Low-power TV broadcasters and interest groups all want deadlines for construction permits for new LPTV stations extended well beyond the FCC incentive auction. They disagree over the method the FCC should use to do so, according to comments filed Thursday in docket 03-185 in response to an Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance petition. The FCC should deny the ATBA petition and address CPs as part of a larger rulemaking on other LPTV issues, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition (http://bit.ly/1rdZizE). “A permittee must be able to anticipate at least the near-term fate of its station before investing in construction,” said LPTV licensee CTB Spectrum Services (http://bit.ly/1vSibK).
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’s 2014 Quadrennial Review of broadcast ownership rules is unlikely to lead to substantive change in the commission’s rules, several broadcast attorneys and industry observers told us. Comments on the quadrennial rulemaking were due last week, and though many commenters asked for rule changes, some didn’t seem to think such changes were likely. The review is mandated by Congress.
The FCC shouldn’t tell video distributors how often to check their closed captioning equipment or tighten rules for live and near-live captioning, said NAB, NCTA and other industry commenters in reply comments filed Friday in docket 05-231 in response to an FCC rulemaking on video closed captioning quality. Though the commission created caption quality standards in February, it also issued a Further NPRM seeking comments on some deferred issues from the rulemaking (CD Feb 21 p5).
The FCC shouldn’t regulate broadcast ownership at all, commented CBS, NAB and 21st Century Fox in docket 14-50 on a rulemaking on proposed changes to ownership rules as part of the 2014 quadrennial review. Though the Further NPRM sought comment on specific ownership changes, such as relaxing the ban on newspaper/radio cross-ownership, Nexstar and other broadcasters said the competitive video market justified the relaxation of all such regulations. The FCC should “amend or, where necessary, remove ownership restrictions that apply solely to the broadcast industry,” said NAB (http://bit.ly/1nwY5eA). Public interest, labor and consumer groups argued against any rule relaxation. The FCC “must maintain existing media ownership rules to protect local market competition and prevent further media concentration,” said the Writers Guild of America, West (http://bit.ly/1kM3Qup).
AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV could be used to allow set-top box manufacturers to sell retail boxes for DBS customers as they do for cable, but such an initiative may not find support, said consumer electronics industry observers and communications attorneys in interviews this week. DBS companies are excepted from rules imposed by the FCC on cable companies intended to create a viable retail set-top market, and DirecTV customers can buy TiVo boxes, but there’s interest among CE companies in expanding their market, said a CE company official. Though getting the FCC or legislators to change rules or impose deal conditions or enact new laws requiring DBS companies to make retail competition with their boxes possible would be difficult, getting such rules imposed as conditions on AT&T/DirecTV would be a viable possibility, said Chadbourne and Parke technology, media and telecom attorney James Stenger.
A GAO report on broadcaster sharing agreements issued last week (http://1.usa.gov/1nOn1nv) could be used to support arguments both for and against FCC regulation of those arrangements, public interest and broadcast attorneys told us. The report concluded that the FCC has little data on the prevalence of such agreements, and that the agency needs to decide if it must have that information to regulate them (CD July 29 p14). “Without data and a fact-based analysis of how agreements are used, FCC cannot ensure that its current and future policies on broadcaster agreements serve the public interest,” said GAO. The FCC’s lack of information on such arrangements could be used to challenge the foundation for limits on joint sales arrangements, or could serve the interests of public interest groups challenging the FCC closure of the 2010 quadrennial review, attorneys told us.
Journal Communications and E.W. Scripps will combine their broadcast operations into one company and spin off and merge their newspapers into another, they said. The all-stock transactions will result in Scripps owning 34 TV stations and 35 radio stations while newly created Journal Media Group will cover 14 markets with the combined newspaper properties, the companies said. Though there are no “market ownership conflicts” between the two companies according to Scripps CEO Rich Boehne, Journal has existing TV and radio duopolies in some markets and may brush up against FCC radio ownership limits in others. Though Boehne said the stations involved were “immaterial” to the deal, he said the companies would try to work with the FCC to hold on to them: “We hope we'll prevail and keep them all."
A federal judge’s finding that FilmOn and CEO Alki David are in contempt of court may not bode well for competing service Aereo’s attempt to be treated as a cable system and obtain a compulsory copyright license (CD July 11 p10), several broadcast attorneys told us in interviews Friday. Judge Naomi Buchwald of U.S District Court in Manhattan fined FilmOn $90,000 for violating a federal injunction by streaming copyrighted broadcast content for nine days after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ABC v. Aereo decision.
A Mediacom petition urging the FCC to restrict programmers -- including broadcasters -- from requiring bundling and other concessions during content negotiations may find favor with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler but is unlikely to be acted on soon, several cable attorneys and industry officials told us in interviews Wednesday. “It would take a very courageous Commission to follow this approach,” said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation. Though Wheeler’s support of rules banning joint retransmission consent negotiations by broadcasters indicates he might agree with some of Mediacom’s points, its petition is likely to be crowded out by the ongoing net neutrality and incentive auction proceedings and the host of large scale mergers facing the commission, numerous industry attorneys told us.
The FCC Media Bureau approved Sinclair’s $963 million buy of Allbritton’s TV stations Thursday evening (http://bit.ly/1lAXiJr). Though commissioner offices are typically notified of Media Bureau actions on delegated authority 48 hours before they're announced, word of the Sinclair/Allbritton approval was not disseminated until the middle of the day Thursday, according to FCC officials. Industry officials have expected the deal to be approved this week since the Department of Justice signed off on it with a consent decree last week (CD July 22 p4). Although the approval was announced after our deadline, FCC officials told us the order accepts the concessions previously announced by Sinclair to come into compliance with the FCC’s rules on sharing arrangements, and conditions the deal on the same single station divestiture to Media General required by DOJ. The deal’s approval had a July 27 deadline that would have allowed either Sinclair or Allbritton to abandon the transaction.