Television

Subscribe to Television via RSS

Drones are coming up more and more often as I travel the country to speak to broadcaster groups. It has become a hot issue, both at the Federal level and in many states. I asked two attorneys in my firm who are watching this issue to do an update on where things stand. Bob Kirk (bio here) and Rachel Wolkowitz (here) have provided the following update on where things stand on the Federal level:

Broadcasters increasingly are looking at drones, or “unmanned aircraft systems” (“UAS”) in FAA parlance, as a more cost-effective option for gathering aerial video and photos. After all, small drones can be used to gather aerial news footage for a fraction of the cost associated with using a helicopter. However, before going out and flying one, be warned, the FAA deems newsgathering a “commercial” use currently prohibited under its rules.

In February, the FAA proposed new rules that would open the skies up to small drones for some limited uses. Congress has ordered the FAA to integrate drones in the national airspace by September 2015, but most experts believe that the deadline will not be met. Indeed, the consensus is that it will take approximately two years to compile a record, review the comments, and adopt final rules for small drones, which the FAA says is the first step in letting many types of UAS take flight.
Continue Reading Will Drones Soon Become an Effective Tool for Broadcasters?

The FCC continues to take its show on the road, announcing incentive auction seminars for TV broadcasters in several new cities. At these seminars, FCC officials meet with TV broadcasters in a general meeting to outline the mechanics of the proposed incentive auction to reclaim a portion of the TV band to be resold to wireless users for wireless broadband purposes, and the subsequent “repacking” when remaining TV stations will be assigned channels on which to operate in a smaller TV band. The new seminars are to be held at the following locations:

March 30, 2015: Cincinnati, OH

March 31, 2015: Columbus, OH

April 1, 2015: Cleveland, OH

April 7, 2015: Louisville, KY

April 8, 2015: Indianapolis, IN

April 14, 2015: Las Vegas, NV (in conjunction with the NAB Show)

TV broadcasters should contact the FCC to make reservations to attend. At the same time, broadcasters can schedule a private meeting with the FCC officials to talk about the likely opening bids to be offered to stations to surrender their frequencies and other details specific to the situation faced by their stations.
Continue Reading FCC Announces New Locations for TV Incentive Auction Seminars and Private Meetings

The FCC has extended the Reply Comment deadline in its proceeding looking at whether to apply some or all of the regulations applicable to multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs – cable and satellite TV) to over-the-top video providers who provide multiple channels of video programming in a linear fashion (i.e. like a cable system, with…

In a decision released yesterday, the FCC renewed the licenses of three TV stations held by large broadcast groups, rejecting Petitions to Deny filed by a citizen’s organization arguing that the children’s educational and informational programming run by these stations was not sufficiently educational or informational to meet the requirement that stations run three hours per week of educational and informational programing. The licensees were able to present evidence that these programs where developed with expert guidance to insure that they in fact presented valuable messages to children and, based on that evidence (plus the fact that the challenged programing had been replaced by other non-challenged programming), the renewals were granted. However, the FCC warned stations to be careful in their assessments of the educational nature of children’s programs, as the FCC can sanction stations where that judgment is not deemed to be reasonable.

Every television station has an obligation to present an average of at least three hours per week of educational and informational programming directed to children who are 16 or under. That three hour requirement attaches to each programming stream broadcast by the station (including each digital subchannel – though the obligation can be met if all of the educational and informational programming is done on the main program stream of the station – so a news and weather subchannel does not need to do educational and informational programming if the main program channel does 6 weekly hours of such programming). Such programing is to be designed to serve the “cognitive/intellectual or social/emotional needs” of children. Obviously, what meets those needs can be a matter of debate.
Continue Reading FCC Renews Television Station Licenses after Challenges on the Educational Nature of Children’s Programming – With a Warning to Other Broadcasters

March is one of those rare months on the broadcast calendar when there are few routine regulatory deadlines for broadcasters. As we are winding down in the television license renewal cycle, the month’s only license renewal obligations for TV broadcasters are the pre-filing license renewal announcements on the 1st and 16th of the month for stations in Delaware and Pennsylvania, whose renewals are due on April 1, and the post-filing announcements for TV stations in New York and New Jersey. But there are still dates of interest to broadcasters in the month ahead. Here are some of those dates.

