able to find a partner with a signal covering the converting station’s city of license that could host the lighthouse signal in the old standard, and agreed to consider waivers of that requirement. The Further Notice raises questions as to whether the FCC should issue further guidance on the standards that it will apply to such waiver requests.
Continue Reading Comment Dates Set on Unresolved Issues for Next Generation TV ATSC 3.0 Transition – Comments Due By February 20

The holidays are over, and while the regulation never stops, it is time to once again buckle down and look at what is on the horizon for broadcasters. While, in the next few days, we will have our typical look ahead at the broadcast regulatory agenda in Washington for the New Year, we also need to look at more immediate deadlines in the month of January. As we are at the beginning of a calendar quarter, the tenth of the month is the date for broadcasters to add their Quarterly Issues Programs Lists for the just completed quarter to their public file – whether it be the online public file for TV broadcasters and the many radio groups that have already converted to the online file, or into the paper file for those radio broadcasters waiting until the last minute before making the conversion to the online file as required by March 1. These Quarterly Issues Programs lists are the only FCC-required documents showing how a broadcaster has met its public interest obligations to serve their communities and, as we have written many times (see, for instance, here and here), the FCC considers them to be very important, and thus have led to numerous substantial fines for broadcasters who have not met the FCC’s requirements.

TV broadcasters also need to file their Children’s Television Reports with the FCC by the 10th of the month, and place information into their public file about how they complied with the commercial limits on children’s television programming. As we have written before (see our articles here and here), these, too have been the subject of numerous FCC enforcement actions when the Commission becomes aware that the reports were not filed, or were submitted late. So be sure to timely file these reports with the FCC, and place the information about compliance with the commercial limits in your online public file by the deadline.
Continue Reading January Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Quarterly Issues Programs Lists and Children’s Television Reports, FM Translator Window, Main Studio Rule Change and Streaming Requirements

Recently, we wrote about a proceeding initiated by the Copyright Office to review the reporting obligations of cable and satellite television systems related to the statutory license that permits those systems to carry the programming of local television stations.  Systems must report information including revenue and subscriber information that allow royalties to be computed.  This…

The FCC, apparently not in a holiday mood, yesterday released a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing a $13,376,200 fine against Sinclair Broadcast group for alleged violations of the sponsorship identification requirements of Section 317 of the Communications Act and Section 73.1212 of the FCC rules. The FCC alleges that program segments contained in news broadcasts of certain Sinclair stations and certain program-length reports featured stories about the Huntsman Cancer Institute which were not tagged as being sponsored – even though they were broadcast as part of a contract that required that Sinclair air advertising for the Institute and develop programming about the Institute’s activities.

While the amount of the fine is large given the thousands of alleged broadcasts missing the sponsorship tags, the Commission’s basis for the fines are not new. The FCC has previously fined stations for news segments that were sold as part of a commercial package and aired without sponsorship identification tags (see our article here.)  Accepting any consideration, even video footage, from a commercial entity, can be seen by the FCC as consideration requiring sponsorship identification. See, for instance, our article here about one such case. The stand-alone programs that Sinclair argued were identified as having been sponsored were found wanting by the FCC as, while the fact that the programs were sponsored was made clear, the actual sponsor’s name was not explicitly stated in the announcement. The Commission rejected claims that the visual depiction of the Institute’s logo that was shown visually just before the sponsorship announcement, and a welcome from the announcer thanking the audience for joining in the broadcast “from the Huntsman Cancer Institute,” were sufficient to notify the audience as to the sponsor of the broadcast. As in cases we wrote about here and here, the FCC takes a hard line on these cases, requiring that the name of the sponsor, and the fact that they sponsored the programming be presented clearly so that any viewer will know who is sponsoring a broadcast program.
Continue Reading Proposed $13,376,200 Fine Illustrates FCC Concern over Sponsorship Identification Issues

The FCC yesterday issued a Public Notice announcing the immediate freeze on the filing of minor change applications for LPTV and TV translator stations. This is to stabilize the FCC’s database so that applicants in the upcoming window for the filing of displacement applications by LPTV and TV Translator stations displaced by the incentive…

Early this month, the Copyright Office released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking dealing with two separate but related issues. First, it asks for comments on certain changes in the reporting that cable systems and satellite TV operators provide to the Copyright Office on the programming that they carry – information that is used to provide baseline information for the Copyright Royalty Board to use in its determinations on how the royalties paid by cable systems for the carriage of television stations are distributed to the programmers and content owners that provide programming to the stations.   While certainly the reporting of information used to distribute the royalties paid by cable and satellite for their compulsory license to carry the programming broadcast by TV stations is important, perhaps the more interesting portion of the Notice was the questions that it asked about the definition of a cable system – proposing to adopt the definition of cable systems that exclude Internet-based systems that has been reflected in recent court cases.

We have written about the issue of whether online platforms qualify for the compulsory license to carry television stations many times (see for instance our article here when the issue was first raised by Aereo), when services such as Aereo and FilmOn argued that they could carry television stations on their online platforms without specific consent from the stations as they qualified as cable systems.  These arguments have been consistently rejected by the Courts (see, for instance, our articles here and here) , most recently in the Spring when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the one District Court decision that had found that the argument advanced by FilmOn had merit (see our summary of the Ninth Circuit decision here).  The Copyright Office proposes to adopt that definition.
Continue Reading What is a Cable System – The Copyright Office Wants to Know