Broadcasters and public interest groups are fighting over whether the upcoming transition at the FCC and the recent holiday season are good enough reasons to extend comment deadlines on petitions to reconsider broadcast ownership rules, in several filings posted in docket 14-50 Friday. “Even in the unprecedented circumstance that every FCC staff person who has previously worked on broadcast ownership reviews accepts an assignment to a different Bureau . . . there is absolutely no reason that FCC staff newly responsible for broadcast ownership would not benefit from a fully briefed docket,” said NAB in opposition to the one-month extension requested by Prometheus Radio Project and Media Mobilizing Project. Nexstar also filed against the public interest request. The opposition filings are “ungracious posturing,” said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represents the public interest groups.
The FCC incentive auction Public Reporting System and its Electronic Comment Filing System experienced outages Wednesday that prevented users from accessing the auction bidding system or reading documents filed with the commission. Though ECFS' difficulties persisted into late afternoon according to several users of the system, the problems with PRS were cleared up less than 15 minutes after the Incentive Auction Task Force announced them, according to time-stamped announcements on the PRS system that have since been removed. The PRS announcement blamed the issue on internet connectivity problems. An FCC spokesman told us the problem affected about 80 documents, and was resolved by Wednesday afternoon, though it could take more time to provide access to the documents. The FCC said it is exploring the cause of the internet outage with its vendors. The spokesman said the issues are believed to be unrelated.
The FCC Media Bureau issued an order Wednesday denying reconsideration petitions that were made to the full commission and without providing any notice of the action to Republican commissioner offices, according to a released statement from Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly which followed our inquiries and bureau documents. “This smacks of midnight regulation” said broadcast attorney Todd Gray of Gray Miller, who represents a group of more than 60 noncommercial TV and radio stations that appealed to the full FCC a rule change that would require the stations to provide certain additional personal information on ownership forms (see 1601200064). “I find it bizarre that the Media Bureau has the delegated authority to act on a petition addressed to the full commission,” Gray said.
Nexstar maintained through December that a waiver that would allow it to complete its $4.6 billion purchase of Media General despite the ongoing incentive auction (see 1611300064) was expected to be granted in 2016. It wasn't issued. Broadcast attorneys and pay-TV officials told us the waiver’s delay could be blamed on a range of explanations from retransmission consent negotiations to the progress of the incentive auction, and some believe the waiver request could soon be granted. There have been a number of carriage blackouts around New Year's day (see 1701030046).
An ownership dispute involving another Entercom station entitles Edward Stoltz to be a party in the FCC proceeding (see 1610280058) on Entercom's KDND(FM) Sacramento license renewal application, which the FCC designated for hearing over a 2007 radio contest that led to the death of a listener, Stolz said in opposition filings posted in docket 16-357 Wednesday. Set to be heard by Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel in July, the case has entered its discovery phase, according to filings with the FCC. “Entercom argues that Stolz engages in a ‘twisted chain of logic,’” Stolz said in his filings appealing his exclusion from the case by the FCC. “This is comically ironic, since Entercom is the twisted party here,” Stolz said.
The FCC's 2016 nationwide test of the emergency alert system showed the system to be “significantly improved” from the 2011 nationwide test, said a preliminary report on the test released Wednesday by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. “The Nationwide EAS Test was successful,” said the bureau. “Initial test data indicates that the vast majority of EAS Participants successfully received and retransmitted the National Periodic Test (NPT) code that was used for the test.”
Many FCC staffers are “unsure what the future may bring,” with the agency's upcoming transition to a new Trump administration, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Dec. 15 at the close of the final commissioners' meeting during the Obama administration (see 1612150034). The sentiments were echoed in recent interviews with an official at the agency's union and current and former commission officials. Separately, former FCC employees from the last Republican administration under then-Chairman Kevin Martin are being interviewed for jobs at the agency by the Trump transition team, said a commission official.
The FCC signed a lease for its new headquarters at Sentinel Square III at 45 L St. NE, a commission spokesman told us Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims denied last week a motion for special relief and a temporary restraining order filed by the FCC's current landlord Republic Properties affiliate Parcel 49C that would have prevented the General Services Administration from awarding the bid, according to court documents. No specific timeline for the move is available, the spokesman told us, though the FCC's lease on the current Portals building expires in October.
A petition proposing relaxing equal employment opportunity rules to allow broadcasters to satisfy EEO requirements with online job postings is likely to find favor in the upcoming FCC but could face public interest pushback, several broadcast attorneys told us. Filed last week by Sun Valley Radio and Canyon Media Corp. and put out for comment Friday, the petition says the internet is now the primary means of searching for job postings and rules that don't recognize that are outdated. “The daily newspaper, previously cited by the FCC as the presumptive way to reach all groups within a community, now pales in its reach within the community compared to the Internet,” said the petition. Comments are due Jan. 30 (see 1612150073), putting any potential NPRM well into the next administration.
The FCC Wednesday pulled a draft emergency alert system order from the next day's commissioners' meeting agenda, after industry and agency officials said it was controversial. Five other agenda items also were pulled, though four were adopted on circulation.