The FCC Media Bureau’s Audio Division has dismissed several low-power FM applications from religious organizations because they didn’t meet the agency’s localism requirements and contained false certifications, according to letters in Friday’s Daily Digest. LPFM applications from Yahweh HTX, Holly USA Espirit Church, Radio Casa de Adoracion TX, USA Church in the Hills and Church of the Last Call were dismissed for making false certifications about the locations of their transmitter site and the residences of their board members, according to similar letters from the Audio Division.

E.W. Scripps has continued to rebuff Sinclair’s merger offers, Sinclair said in a news release Friday. The company announced it had acquired an 8.2% stake in Scripps in November, to which Scripps responded by adopting a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan (see 2512160079). “Scripps has refused the invitations to speak with its single largest shareholder and instead has stated its preference to execute its standalone plan,” Sinclair said Friday. “Our last proposal to Scripps represents a premium of more than 240% over Scripps’ unadjusted share price, while the cash portion alone represents a 32.7% premium over the unadjusted share price. We believe this proposal is attractive to Scripps’ shareholders and, at a minimum, is worthy of engagement.”

The FCC should open an inquiry on the financial viability of PBS and NPR stations in the wake of the end of federal funding, said the Center for American Rights in an email to acting Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone, according to an ex parte filing Friday in docket 25-322. The FCC should ask “PBS and NPR and their affiliated stations to be transparent, honest, and proactive about this new landscape.” The email pointed to public broadcasting stations that have announced impending closure or plans to end their PBS affiliations (see 2512120040). CAR first pushed for an inquiry into PBS and NPR stations in a filing last month (see 2512110052). America’s Public Television Stations has said such a proceeding would “needlessly divert time and resources away from local public television stations’ public service to their local communities.”

The FCC should keep TV and FM ownership limits in place, said National Religious Broadcasters in a reply filing Thursday in docket 22-459. Increased ownership consolidation “would disproportionately harm independent, mission-driven broadcasters, who lack the scale, capital, and national infrastructure of large broadcast groups,” the group said. It would “reduce educational and public-interest programming, which depends on local commitment and community service, not commercial scale or national efficiencies.”

A new study commissioned by NAB shows that local broadcasting “fuels $1.19 trillion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and supports 2.46 million jobs nationwide,” the group said in a news release Thursday. The study, conducted by Woods & Poole Economics and BIA Advisory Services, “reinforces that broadcasters are not only essential to our democracy and daily lives, but to the strength of our economy, as well,” said NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt in the release.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau has proposed $20,000 forfeitures for each of three pirate radio operators in the New York market, said notices of apparent liability in Monday’s Daily Digest. One of the proposed penalties, against Robert Bekune in Irvington, New Jersey, goes back to violations found in 2018, when bureau agents tracked an unauthorized signal to an industrial property with a large sign advertising “PowerHouse Radio 98.5 FM” and “Founder Rev. Prophet Robert Bekune.” Agents found the station operating again in 2023, with the same sign in place, said the notice. Two other NALs were issued to pirates in Spring Valley, New York. Jean Boncoeur and Etzer Toussaint were found allegedly operating unauthorized stations called "Radio Gold Stars" and "Radio Tele Model," respectively, in January 2025.

Arguments that the FCC lacks authority to adjust or eliminate the national TV station audience reach cap ignore that the statutory text and its history show otherwise, Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer said in a filing posted Friday in docket 17-318. The FCC itself, not the Communications Act, created the broadcast-ownership cap, and the agency has repeatedly revised it, he said. Congress' 2004 change to the cap didn't freeze it in place, the filing noted -- it only instructed the FCC to adjust an existing regulatory framework.

The FCC has the authority to lift or eliminate the national ownership cap, wrote Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer in a blog post Wednesday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. The Phoenix Center’s Lawrence Spiwak made the opposite argument in a post on the same site Sunday (see 2601060049).

The Center for American Rights is wrong to argue that the FCC is obligated to enforce its rules even when they're based on judicial precedents that are now widely seen as poorly decided, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said Tuesday. CAR argued last month that the agency is bound by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC decision, in which the court ruled that broadcasters have reduced First Amendment protections because of spectrum scarcity.

The FCC doesn’t have the authority to alter or waive the national TV ownership cap, and trying to work around that by redefining the term “national audience reach” to approve the Nexstar/Tegna deal would be “fraught with peril,” said the Phoenix Center’s Lawrence Spiwak in a blog post Sunday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. The ownership cap prevents a single TV broadcaster from owning stations with a combined national audience reach of more than 39% of U.S. households. The FCC “would have to engage in some very creative economics to come up with a plausible formula that would allow the major broadcast license owners to merge and still satisfy the 39% cap,” Spiwak wrote.