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.
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.
As we wrote on Friday, the government shutdown affects many aspects of FCC operations – and could affect the ability of the FCC to hold its regular monthly meeting, now scheduled for January 30. With the FCC likely shut down for most of this week, just before closing, the FCC released its agenda for the January 30 meeting (which would normally have been released this week – 3 weeks before the meeting). One interesting item on the agenda was a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to change certain aspects of the criteria used to evaluate applicants for new noncommercial broadcast stations and LPFMs, and the operations of those new stations after a construction permit is issued. The draft NPRM is here. As with all draft items released with the agenda of an upcoming FCC meeting, the draft is subject to change before that meeting.
It appears that the NPRM was not prompted by any single group representing noncommercial broadcasters, but instead raises a number of issues and problems that have been raised before the FCC in comparative cases in the last decade, which use a “points system” process to determine which mutually-exclusive noncommercial applicant should have its application granted. The point system relies on paper hearings to determine which applicant has the most points, awarding applicants preferences on factors such as whether they have few other broadcast interests, whether they are local organizations, and whether they are part of state-wide networks. The NPRM also looks at the restrictions on what successful applicants can do, once they receive their construction permits to build new stations – including the length of LPFM CPs, the transferability of those CPs, and restrictions imposed on changes to certain NCE technical facilities after a CP grant.
Continue Reading FCC to Examine the Process for Awarding Construction Permits for New NCE and LPFM Stations – And Some of the Rules that Apply Once a New Noncommercial CP is Awarded
There were several recent FCC decisions on application processing matters worthy of note. One deals with the processing of commercial applications for FM stations or FM translators that are involved in an auction to resolve disputes, the others with the processing of noncommercial applications (in this case for LPFM stations). None break new ground – but instead they reinforce earlier decisions that some who have been around the broadcast industry had found surprising, so these decisions are worth noting. The commercial case involved the question of whether an applicant needs to receive “reasonable assurance of transmitter site availability” before specifying a transmitter site after a broadcast auction. The noncommercial cases deals with the dismissal of an application because of a change in the control of its board of directors while the application was pending.
The commercial case involved the application for a new FM translator in New Jersey, where a local broadcaster filed a petition asking that the translator application be denied as the applicant had never received permission to specify the tower site, owned by the petitioner, in the “long-form” application filed by the applicant after the applicant prevailed in an auction. After the petition was filed, the applicant amended his application to specify another transmitter site. But, under an old line of cases, the failure to have “reasonable assurance” of a transmitter site was fatal to an application and could not be corrected by a later amendment to an available site. In this week’s decision, the FCC reiterated a decision that it made a few years ago (see, for instance, our article here) concluding that, where an application is granted as a result of an auction, the applicant need not have “reasonable assurance” of its transmitter site at the time it files its “long-form” application (the application that specifies the technical details of the facilities that the applicant intends to use to operate its station).
Continue Reading FCC Application Processing Decisions – No Reasonable Transmitter Site Assurance Necessary for Auction Applications, Change in Control of Nonprofit Governing Board Fatal to Pending Applications
In a decision released earlier this week, the FCC dismissed an application for a new noncommercial FM station based on a change in the majority of the applicant’s board of directors within a one-year period after the application was filed. The change was deemed a major change in ownership, which the FCC rules says requires the assignment of a new file number – essentially meaning that the application is treated as a new application received after the filing window for the new FM stations was closed and was therefore dismissed. The decision was one made by the full Commission which reversed a decision of its Media Bureau. The Bureau had granted the application following a settlement with other mutually exclusive applications. The full Commission decision to instead dismiss the application was not made without some angst, as two of the Commissioners concurred in the decision but urged the FCC to change its rules before the next noncommercial filing window to avoid a similar result in the future. But the decision does raise some questions about just what constitutes a change in control of a noncommercial broadcaster.
In this decision, the FCC found that two changes in the majority of the members of the board of directors of the applicant, where a majority of the board members changed in a period of less than one year, constituted a major change in ownership of the applicant requiring the assignment of a new file number to the application and its dismissal. The decision contrasted this case with those of other noncommercial applicants in another new application filing window. In that other window, the FCC granted blanket waivers of the major change rule to applicants that had a change in a majority of their boards over a much longer period of time while their applications slowly made their way through the Commission’s processes. It was the difference between the relatively sudden changes in ownership in less than a year in the case decided this week as opposed to the more gradual changes in the other cases that seemed to make the difference in the outcome. But the two Commissioners who separately commented on the case asked if this distinction really should make any difference, especially as the changes did not appear to be the result of any takeover of the organization, but instead were merely changes that occurred in the normal course of operation for this volunteer organization.
Continue Reading Changes in the Board of Nonprofit Corporation Doom FCC Application for New FM Station – Addressing Control Issues in Noncommercial Broadcasting
How do you determine who is control of a noncommercial broadcaster governed by a self-perpetuating Board of Directors? That question was addressed in a recent FCC decision, dismissing an application for a new noncommercial FM station that had not properly disclosed its owners on its FCC Form 340 application. In that case, the applicant had reported to the FCC…
