The FCC Media Bureau will update its guidance for broadcast transactions involving sharing agreements in response to Congress' pushing back of the FCC's deadline for broadcasters to unwind attributable joint sales agreements, an FCC spokeswoman told us in an email Monday. In a provision of the FY 2016 omnibus appropriations law signed by the president Friday, the deadline to unwind existing JSAs was moved from June 2016 to Oct. 1, 2025.
Monty Tayloe
Monty Tayloe, Associate Editor, covers broadcasting and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2013, after spending 10 years covering crime and local politics for Virginia regional newspapers and a turn in television as a communications assistant for the PBS NewsHour. He’s a Virginia native who graduated Fork Union Military Academy and the College of William and Mary. You can follow Tayloe on Twitter: @MontyTayloe .
The FCC unanimously approved an order Wednesday designed to mitigate the incentive auction’s impact on low-power TV and translator licenses, leading to the item being pulled from the agenda shortly before the FCC’s meeting Thursday. Commissioner Ajit Pai said negotiations on the order were “productive.”
There have been many more party-line 3-2 votes at FCC meetings under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler than under former Chairmen Kevin Martin and Julius Genachowski, a comparison of such votes shows. Using records on the FCC's website and in the Electronic Comment Filing System, Communications Daily tallied votes at FCC meetings in 2008, 2012 and 2014. It found that in 2014, the Wheeler-led commission approved items at FCC open meetings with a party-line vote 11 times, compared with two such votes under Martin in 2008 and just one under Genachowski in 2012.
Industry expectations of an upcoming FCC rulemaking stemming from the final report of its Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee are behind a recent flurry of filings in the DSTAC docket from EchoStar, NCTA and TiVo, industry officials told us. The report contained opposing recommendations from a group of pay-TV carriers and the TiVo- and Public Knowledge-backed Consumer Video Choice Coalition. The multichannel video programming distributors have taken the stance that the FCC should take no action toward creating a downloadable security solution -- so an FCC item would be seen as a blow to the MVPDs.
Free Access Broadcast & Telemedia wants the incentive auction's March 29 start pushed back to accommodate its court challenge of the way low-power TV licensees are treated in the auction rules, it said in a news release Friday. “Should the FCC decline to move back the kick-off date, FAB counsel may likely be forced to seek Court relief to delay the auction until all issues are resolved.”
The Form 177 application window for TV licensees to apply to participate in the incentive auction opened Tuesday at noon EST, two hours into the Incentive Auction Task Force’s workshop on filling out and submitting Form 177. “Once you leave here today, you’re on the clock,” IATF Chair Gary Epstein told the crowd of attorneys and broadcasters. “Please file early; we can’t stress this enough,” he said. The window to file Form 177 ends at 6 p.m. EST, Jan. 12, and Epstein said he expects to pull an all-nighter that evening. Broadcasters can still decide not to participate in the auction if they change their mind after the window closes, but those that don’t file Form 177 before Jan. 12 won’t be able to sell their spectrum, said Wireless Bureau Attorney Advisor Erin Griffith.
A T-Mobile reconsideration petition asking the FCC to restrict Dish Network’s bidding in the broadcast incentive auction because of Dish’s use of the designated entity rules in the AWS-3 auction isn't considered likely to get much traction, with agency leadership focused on maximum auction participation, lawyers and analysts told us Monday. The credibility of the incentive auction should also be important to the commission, T-Mobile Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Kathleen Ham said. “The auction needs to be fair. What happened in the last auction wasn’t fair.” Dish and the FCC didn't comment.
A recent spate of broadcast mergers is “putting pressure” on the FCC’s proposal to eliminate the UHF discount, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said on Friday at the Practising Law Institute’s Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation. The deals, which include Gray’s purchase of Schurz’s stations and the proposed Media General/Meredith and Nexstar/Media General combinations, are seen as part of a scale “arms race” between broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors, Lake said.
A draft order at the FCC on the incentive auction’s impact on low-power TV and translators would contain rules allowing LPTV stations to channel share with translators, delaying the deadline for LPTV to transition to digital, and allowing displaced LPTV stations to take advantage of FCC auction software to find new channels, agency officials told us. The item would also eliminate the analog tuner requirement for TVs and set up a new digital-to-digital translator service, an FCC official told us.
The definition of a cable system isn’t technology-neutral, said Rosemary Collyer, U.S. District judge for the District of Columbia, in an opinion saying streaming TV service FilmOn X isn't eligible for a compulsory license.