The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously vacated the FCC’s requirement that broadcasters check federal databases to determine if entities leasing time on their stations are agents of foreign governments, said a seven-page opinion Tuesday. The court ruled against the agency because the language of the sponsorship ID statute limits the due diligence required of broadcasters to their employees and sponsors. “The FCC’s verification requirement ignores the limits that the statute places on broadcasters’ narrow duty of inquiry,” said the opinion from Judge Justin Walker. “That is not the law that Congress wrote.” “The FCC overreached,” said Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council Senior Adviser David Honig. MMTC, NAB and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters were the petitioners in the case.
Tech and public interest groups urged the FCC to close off the possibility of charging regulatory fees to users of unlicensed spectrum, while NAB -- which first raised the proposal -- pivoted to arguing for additional fees for broadband service providers, in comments on the agency’s 2022 regulatory fees in docket 22-223 filed by Tuesday’s deadline (see 2206010058).
Broadcasters, MVPDs, ISPs and other entities argued over the state of competition in the broadband and video marketplaces and how to address it, in comments posted by Friday’s deadline in docket 22-203 for the agency’s biannual State of Competition in the Communications Marketplace report to Congress, due in Q4. Regulations premised on lack of competition “should be repealed,” said NCTA. The FCC “must consider the real-world consequences of imposing, in a highly competitive marketplace, a burdensome and outdated regulatory regime,” said NAB.
An NAB-backed Senate bill to open a window to allow low-power television stations to upgrade to better-protected Class A status is opposed by some LPTV groups, but lawmakers are looking to move it this year, said legislators and LPTV industry officials in interviews.
Apollo Global Management’s financing of Standard/Tegna, influence over the new company and the series of station transfers the $8.6 billion deal would create among Standard, Tegna and Apollo subsidiary Cox Media Group were targeted by MVPDs, public interest groups and fellow broadcaster Graham Media in petitions posted Thursday in docket 22-162. “Why would Applicants go through this many hoops?” asked MVPD Altice, saying one possibility “is that they seek to apply Cox retransmission consent rates to New TEGNA stations -- even though Cox isn’t buying TEGNA.” The applicants’ “attempt to exploit ‘after-acquisition’ clauses in retransmission consent contracts will inevitably result in increased MVPD subscription prices” for consumers, said a filing from two sectors of the Communications Workers of America.
Apollo Global Management and its subsidiary Cox Media Group’s noncontrolling shares in the company created by Standard’s $8.6 billion buy of Tegna wouldn’t give them influence over it or on retransmission consent negotiations, said a response from all four companies to the FCC Media Bureau, posted Tuesday. “The companies will continue to compete directly and vigorously in the handful of markets where both own stations,” said the response filing.
A draft NPRM on preserving FM6 stations -- low-power channel 6 TV stations receivable by FM radios and focused on audio content -- is expected to be unanimously approved with few changes at Wednesday’s commissioners’ meeting, FCC and industry officials told us. The owners of the stations -- sometimes called “Franken FMs” after the fictional Frankenstein's monster -- are optimistic about the FCC allowing them to continue broadcasting but concerned about proposals in the draft to make their licenses nontransferable or bar new entrants. FM6 stations serve underserved communities, said FM6 broadcaster Paul Koplin, CEO of Venture Technologies Group: “Wouldn’t it be in the public interest to let as many people do this as possible?”
NAB and tech groups are preparing for a battle over the FCC’s upcoming collection of regulatory fees, said attorneys and advocates in interviews. Since regulatory fees must be collected by the fall, attorneys expect the agency to soon issue public notices on the 2022 fee collection. The NPRM on the 2021 fee collection was released in May 2021. NAB has had annual disagreements with the agency’s fee assessments for the past several years (see 2008210053), but broadcast attorneys and tech advocates said they expect the group to press the issue this year. NAB Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan at the 2022 NAB Show in April said the item is now “at the top of the list.”
A 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week against the SEC could have implications for FCC enforcement actions and the powers of administrative law judges like the FCC’s ALJ Jane Halprin, but it is too early to be sure how the ruling against the SEC applies to other agencies, said academics and communications attorneys in interviews. Based on that Jarkesy v. SEC decision, U.S. Supreme Court rulings and a pair of cases currently before SCOTUS, the outlook for ALJs at federal agencies -- including the FCC -- “looks a little shaky,” said Jeffrey Lubbers, an administrative law professor at American University. “I’d be surprised if this decision is the final word,” said former FCC General Counsel Tom Johnson, now with Wiley.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) doesn’t mind if a federal privacy law preempts the proposed Colorado Privacy Act as long as it's “as good as what we have” and gives state attorneys general the authority to protect consumers, he said Wednesday at the Mountain Connect Broadband Development Conference. Weiser also discussed digital literacy, broadband infrastructure and consumer protection, and blamed the need for individual state laws on a broken federal system.