March also brings the obligation, by March 16 for TV stations to be in compliance with the Closed Captioning Quality Standards, which require that broadcasts assess and work to perfect the quality of the closed captioning carried on their stations. While the FCC is looking at bringing television program suppliers under these rules, as of now, the obligation for compliance with the rules is on the television broadcaster. We wrote about the captioning quality rules and the FCC’s recent proceeding to shift some of the burden to program suppliers here.
Continue Reading March Regulatory Dates for Broadcasters – Closed Captioning Quality Standards Effective Date, Comments on Online Public File, MVPD Status for Online Video Providers, LIFO for Political Ads, and FRNs for Biennial Ownership Reports

Last year’s FCC decision to make Joint Sales Agreements between broadcast television stations attributable interests (meaning that they can only be done if stations are commonly owned) are back in the news – at least a little bit. Yesterday, at the NAB State Leadership Conference held here in Washington DC, NY Senator Chuck Schumer, a prominent Democrat, said that he believed that Joint Sales Agreements, especially in smaller television markets, were beneficial to the public interest. He said that he has sent a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler urging him to grant waivers to allow such agreements to continue. Coming from a Senator of the same political party as the Chairman, that call may have more impact than those that have previously gone to the FCC.

It appears that many broadcasters who had entered into those agreements, who are not currently in the middle of a sale of their companies, have been sitting with their JSAs, waiting to determine what to do with them before the deadline for existing agreements to be unwound – set in December of 2016 by a provision in last year’s STELAR legislation (see our article here). One other factor causing stations to wait on any action is the appeal of the FCC’s decision. The Briefing dates for that case have now been set – with initial briefs due on April 13, and the final of series of other briefs and responsive briefs being due on July 27. No oral argument date has been set yet, but it is likely that the argument itself will not occur until late in the year, so there would not likely be a decision until 2016. Thus, stations waiting to hear about the future of JSAs to which they are a party, may not have much time to decide what to do with their arrangements if there is no decision until 2016.
Continue Reading NY Senator Chuck Schumer Supports TV JSA Waivers in Small Markets, Briefing Dates Set in Appeal of FCC JSA Decision

As we accelerate toward next year’s planned TV incentive auction, it seems like there is news almost every day of interest to television broadcasters who may be affected by the FCC’s efforts to clear TV spectrum so that it can be repurposed for wireless broadband use and sold to wireless companies and the subsequent repacking of remaining TV stations into a smaller TV band. Some of the broadcasters most directly affected by the auction and repacking will be LPTV stations who, thus far, have been promised no compensation should their operations be displaced by the repacking of the TV band, and offered no promises that they will have channels on which they can operate after the auction. The issues for LPTV stations, and the FCC’s proposals to deal with them, were to be addressed at a webinar on Tuesday, but the session was cancelled when the Federal government shut down because of snow in the DC area. The FCC yesterday announced that the webinar has been rescheduled for next Tuesday, February 24 – details in the Public Notice here. We wrote about the FCC’s rulemaking looking at what to do with LPTV stations after the auction here.

One of the big questions that many broadcasters have asked since the FCC rolled out the recent Greenhill Report (see our article here), setting out expected opening prices that will be offered to TV stations to surrender their TV channel, was how many stations could actually expect to be bought out in any market. The NAB released a study yesterday, suggesting that in some markets, it is very likely that the FCC will not need to buy out any stations, whether the auction tries to clear 120 MHz (20 TV channels, the maximum that the FCC has looked at clearing) or only 84 MHz (which some have thought was a more realistic goal). On the other hand, in several large markets and in markets in congested spectrum areas near some of those large markets, the FCC may need to get more than half of the stations in those markets to give up their licenses. The NAB computations are taken from FCC data, and the NAB provides many disclaimers that this information may change as auction plans change over time as different assumptions are made, and also are very dependent on the number of participants in adjoining markets. But the study is nevertheless one that gives some broadcasters an idea of how likely it is for them to really need to be an auction participant. See the NAB explanation of their procedures here, and the complete market-by-market chart of likely TV clearing needs here.
Continue Reading More Incentive Auction News – LPTV Webinar Postponed; NAB Study Looks At How Many Stations Per Market Will Need to Surrender Licenses for Successful Auction; More Auction Seminars Scheduled

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